Hiring an SAP consultant? Five things a technical screen should check
Every SAP consultant's CV lists the right modules. "FI/CO, S/4HANA, ten years." "ABAP, RAP, Fiori." The words are cheap; the experience behind them varies enormously. If you're bringing an SAP consultant into your team, here are five things a good technical screen should check.
1. Scenarios, not keywords
Ask the candidate to walk through a real situation in their module: a month-end close that ran late, a pricing change that broke billing, a transport that failed in production. Experienced consultants answer with specifics: what they checked first, what the root cause was, what they changed. Thin experience answers with definitions.
2. ECC versus S/4HANA, in their own module
Most landscapes are on, or moving between, both. A finance consultant should be able to explain what the Universal Journal changed for them in practice. A logistics consultant should know what Business Partner means for customers and vendors. If the S/4HANA differences are vague, the "S/4HANA experience" on the CV probably is too.
3. Clean core awareness
Ask how they'd meet a requirement that standard SAP doesn't cover. A consultant who reaches straight for a modification is a future upgrade problem. One who talks about configuration first, then released APIs, then a side-by-side extension, understands how SAP is meant to be extended today.
4. The integration touchpoints of their module
No module lives alone. A good SD consultant knows which interfaces feed orders in and invoices out. A good MM consultant knows where supplier EDI arrives. Consultants who understand where their module meets other systems cause far fewer surprises in testing.
5. How they document and hand over
Ask what they leave behind at the end of an engagement. Configuration documents, test evidence, a short runbook? A consultant who documents as they go protects you when they leave. One who doesn't leaves knowledge that walks out of the door with them.
The question isn't whether a consultant knows the module. It's whether they've been responsible for it when it mattered.
How we screen
Every consultant we place is interviewed by a senior SAP architect on real scenarios in their module, covering exactly these five areas, before you see their profile. You then interview and choose. It's slower than matching keywords, and it's why the shortlist is short.