The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
Welcome to The Breakthrough Hiring Show! We are on a mission to help leaders make hiring a competitive advantage.
Join our host, James Mackey, and guests as they discuss various topics, with episodes ranging from high-level thought leadership to the tactical implementation of process and technology.
You will learn how to:
- Shift your team’s culture to a talent-first organization.
- Develop a step-by-step guide to hiring and empowering top talent.
- Leverage data, process, and technology to achieve hiring success.
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The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 128: Mastering executive hiring and growth strategies in tech with Jimmy Kim, Founder & CEO at Sendlane
Dive into the world of executive hiring and growth strategies within the tech industry with host James Mackey and his guest Jimmy Kim, Founder & CEO at Sendlane.
This conversation explores the crucial aspects of attracting, evaluating, and securing top talent. They discuss culture fit, balancing excitement and realism, and the intricate process of hiring key leadership roles. Gain valuable insights into sales techniques for finding the perfect candidates and hear how to avoid costly hiring mistakes.
0:34 Jimmy Kim's professional journey
1:22 Lessons learned in hiring for growth
8:33 Navigating executive recruitment challenges
16:54 Attracting and hiring top talent in the tech industry
26:46 Hiring process for key leadership roles
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Our host James Mackey
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Thanks for listening!
Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, James Mackey. Today, we are joined by Jimmy Kim. Jim, thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for having me here, excited to jump on the pod.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and so before we jump into the topics, could you please share your background with everyone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Today I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Sendlane. We're a unified email, sms and reviews product for e-commerce merchants, so we're hyper verticalized and we help them with their customer communications, recovering and browse abandonment events and helping them turn their customers to repeat customers.
Speaker 1:Love it. Is this your first company or have you found any companies before this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is actually my third company that I founded. My first two were in one was in retail slash e-commerce direct to consumer, and the other one behind that was there's some content education company that became a software company before I exited.
Speaker 1:Nice good stuff. Yeah, look, I think you've probably learned a whole lot about hiring over the years with the companies that you've built and particularly with the company that you're building right now, I think the audience. We'd love to hear a little bit about some of the lessons learned over the years and how you think about hiring today for your current company. Would you mind sharing some of the top lessons for executives tuning in, let's say, of growth stage companies, just high level biggest takeaways or lessons learned when it comes to hiring?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. When it comes to hiring, it's been an interesting journey for me, as I think the difference between my first two businesses and this one have been very different, because my first two they're smaller, they're more lifecycle type businesses and it didn't require the same type of investment into the leadership that was required when I started building a SaaS company, and I think the most important things that I've learned in SaaS is that every person in SaaS is not the same, and I think that's something that I really learned. So in the early days and I think I can carry you through some of the things in the early days of the story of the business, we were looking for a very different profile than we do today. As we continue on that journey and what I mean by that is experiences in your background are very important. So, when we think about leadership, hiring especially and I'll go back to, like my CTO I think my CTO is a perfect example of somebody right. This is we go back to 2018, I just read my seed fund.
Speaker 2:Fun fact about me is that I'm not technical and I know that I own a software company and I run a software company. That's venture-back, but I'm not technical and what I thought was really interesting about that is that I had to go out and find a great technical person to take it on. At that point we had just hired, used, outsourced, we had a little internal team and we were the product guys. We were whatever you wanted to call us myself and the other co-founder. But we realized real quickly that we needed to go find people. I did the natural thing that everybody does Go look up for the big brand names, go look for this, go look at, like my competitors and try to steal their people. And in the early days, when going through this interview process, I quickly realized that you've got to find great alignment around who you are and what the culture and the things that you have, and start understanding how to match that personal level with that other person and looking for that background. And so my CTO and I, when I was looking for him, I went and interviewed a lot of people and the rule number one that I really learned from that was the more you meet, the better clarity you'll have on the role that you want, and what I mean by that is the more people you meet, the more you talk about the company, the more you talk about the things that you need and the things that you're looking for in that person, the more clarity started happening with me, and so that was one of my first rules I learned about executives is that I needed to meet a lot of different people, so I went out to try to meet 30 different people. Now how do I go out and find them? A I didn't have any money at that time, so that was a problem. And B not enough money to go hire people to go do this for me. And B I believe that when you're looking for executives, they've got to be almost led by the executive team. They can't be led by someone else because, especially in the early days, this is someone you're going to be working with a lot.
