Found this little gem online looking for some well thought out interview questions (both on the giving and receiving side here). http://www.best-job-interview.com/
It brings me to thinking about hiring good SEs and how you validate the best candidates during an interview. Of course good SEs might be hard to hire, so how would you suggest identifying the best people for the job? For me, behavioral questions which find previous situations which they've performed the required activities and drilling into their ability to execute on them and the breadth of their experiences is key.
The thing with SEs is you don't want to end up with a good implementer or consultant without the sales know-how, or a person with the sales ability but lacking in the technical depth. So you have to test both of these aspects, and find a balance between the two.
The next step, finding a good Sales Engineer Manager, is another chestnut. Finding someone respected by SEs usually means one of them, and then finding a good SE that can manage other SEs well - that is key. So then you test yet another ability and find the correct balance of the three. The best job interview site also had an article on the Manager Q&A for interviews in case you are interested.
I would be very interested if anyone wants to comment on send in some tried and trusted SEquestions as a comment here!