 I know it's the afternoon. We're almost there, but I'm just so blown away to see all of you here at Slush like many of you I was under a cave for the last three years and to be back at an event like Slush is absolutely breathtaking So thank you for being here. I Wanted to give you a quick introduction of myself and why I'm talking to you here today So a little bit about me I've had the privilege of working in very very different companies at various sizes stages of growth various industries with various types of different talent and I'm super passionate about hiring and building teams. I honestly think it's the hardest job You and I will ever do in our careers the metrics the products the business Those are solvable problems and this is why I think AI has got nothing on people because the most impossible equations The most difficult puzzles to solve are The question of people and and how you motivate human beings. How do you find the right human beings to partner with? How do you build great things together tapping into that human potential is the ultimate challenge? Which I don't think is ever done getting cracks. So super excited to chat with you a little bit more about that today I started my career baining company in strategy consulting and I thought I knew a lot about hiring back then But unfortunately as you and I both know that when you hire a lot of insecure overachievers and consulting That's that's not much of a hiring job at all. You tell them to jump and they and they ask you how high So that was the start of my career when I made my first few hires a baining company And and I thought I was well on my way to be a manager the real world was still waiting for me and when I moved to into it a Very very large organization building software products both on the consumer and for small businesses and I realized that Consulting and consultants are maybe ten percent of the problem, right? Thinking you know the strategy and the answer is the only start of it But building products building diverse teams with very different functional skill sets very different motivations That's a whole different ballgame and I learned I really cut my teeth add into it So over the next 20 minutes or so I'll tell you about all the ways I failed in hiring and building teams so that you can learn a little bit more for my experience from there went to mule soft commercial enterprise IT space super technical and so worked with a lot of developers in that industry and then went to Marquetta Which is in the payments infrastructure space? I say this to you because there's absolutely nothing common in any of the jobs I've held except that there have been problems to solve plenty of problems and plenty of smart people I've tried to do it with I've also had the privilege of living and working all over the world in US Singapore Hong Kong Thailand India South Africa and now most recently I've been living in the Netherlands for the last three and a half years So hopefully I also bring a little bit of a balanced perspective internationally even if I sound rather American So thanks for bearing with me over the next 20 minutes Let's talk a little bit about When you should hire we're going to talk about a lot of topics today But it all first starts with when when do you know that you have to hire more senior leaders on the team? This is a question I get asked a lot People are very fixated on titles and they go I have a team of directors. Should I be hiring VP's? I have a team of VP should I be hiring C levels? That's one that you hear very often and I say forget about the titles Let's talk about the challenges you're facing at your company right now And the first most telling challenge is that you have stalled growth and bottlenecks So I'm gonna quote Simon Sinek here who says that look when the sun is shining and the water Are calm everyone on the boat looks the same Everyone's doing a great job and things are sailing just great But when you hit the storm and you hit those rough waters There's a huge difference between the entry level seaman or sea woman and the one who has battle tested Multiple storms and navigated their way through it So the first sign that you need to upgrade your talent is you have hit rough waters You have stalled growth you have hit bottlenecks and challenges and you're watching your team struggle getting through them Now there are a couple of options from there. You can say hey, I can coach them through it I can try to get them more support mentorship through it, or maybe I need new talent now There's no perfect answer, but that's the first signal you look for Is when you're starting to see that tapping off and and challenge with addressing bottlenecks That's your first sign The second one is the strategic strategic goals require unique expertise. So what do we mean by that? That's a lot of words, but let me give you an example when we were at Marqueta And we were really looking to build out a new credit offering Now that is a very specialized set of skills or you're looking to build payments products for the crypto industry Or what is very relevant now and one that every team is grappling with is if you're looking to create your new AI product Now those are a very specialized set of skills that you know You have to bring in more senior talent for because there are people that have cut their teeth already on this and you can benefit from their experience and last but not least struggles adapting to change adopting technology or addressing skill gaps that you have on the team a typical Symptom I see of this on teams is when you ask a team why they're doing things a certain way and they say well It's how it's always been done Our infrastructure is built this way This is how we solve problems here and the moment you start to hear those answers you have to ask is that necessary? Or are we really bound to an older way of doing things and in order to make the Technological advancements we need to as a company. We also need to upgrade the talent as a part of that So these are a few sort of signposts that I use to address whether I need to bring in more senior talent into the team So now you've identified that you need new talent. You need it to be more senior. Where do you start? I cannot emphasize this enough people seem to think I'll just meet people. I'll figure it out No, please lock yourselves down at a desk and first write down what great looks like Please invest the time do not Google copy paste some job description for that same title But really think about what you are looking for in this role Make sure it's pity it's concise and if you can't articulate what you want in that role You're never gonna find it and that person's not gonna be successful if you find yourself struggling to write a great job Description for this role specifying exactly what this person needs To bring to the table you're probably not ready to hire this role