Speaker 2:So I set a profile and I went out searching and one thing led to another, and the guy that I ended up finding, the way that we related really well, was actually just based around the way that our conversations started, right Like the joke ongoing joke in this company is that I slid into his DMs or I found him like at late night on LinkedIn at 10 pm at night, and I found him at the right time and where he was frustrated at his current role because he had this overseas team and he had to be up late, really late, working, and it found him at the right place and then we started relating and got together right, and so it became a match made in heaven. We did a great job and he still had the company today, four plus years later, and we've gone through all these different stages, through four runs of fundraising, and he's been a great anchor. So there was that story, and I think that's a perfect example of something that went right. Now I'll tell you about something that goes wrong often, and often as well too, is that we as an executive, sometimes we're looking for that perfect experience and you see someone you think would be perfect. They work at these right companies, they must know your industry and so forth.
Speaker 2:But the thing that I found out really early was that executives the hardest part of executives is they're not all the same, and what I mean by that is some are not built for Growth, right, they're built for scale, and there's a difference between that and what I mean by that is growth. People tend to have the idea mentality they're going to get their hands with. They don't need a lot of people surrounding them. They don't need all these things and structures and processes already done. They're going to be the ones that build those things. They're going to be the ones that carve those where you might not see that with someone who's a little bit more structured and they've been in a bigger organization and they don't know how to operate without people, with processes and organizations.
Speaker 2:And often the biggest mistake that I see happened to me and has happened to all my founder friends, often as entrepreneurs, is we go hire them and chase these really big name people thinking that they're going to be our magic bullet, when reality was there, the worst decision that you can have for your business. So, to give you an example, I'm not going to name names and departments because if anyone listens, I don't want to embarrass anybody because it's public, but there was an executive that I wanted. I saw him from a distance, I saw him in the market, I saw him talking to all these people and obviously, clearly, this guy was like the golden bullet and so I overpaid for the guy. I brought him in and I got him in here and at the same time I had two executives and this is why the story is really interesting. He was someone that I would say that I took a lateral position, didn't give him a promotion, and I hired another person and she was in a different position where I was bringing her up into an executive position and role. Right.
Speaker 2:Two different, very big people and in the early days, right off the back, within the first 30 days, I quickly realized there was a very big difference. One get her hands dirty doing the things that need to be happening in the business to make it move, getting understanding. The other one really just wanted to bark orders and try to tell me why everyone needed to hire more people and get this person and there was a very different habit there and as time went on, really quickly you could see the very big difference, stark difference. And the problem is he probably was great If I was putting him in a larger company of organization with structure. He was probably great because he was a strategic guy, his leadership, he was thinking about the big things, but at the stage of the company you needed someone different and I think that the lesson here is that not all executives are the same, but what's even more about that is that you need to understand where they're most comfortable and understand where your business is and be truthful about it, because, look, we all want the A star player that is in the market and that we think that is the best person that we think it is, but the reality is your business might not attract that kind of A plus player and you've got to realize you need the A player that you can find for your business, and I think that was probably the big mistake there that I learned.
Speaker 2:And one survived and continued on with the business for years to come now and still is where the other one exited out within about six months.
