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Hire a account executive
How to hire a
account executive.
Salary bands, time-to-fill, what good actually looks like, and the assessment we put every candidate through. Built on nine years of validated psychometric data from Neuroworx.
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~30 seconds
Title, level, three must-haves. We syndicate, screen, score, and shortlist. First 50 candidates free.
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£78,000
Median salary · United Kingdom
£78-£115k OTE senior range
42d
Typical time-to-fill
down to 2.8d with Picked
312
Applicants per role
Series A · public posting
9 / 312
Make it to interview
industry · pre-AI screening
Salary bands
What it costs to hire one.
2026 H1 · base + variable
LevelUSUKEURemote
IC1 / SMB AE$65-$90k OTE£38-£52k OTE€42-€58k OTE$55-$80k OTE
IC2 / Mid-market$95-$135k OTE£55-£78k OTE€60-€85k OTE$80-$120k OTE
IC3 / Senior$135-$190k OTE£78-£115k OTE€85-€125k OTE$115-$165k OTE
IC4 / Enterprise$185-$265k OTE£115-£165k OTE€125-€180k OTE$160-$230k OTE
IC5 / Strategic$260-$380k OTE£165-£240k OTE€180-€260k OTE$225-$330k OTE
Source · 2,847 anonymised offers placed via Picked Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Updated monthly.
What good looks like
Past credentials. Present signals.
01
Qualification discipline
Knows when to disqualify in week one. Will name an account they walked away from this quarter and explain why.
02
Discovery depth
Runs discovery calls that surface a real budget owner, a real timeline, and a real pain. Not a feature checklist.
03
Closing instinct
Reads the room. Knows when the buyer needs a second pricing call and when they need a deadline. Has lost deals to overplay and named the lesson.
04
Resilience
Has had a quarter at 40 percent of quota and shipped the playbook change that made the next quarter 110 percent. War stories include the quarter that went wrong.
05
Curiosity about the buyer
Reads the buyer's industry, not just the persona doc. Asks one question per call that the buyer has not been asked before.
Nine years of Neuroworx outcome data on 14,000 account executive hires says: the candidates rated high on qualification discipline + closing instinct outperform high-prestige-CV candidates by a wide margin in the first twelve months.
Read the paper →
What Picked puts every candidate through
Four stages. Each one written down.
From the Neuroworx item bank · 1,247 items live
01
Triage
CV + cover screened against must-haves. Title, level, language, region, three skills you set. Hard filters first. The model spends no time on people you would not even read.
~12 seconds · $0.12
02
Conversational screen
A 12-minute voice or chat conversation against six structured probes: motivation, scope of last role, the thing they are proudest of, biggest production mistake, what they would build with a free month, why this role.
~12 min · $0.31
03
Role-fit assessment
A scoped task drawn from the bank. Submit a short writeup. Scored against a published rubric on judgement, craft, and pragmatism.
30-60 min · $0.28
04
AI first-round interview
A 20-minute voice interview against six items drawn from the IC3 item bank. Includes behavioural ("tell me about a time"), technical or scenario ("walk me through how you would approach"), and an ownership probe.
~20 min · $0.24
The 1,247 items for account executive are split across 42 sub-rubrics. Every item has been calibrated against twelve-month performance outcomes from 14,083 prior hires.
See sample items ↗
Sample interview questions
A few from the item bank.
01
Walk me through the last deal you closed end-to-end. From first call to signed contract.
Listen for: Specific account, specific numbers (ACV, cycle length), the moment the deal almost died and what they did.
02
Tell me about an account you disqualified in the first two weeks. Why?
Listen for: A real account, a clear reason (budget, authority, timeline, pain), the conversation they had to have with their manager.
03
What did you do the last time a buyer ghosted you for three weeks?
Listen for: A specific outreach plan. A pattern interrupt that worked. Knowing when to walk.
04
What is the most important question you ask in a discovery call?
Listen for: A question the rep actually asks. The reason they ask it. The signal they are listening for.
05
Tell me about a deal you lost that you should have won. What did you do differently the next quarter?
Listen for: A specific loss. A specific change. The data they used to convince themselves the change was working.
See all 30 questions →
Job description template
Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.
account-executive.md
233 words · 3 min read
# [Senior/Mid] account executive · [city] or hybrid

We are hiring our [Nth] [SMB/mid-market/enterprise] AE. You will own a book of [N] accounts in the [low] to [high] ACV range across [verticals]. The team is [N] AEs and [the sales leader]. [How we sell]. Average cycle is [N] days.

## You will be good here if

- You have closed [N]+ deals in the [low] to [high] ACV range and can talk about each one.
- You disqualify in week one rather than dragging deals through the pipeline.
- [The third trait you actually care about].

## What you will not get

A spray-and-pray outbound motion. We do not chase logos for the deck. If a deal is not real we kill it.

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent commission. OTE [Currency][total]. We post the band because we mean it.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen + assessment via Picked, 20-min interview via Picked, one on-site with the team plus a live discovery role-play with the CRO. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Qualification discipline, discovery depth, closing instinct, resilience, curiosity about the buyer. Not the logo count on your last CV.

That is the JD. Apply via [link] or just send a paragraph about the last deal you walked away from and why.

[Your name], [your title]
Full JD template page →
Also from this hub
Account executive hiring, written down.
Interview questions
30 questions, broken out by stage and seniority, sourced from the Neuroworx item bank.
/account-executive-interview-questions →
Job description template
A short, copy-pasteable JD that does not read like every other JD on the internet.
/account-executive-job-description-template →
Onboarding checklist
Week-one, week-two, day-thirty milestones. Borrowed from Wise, Linear, Vercel.
/account-executive-onboarding →
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