because you haven't figured out this yourself So I would also encourage you to push you hiring managers to do this If they can write a job description send them back and say you know what this is the most generic job description ever seen I think you haven't given enough thought to the kind of team you want to build here go back You probably don't need the headcount. You probably don't need to up level the team Highlight them must have skills be really clear specific. They're not gonna bring it if you don't ask for it And then share your values This is one not to be underscored For example, if you're a roll up your sleeves scrappy team with low budget that encourage experimentation Don't promise big budgets and teams and actually call out those attributes in your job description Second for example, if you have a value around make mistakes fast Experiment learn early as opposed to bring process bring infrastructure bring experience Call those out because those are denoting the values that you're looking for in your company I can't tell you the number of hiring mistakes that have been made By me personally when I focus a lot on the left-hand side those must have skills and I forget about the how and It's very evident by the DNA of the person walking in through through the door where they have very relevant experience But for example, they came from a really large company and now they need say three months and lots of Engagement meetings influencing meetings to get something done when we are a hundred percent scale up or the opposite I've hired someone from a startup brought them to into it and they run around breaking glass and no one wants to work with Them so understand what your values are what's important to you and not just the what but also the values and how and last but not least Define the outcomes and metrics and this is just as important as writing that job description If you can't specify what it takes for this person to be successful in the role Then they're not going to be successful It's a little bit like hiring someone to play soccer, but there's no goalpost and they have no idea what they're doing on the field So force yourself to identify those metrics of success and including that in the job description Or at least having that on hand to share with candidates when you meet them as a part of the process So it's super important to take the time to make this investment up front Recruiting channels. This is one that I have also failed miserably on early on my career I used to think hiring was okay. I understand went to hire I wrote a great job description Outline metrics of success and then I handed it to my recruiter to go recruit And I think that's where a lot of people fail in really building a high-performing team hiring is everybody's job I will say hiring is the most important job you will do as a hiring manager in your entire career and So it is absolutely critical to own it and drive it yourself with support But really own it and drive it. I Interview every candidate at data snipper every single person who walks through our company doors I spend 30 minutes with them as a part of the interview process and for roles on my management team. I Recruit them directly myself and that starts with first leveraging my own network Who do I work with who in my previous companies or my prior experience? Do I believe I want to reach out to that? I think will be great for this role Second engage mentors and investors. So think about multiplying your network Reach out to people you trust and say hey, I'm looking to fill this kind of role Is there someone in your network that you would recommend some of the best hires come through referrals? So tap into your network in order to get more of those referrals coming in third Outbound on LinkedIn. I still send cold messages to multiple candidates for important roles at the company And the way I do it is I search for the profiles that I think would be really right for this role And no shame at all. I write them a cold message and I say hey, I'm the CEO of data snipper I love your experience in profile. Will you please give me 30 minutes? I think you'd be perfect for this role and it could be a customer support associate I recently did it for our first sales hire in qualm 4 I think everyone owns hiring and no matter what your title or level in the organization the more of this you can do The more impact you will have at the company. I think there's no strategy That's good enough unless you have the right people that are steering that strategy and Last but not least of course, they're the recruiters and the search firms They're incredibly helpful. They help you run a smooth process I just don't think you should rely on them a hundred percent this job is too important for you not to have the driver seat on it Here's my cheat sheet for what to look for in a candidate. I take no credit for this I've worked with some incredible managers and leaders in my career many of them at mule soft who really taught me this Amazing playbook that I've now used over and over and over number one. I look for intellectual curiosity I'm not looking for those big university names or those fancy GPAs But I look for that sparkle in someone's eye when I meet them that they are absolutely Intellectually curious and interested in the product you have and the problem you solve and they've been thinking about the problem And they ask you questions about how you can do it better You know when you meet that person right? They've thought about you before they walked in through the door more than some standard questions But they're the kind of person that you know even when they leave the office. They won't stop thinking about your customer That's the kind of intellectual curiosity and drive that I want to see if there's a genuine interest in learning There's a learning mindset there second grit and resilience so The only thing that's true of every job and every company is that there's no Absence of problems and so I think it's imperative that you find someone that doesn't run and hide the first time they come across a problem And these are candidates That are seeking challenges. They know how to work through them and they will stay through them So I'll also talk about what are some of the Things to avoid but one of the things I look for to demonstrate grit and resilience is that they've had staying power in jobs So I actually don't like to hire people that I've hopped jobs every year I think the first time maybe you made a mistake second time you got unlucky But third time maybe you're not showing any of the grit and resilience to be able to see challenges through This is a bit of a controversial one, but it's one I swear by and it's one that holds me in good stead is I Trust people that will be part of solving problems with us with the team with the company Third high trajectory people who are driven they