Speaker 2:And I think that last part, that six months that I always say is you also need to figure it out fast, and I think that's been something that has been hard. I'm a very patient person and sometimes I give people way too much time to figure things out, but that person can really destroy the momentum, can destroy a lot of things that are happening in the business, and you as a founder and CEO often have to be pretty aware about the things that are happening and being understanding of the people below them and the performance that comes out of them. So there's a lot to that story, but the reality is. What I'm saying is very simple, like the biggest learning lesson I've had is not all executives are the same. Don't hire for brand name or logo. Hire for experience. Hire for them understanding your business and hire for people who actually want to be in your business, not people you're chasing down and paying so much money that they can't say no. These are things that I've all learned along the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. There's two, like specifically, ways where I think we can mishire executives when it comes to maybe getting folks that we feel are going to be really good but they're not necessarily going to roll up their sleeves and grind it out and do some of the work that needs to be done. The first is, as you mentioned, like people that would do better at a larger company environment. If somebody maybe has a lot of relevant experience in some regards but comes from a larger environment, that can be a bit of a culture shock coming into an environment where they don't have nearly as many resources. So that's that's something that we should be very aware of. If it's an early and mid stage company, growth stage organization, we're going to need people that really have a realistic expectation on the work that needs to be done and sometimes, quite honestly, it's not enough for them to have clarity into expectations. It's almost better to know they really know what it's like. They've worked out a startup or a scale up before. Not, they think they can do it or they intellectually understand about. Have they actually been in the environment? What do they think? I feel like that's super important.
Speaker 1:The other thing and this is what makes hiring I think really hard is because sometimes you can get somebody who's a great person but the timing's wrong. Like timing is really important too when it comes to people's careers. So you might have gotten somebody who's like a three, four, x executive for several reasons, whatever, potentially what chapter they're in life, maybe they don't have the next two years, maybe they're not gonna be able to grind it out for you like they did in the past, and so I think really trying to understand people's like current situation and what's motivating them and what they want to do is really important as well, because it's what, again, what makes recruiting really tricky is somebody can look great on paper and even if, okay, we need somebody from a startup, we need somebody experienced, it's on this level of scale, it's still even all of that is not good enough. You really wanna try to understand the chapter that this person's in and what they're thinking about their career and what they really wanna do. And it's sometimes easy too.
Speaker 1:It's like when we really like somebody, like we see potential, we start to put the narratives around it that we want to put around it, and maybe we ignore a little yellow flags and these types of things just because we're so focused on all. This person would be great. They worked at this company and they were the 20th employee and they scaled to 500. And we start to get really excited, which is great, but we need to be careful right, because there are so many opportunities to miss hire at the executive level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it hurts really bad when you miss hire. That's the real big part is, like, the amount of money you spend, the amount of time you spend and then the amount of investment you put behind it are insane, right, like they are really a lot of time and energy. And I look back at those mistakes and those pivotal mistakes probably sent my company back each time a quarter, like a quarter of motion of that department moving forward and not being able to scale and so forth, and I think it's one of those things that you don't learn and understand until you go do it. Unfortunately, like I don't know a person who hasn't done this along the way, so if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I did that, it's yeah, that's normal, that's how we all learn, I think.
Speaker 1:I've done it, I did it. I did one of them was last year. Yeah, it's hard. You're never gonna get about 100, or you're never gonna hit everything, and you wanna get to the point where you really know what you're doing. With hiring, it's like working with people is tricky and things come up, and so sometimes you can do all the legwork and still not gonna work out. So that's why it's so important, though, to do all the things that you can do, but yeah, it's been interesting. I think what's the scariest part about executive hiring is when you really sit down to think about the cost, everything that goes into making the hire and then the opportunity cost At a minimum. It's like getting that wrong is at a minimum of a seven figure problem.
Speaker 2:A lot of times it's eight.
Speaker 1:And you're right, like you get the wrong executive end, it's basically gonna impact everyone. That funnels up through them right, their productivity and effectiveness. And all the time and the hours that go into interviewing the person, building the relationship, all of that to the onboarding and then waiting to see, okay, the initial Q1 wins, q2 wins Are we really tracking, measuring the goals, things that we outlined? Yeah, it's huge. And then it's again it's like all of those quarters like where what could have been done by getting the right person? So it's yeah, it's, I would say, like executive hiring is probably one of the most important skills Hiring in general. But executive hiring is such an incredibly important skill set for founder CEOs to have. And, as you said, when you feel like executives should be running it, it's not necessarily something that you would want a recruiter to manage up. And, of course, you're like coordination and stuff like that is fine, but I actually agree with you Again, like we were before the show started.
Speaker 1:We said the whole premise of the show is that people are the initial cause of all success in business.
Speaker 1:As a founder, it's like literally, our job is we have a vision of the future.
Speaker 1:How do we attract the people to build that vision, whether it's our employees or whether it's the customers, whether it's board advisors, executives, it's we never stop recruiting, just like our point of impact starts to shift. It's like in my company we've almost been around a decade and that's funny. Like we, I bootstrapped right, like I, so I don't have a board of directors, which is nice in certain ways. However, I've spoken with companies, people that have built and sold companies, and they're like you really need it, you want a board, you want, like oversight, you want that structure. That's something that we, I feel like would be good for you to do. So I put together a board of advisors and it's funny. It's I'm eight years, eight years, close to 10 years in and I'm recruiting, I'm doing outbound message, I'm tapping in my network, like trying to build a board of advisors, and so it's just such an incredible skillset, like incredibly important skillset, to be able to attract the right executive level folks to your organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm with you on that and I think even beyond that, and you've got you nailed some very important things that I do think about pretty often, and I think the last piece that I think I learned a lot around when I think back of my recruiting is the use of tools, and what I'm talking about is like different things, like culture, tools and different understanding and look, I know how some people may feel about them, but the reality is they're helpful. They're helpful in understanding the person. As you said, you don't know the person and how they're really going to be until you put some pressure on them. Ultimately, like everyone's going to go through honeymoon phases, everyone's going to go through different places. One thing I've done this last couple executive hires that we've done is we spent time ensuring that. What's that called? Again, ensuring that we worked with them before, exposed them to some more of the data, got them under them and we actually pay them often as, hey, we're going to pay you as a contractor to just learn and do something and I want you to go through an exercise with me and learn and all that stuff and I found that super helpful as a way to start to get people and understanding how, like, how much they might want to get their hands dirty. It's, it's something that we learned. It's something that you can almost implement as a small test. We would use them as small testings and a little bit like hey, we want to design this, go to market plan around this.
Speaker 2:What do you think you'll do? And the reason why I do is not because I'm expecting to nail it. It helps you understand how they think about it. Did they go off and actually research it? Did they just go pull a boilerplate off the off the shelf? Did they actually have thought processes? It's something new, right? Are you learning? Because I think one of the things people are really bad at and this is something that I've learned is people have this weird inherent ego. They don't want to hire people better than them. And my opinion it's all about hiring people better than you. I want to be the dumbest one in the room when I'm sitting in my leadership team. That means that I won. In my humble opinion, that means I won right.
Speaker 2:We're founders, especially ex founder level. Like your job's not to be the smartest person. Your job is to be able to get the smartest people to come work for your vision and the thing that you're trying to drive out into the market, and people tend to not understand that. And that's where I look at tools like a culture tool, like a culture index, for example, and what's cool about it is I understand who they are and how they could be yin and yang with me. You know what I mean how they can partner with me.
Speaker 2:I brought in someone recently, an executive, and I was looking for a very specific person and I declined some people that probably would be, look on paper, better for than this person. But on the culture side, we knew that this person would be better for us as a company and we call this inside our company. We call them send laners because we have it, because it's like you either fall into culture or not. You know what I mean. You're not a jerk, you're kind. You're getting your hands dirty. You're aware You've got a lot of that mentality, that grit right. We're a big, you know, on the outside money wise, we're pretty big, but we're really lean on the inside, because that's how I operate and if you want executives that operate that way, you need to find lean executives that are understanding and they're going to do and work the way that you want it to happen, and I think that's some of the other things that I think about along the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I think when it comes to culture, we do from an Italian attraction standpoint we highlight things that folks are going to be interested in. Our culture would love, like when it comes to autonomy, and like just independence and ability to manage your own workflow, if you will, and all of those things it's. We use the things that we're looking for as a selling point in a sense, sure, and to help drive the right folks for my company. I want to find people that are intrinsically motivated, that are used to doing a lot of the hands on work, that don't have a lot of, like, large support systems and teams in place. We can provide clarity into outcomes that need to be achieved. We can even provide clarity into workflow and exactly what you have to do step by step. I play books for literally everything, but we're still looking for somebody that, like was able to take that initiative that we don't need to spend a ton of time managing. They're going to have weekly one on ones, but we want that to be more of a collaborative thing versus, like us always having to explain it. So we hire senior people like the culture that we've built is usually the feedback we get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like it here because I feel I know what the mission of the company is. I know my place in that and how I'm contributing. I like how I can give feedback and I like how I'm not being micromanaged. I can do my job. I have ideas on how to do things better. I don't have to get a bunch of approvals. I can just I can do what I need to do to make the customer happy. It's usually that type of feedback Right. So I think that's really important.