take on increasing Responsibility they take on the challenges of wanting to create more impact and they have a hunger to grow and Last but not least. Okay, so they're curious They stay at jobs and they seem to have high trajectory But did they have any impact or were they just pushing paper? And so this is when you actually try to understand from their experience What was the impact that they had and and the responses can be very different from? Well, I implemented this project and I worked with this team and I did this process versus hey We launched a new product or I improved efficiency by 20 days on support tickets Or I was able to close this customer that had been in our backlog for 18 months So look for those points of evidence because you will also find the people that are Very outcomes driven instead of process and effort driven one of the questions I often grapple with is When you're looking at talent and say they have all of those amazing criteria do you hire for experience or do you hire for talent and There's no easy answer. I I constantly go back and forth between the two But it's really important to understand the trade-offs you're making when you're hiring for experience or hiring for someone that Can weather the boat through the storm? They bring all those years of experience. They bring their network They bring a sense of maturity. They bring industry knowledge Super valuable, but they also bring maybe an element of rigidity, which is this is how I've always done it It's been successful. This is my playbook and they also tend to be more expensive So depending on where you are as a company on your scale up journey It's important to know that you probably can't fill all your seats with super experienced people Because number one you probably can't afford it number two You're trying to form your own culture and so if you have too many of the people who are very experienced It becomes very hard to settle on a culture of the company and the team you're trying to form On the other side early talent If you have too many of them, it'll be blind leading the blind They're wonderful. They're hungry. They're driven. They think they bring a fresh perspective. They're innovative But you can't have too many of them And so for me, it's always been a balance and the question is is where do you want to put the most experienced people and When do you surround them with early talent to give them some of that fresh energy and and the high drive to to get things done? so What are the questions you ask in order to understand do you hire for experience versus early talent number one the role requirements? Do you benefit from experience here or do you benefit from fresh perspective? So I'll share an experience when at Marquetta I was looking to someone to lead the the risk operations of our payments business Okay risk operations payments a lot of things that require very proprietary knowledge and deep experience This is not where you want fresh talent on assessing your risk profile as a company So there you clearly lean in on experience But for example our first ABM marketer quite willing to take on early career talent have them figure out Learning on the job because a lot of things in marketing tools and technology are evolving so quickly So that experience in my view can quickly become outdated so figure out what the role requires and make that call team diversity Balance both you need experience and you you can really benefit from early career talent So ensure that the mix is there because those diverse perspectives can really strengthen your team For example when I was at Marquetta, I didn't have any payments background experience So it became very important for me to surround myself with people that are subject matter experts It's the same a data snipper I'm not an auditor and so I rely heavily on my former Auditing colleagues because they bring such important domain knowledge that I can learn from so also think about it relative to yourself are you someone who has deep domain knowledge and Could you bring on more early? talent to mentor and grow and invest in or is it the opposite and Third long-term goals Think about it in terms of the cultural fit where you are as a company and where you're going a lot of people make the Mistake of hiring for today, but if you're in a high-growth environment today is already in the past And you're gonna quickly whoever you bring on is going to not fit the shoes any more 12 months from now Sometimes just being in a high-growth scale up can feel like a promotion for people because that's the pace of change Here are my flags to avoid These are just ones they they always serve me number one in any interview or discussion If you're going to say anything negative about a prior employer, that's already a no-go on me I mean I barely know this person and they threw their previous employer under the bus Look unless it's Enron or something that is really on the wrong side There's no reason to make snide remarks or basically blame failures on a previous employer Just keep a look out for it in some cases. It's warranted But in a lot of cases it's giving you an early indication of how this person is going to think and picture them exactly two years from Now complaining about you somewhere else Second many short stints. I don't hire job hoppers if someone has gone consecutively from 12 month 12 month 12 month To different jobs. They're probably going to be out of here by the time I fully onboarded them And they figured out where the bathroom is Third very I focused you hear this in answers. I I I did this. I was amazing. I was cool. I Should probably leave the door Higher team players right you can hear that in the stories building a company is a team sport and No one's playing tennis here individually. It's not a zero-sum game. And so the iPlayers Just really have a hard time in in these super fast-moving collaborative environments where you're trying to work on projects together And this is the last telltale sign, you know those last five minutes when you ask hey Do you have any questions for me and Someone always says some seriously canned question of Tell me a little bit about your plans for the year or tell me a little bit about why you joined the company Sure, okay. I'll tell you that but I wish you had something more interesting because Hopefully you spent a few hours thinking about the company the product this role the challenges We're facing tell me what you're genuinely interested in and if if they don't seem to have put enough thought into that Then it comes back to the first quality I look for which is intellectual curiosity and if it's just not there That's that's a good telltale sign that this may not be the high trajectory candidate. You're looking for a Little bit about interview panels. This comes up a lot who should meet the candidate. What does the mix look like number one? You as the hiring