Speaker 1:It's interesting we don't spend a ton of time talking about culture interviews, but we just talk about like how we do business and it comes. It's just an organic thing. Hey, this is the stuff that we like. This is how we but we're not like necessarily. I don't have on the careers page, like a ton of things on culture we just answer a lot of questions and I think just by explaining how we do business and who we're looking for, it explains itself more. So we end up getting a lot of like really independent people, but we have people that are like so different in so many different ways to like everything in terms of even like values of personality, to so many different things, but like the way we all have in common is like just some of the underlying things that make people successful as recruiters in the tech industry.
Speaker 2:Essentially, yeah, that makes total sense. Actually makes total sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hey. So one other question as it relates to executive hiring, we're obviously we're always going to get the best of the best right, like we don't when we're looking at executives. The leverage that a great executive can create is, of course, immense and it could have a compounding effect on the growth and success of the company. So we're always trying to stretch to get the absolute best person. Can you tell us a little bit about how, over the years, you've attracted great people to the organization? Like how do you so there's a whole alignment piece but like how do you also get them really excited about what they're building? How do you build trust with them as to why they should take a risk working with you?
Speaker 1:And maybe at some points in your career it's been harder than others. Like maybe it's like when it's an earlier stage and you don't have the big name customers and there's a way you have to approach that versus maybe the little later stage when you got more backing from big VCs. But there's probably some underlying things that you have to, because at every stage you're always going to go for the absolute best, and every time you go for the absolute best it's going to be hard. So I guess. Let's just Let me dial in on this how do you build trust and excitement towards the vision you're creating to attract the best people?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think it starts with storytelling and being able to narrate a great story and being able to explain your journey and being able to facilitate and tell people what you're trying to solve very fast. And what I mean by that is too many people need too many words often to be able to do things, and what I mean by that is how do you concisely tell a person what you're doing and get someone excited really quickly at doing that? And so when I think about hiring and I talk about people, you're really giving that trust. And I think when I go out, it's just another sales pitch. You're going to a human and saying this is why I'm great, this is why I need you and this is why I think that you shouldn't join us.
Speaker 2:And I use that third part as like a big driver for me when I talk to people because I want them to know what the hard part of this business is. I don't tell people you come to my business because you want to work less. You probably are going to come here and work harder than you would do today. And I tell people that because I want people to have that right mentality that they're not coming in for the wrong reasons, right, you're going to have a lot more opportunity. There's no doubt about that, right, why you join it. And then it's also giving them the comfort of all the things and answering and having that good two-way dialogue. I think, for me, the biggest thing is I build this friendliness for story, and then I build them trust by telling them about the business, and I'm being very transparent with these people. I'm not telling them oh, I need to sign an NDA or I can't tell you all the details about everything that we're doing. I need to be able to give them a pretty high level thought process that, if I want an executive to perform the way that I want to, I've got to be able to give them the information just as fast so they can make those decisions in their head and say, okay, I hear the ACVs, I hear this is what they're doing, this is their sales cycle, this is their problems. Is this what I want to take on and challenge and I think that's our job to almost sell them at some level.
Speaker 2:Now there is a fine line, though, between selling a person and also over getting ourselves into a position where, now, we're trying to get this person so much that we forget that they still need to impress us. I think there's a balance there, and what I mean by that is, while you're selling the company, don't sell the role. Sell the company, and what I mean is talk about the company, but the roles should be really focused around what you're looking for and what you would like to happen. What would this person take over? And this is what they want, and you need to listen and make sure that they understand that and they think that's what they want to do too.