manager spend a third of the time You are the most important decision-maker in this you have to ensure you're aligning them on leadership potential Whether they'll work well with the team work well with the company goals You're looking to achieve the second most important stakeholder are the functional peers So imagine you're hiring an engineering manager It's about all of their engineering peers because those are complementary roles and those people are critical to make this higher Success if it's someone on the executive team the other executive team members are the next most important stakeholder after the manager to Ensure this person is successful The third important stakeholder are the cross-functional peers So really ensuring that the people across teams that they may not work day-to-day, but we'll have Collaboration with on important projects ensuring that they have had a chance to weigh in and the last one are the direct reports This is a really difficult one right because direct reports come into interview situations with a healthy mix of testing But also fear right they want someone who's smart and challenging but not too challenging that makes their jobs difficult They want someone friendly but not so friendly that they favor some of their for other peers over them And so you want to make sure that all the other stakeholders have had a very Resounding endorsement on this candidate before you put them in front of their direct reports You also want to minimize the number of candidates you put in front of direct reports Because it just creates a lot of sense of flux and change for them They should be the last stage gate in the process and by the way I've had candidates who have done resoundingly well in other rounds met the direct reports and then I've decided that they're Not a good cultural fit, so it's still a very important stage gate I just would really keep it as the last check because otherwise you complicate your hiring process unnecessarily in the in the early part and Don't forget onboarding. I can't tell you the number of times. I've seen executives do this They do a great job hiring. They really do they run a great process and then they go welcome Let me know if you have any questions and they and they just basically say do your thing and Then three months later. They go we didn't like how you did your thing. Would you mind walking out with me and People don't realize how important those first 90 days are as a hiring manager It is your job to be the training wheels for anyone you bring into the company And that's not one to be taken lightly you have to align on vision values What are their roles responsibilities? Introduce them to people that are critical to their success Share the business context the history where the dead bodies are buried where the mistakes have been made and Map out their first 60 days in the role. What does success look like? What do they need to achieve? Do you want them to listen and learn only for the first 60 days? Do you want them to get out a few initiatives critical initiatives out the door? Do you want them to make a few critical hires be explicit because we've all been in their shoes, right? Be a senior level higher in a new company. It's nerve-racking all eyes are on you You're really terrified of failure. So put yourself in that person's shoes and say how can I make this as Unambiguous as possible for this person and really be the training wheels for them to make them successful in this role And of course ongoing management check in often check in early trust and verify early Really go deep into the data early on so that you and this new person can align and calibrate Calibration is a process. That's often underestimated You want to set expectations? You want to look at the process the data early and calibrate together? Hey, that's not what I expected from from this project or this initiative Can we go back to the drawing board and talk about this the the more often you do this early on in the process? The more the greater chance that you and this new hire can be aligned on how best you can work together The problem is if you don't do this the person gets set in their way three to six months later And then if you come and give feedback they're like well I've already been operating this way. You never said a thing and so it really creates a Challenge to course correct much later on This is an important one. Okay. We went through this incredible process. What if I didn't get it right? Number one ask the question Is it a skills gap a cultural fit problem or a performance issue very often people just jump to performance issue and don't Don't thoughtfully answer the first two parts because they're parts of this that are fixable They're addressable before you go straight to that second communicate be candid huge fan of Kim Scott's radical candor But do with kindness be honest say hey I I see you doing this I know this is not your intention, but here's how it comes across This is what I would like to see because if you're not communicating then they're not aware of it And they're not able to correct the correct a lot of the actions that they're taking and third If turnaround is not possible. This is really important. Please sooner rather than later Take action and do it with kindness and speed and goodwill Help this person land on their feet give them a very dignified exit. It's probably best for them and you But a lot of people sit on hiring mistakes that they've made for way too long and what they've done is they've actually Damage the teams around them disappointed people around them and actually slowed their ability to take Corrective action with a new hire that they need to bring in there So I can't emphasize enough just when you think you're probably being too fast It's probably not fast enough so really pay attention because as human beings We don't like giving bad news, but sometimes it's the kindest most important thing to do as long as you do it with respect and dignity So quick summary Hiring is the most important job you'll do is the most important job I'll do the business problems are solvable the people problems will forever be a mystery So it's a constant work in progress. So please give it the time and the effort it requires And don't stop there when you're hiring really take the time in the first 90 days That are critical to making someone successful and then correct early and often communication is C Is key and don't be afraid to say you know what I made a mistake here I hired you, but you were not right for the role Let's figure out a plan for you either find you a different role in the company Or let me be a great referral for you at a role somewhere out in my network out in the industry So with that I wish you all luck. It's not a roulette wheel I think you can all be great hiring managers if I can you definitely can so enjoy slash and thank you so much