Speaker 2:So to me, it's communication and storytelling that come as the biggest driver for me, and if you do a good job early on and you create that great connection, it helps move the process along pretty quickly. It's usually and I always say this like within the first five to 10 minutes of any conversation with any executive, I know if there's going to be a part two. Like really is, and I think it's really important to be honest about that too. Man, like something I do in calls is 15 minutes and I might say hey, look, I really appreciate meeting you, but I don't want to waste your time. I don't think you're a really good fit for this thing.
Speaker 2:Let's not spend time on this thing, let's move forward and like people appreciate that too, because I think everybody's trying to figure it out too Right, like we're all humans and really it's connecting as humans and not everybody is the same and being able to find that right person. So, yeah, man, storytelling drives it and teaches people. All the data is in the history of their resume and the things that they've done in the past, the way they're talking about it and you use all of those and you can. You're like okay, this person probably wants to talk about why the family values, this company are important. We should talk about that a lot more and being able to drive those conversations to be important for that person, but also finding that fine balance of not overselling a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so, and that is definitely a chapter I went through, and it came to attracting talent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause it's like when you're starting out, you're just you're learning how to get people interested, right, you're learning how to recruit, get people excited, and then the next phase is you start to get really good at that, and it's a balancing act, because the reality is, if you focus too much on, like the clothes or the selling, then you might actually convince them to take something that they're not actually going to love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you got to be careful there too. Like you're fighting for this talent, but you have to put enough emphasis on challenges to make sure that you don't want to oversell, because you can get to the point where you're just so damn good at it that people are going to accept, but then they're not happy in the role or you get them all like emotionally pumped up, but then, once that sets, that starts to fade away after the first several weeks they may not feel like it's the right fit. I spend a lot of the time to just speaking about challenges, and I'm sure you do, and that's why we're bringing people on like opportunities, challenges, and we got to be like really honest about those things and you want the folks that are going to be excited about solving for those challenges. I just think that there is a balancing act to the selling that hopefully you come out the other end, you know how to sell the company, but you're also essentially highlighting the challenges and making sure those feel real enough where you almost try to create like pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, during the interview yeah, like with style and like this is the pain aspect of the job. Like how do you feel about that If they're excited about that and you're like, okay, this might be the right person for us.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They've got to be excited about the pain and the challenge You're really bringing people into fix a problem. Ultimately, you don't bring in people just because, like you just bring in people, there's usually a problem to fix in a core, like number one thing that you really want this person to do Should focus on it and scare them about it and make sure that they know how big of an undertaking it really is, because chances are you're not bringing an executive into fix something if it's not a pretty large problem today. So I think that's being honest with yourself and, yeah, challenging that person and making sure that you really do believe them and ultimately, I always go back to them and trust your gut feeling. That's the biggest thing I say.
Speaker 2:Like, as a founder and CEO, I've never been wrong with my gut. Like with people, like it's usually like you feel it and you make that you still hire them because, oh, everyone else like them, you did this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then it always backfires. Man, it never works and we always touch the fire and it's hard. It's hard to find that balance, but it's definitely something you got to keep, continue to think about all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think too, it's like not getting ahead of ourselves, not getting too excited about oh and fill this role. We're going to be able to achieve XYZ growth, and so you rush into a hire too.
Speaker 2:Yep, 100%, happens all the time.
Speaker 1:It's just so. There's so many opportunities. When you're growing quickly too, there's a lot of pressure to hit growth objectives one and then two. It's just like very exciting, and so sometimes we just have to remember this is not something where the cost of being impulsive or not having a realistic pulse on something, or confusing excitement for filling the role with excitement with the candidate, or starting to pick and choose or ignore yellow flags or making we didn't think that we were going to like this profile, but we really like it. So there's so many opportunities to go astray, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is all really important stuff and I think I'm glad we were able to slow down on it. One more question I have for you is, from our process perspective, what can you walk us through for executive hiring, like end to end, what the interview process looks like? We don't have to go into a ton of details. It could be phases, okay, so basically phase one, phase two, phase three, or you get as detailed as you want, but I'm curious to hear a little bit about what that looks like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ours is interesting. So we start phase one, which is like whoever's leading the recruiting is going out and like basically reviewing the applications and going to find headhunting people and taking a look at those people and getting those first meetings out of the way. In the first meeting it's usually about 20 minutes and the goal is one we tell the story, who we are, what we're doing, what we're looking for. And then two, we just get some key clarifying questions at that point that we usually have on the candidate. We've done our research. We don't need them to help here, we just need them to tell us the things that we need to hear and make sure we understand it From there. Once we've determined our pool of people that we really want to go after, at that point we go and set that longer meeting. At that point we're going to dive into the candidate, ask them about their story, learn about them, start showing them data and exposing that, and then we slow down from there.
Speaker 2:Now, at this point the first one I'm usually trying to get 20 to 31st meetings happening before I get into that second stage. At that second stage phase two which is I'm getting diver, deepening diver, diving deeper into the person. Usually it starts off with usually about 10 of them, right? So if I've done 30, then I'd have about 10 on that second meeting. And that time we get to talk, I usually have a set agenda that I follow. Here's what I'm going to cover, here's what I need you to cover, here's what we're going to work on. I usually send them early so they know that this is where we're going to cover and we get on these calls and at that point we're getting in really deep. We're talking about all the things and all that stuff. And then I spend a little bit of time probably about two meetings outside of that, not with me, but with two other people on the team that need to be relating to them, usually another executive, often. And from there I'm picking from those 10, maybe five that I want my executives to meet, and this is helping me filter. And at the end of the, at the end of those meetings with those people, I go back and say, on a rating on one to five, and we go through a bunch of people and we start rating them down, who we think, and usually we align pretty quickly and that comes to about three, and then that's when the fun really begins.
Speaker 2:So when that happens, then we jump into like almost that contractor phase that I told you about. We're like hey, we like you, we want to try you. Here's a project that we're looking at without any knowledge, except all the knowledge we give you. Try to tell me what you guys would do. And it's again not about the actual answer. It's about knowing that they're thinking about things and that's the time that we do the test stage. From there, we make them present that to, let's say, it's an executive hire, right. So then we bring it to the executive team and we literally have a meeting where it's executives and the candidate and they're presenting this plan to the executives to see how that would work out, to hear how they would present it back out, not just how they would do work. And then that allows us to say, okay, now we have someone we could really work with. We look great at it.
Speaker 2:You like to get to the final numbers with least two people Hopefully three that's the goal for me, but usually two at the bottom end. And then we do something interesting and unique and quirky. Sometimes, when we have two great candidates, we'll actually invite the actual team that'll be working under them to interview this person through this process and the goal there is let's see who you want to pick out of your new boss. Basically, like they know the boss is coming, they know someone's going to come over them. I think that people don't get enough saying that and we'd like to say, hey, we've curated two people We'd hire. Why don't you tell us who you'd want to work for basically and usually there's always a clear answer. That happens between them because the synergies happen really fast, because I'm not looking to bring a person to replace my team. I'm looking for the person to help lead my team.
Speaker 2:That's already there and oftentimes, so there's that part, that kind of comes in. So there's that and then that's it, and then I even the offer and the dollars and the money. I probably missed that part, but I'm talking about that in phase two, really early. We're talking about money, making sure we are aligned, making sure the dollars are there, and then by the time we're going to call four. It's not a question about the dollars, it's here's the comp plan. I want a verbal yes before I'll ever write you an offer letter and my offer letter is explode in 24 hours. Like I'm pretty aggressive all the way, because I say at that point, if you've verbally gotten yes, then there should be no reason why you're hesitating to make that offer swing. So, like I move pretty quickly right at the end. And I think that's a really important part for us too, because when we're fit we need to move on it or don't move together.
Speaker 2:So that's our hiring process, man. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, there's a lot of other things that go into it culture tests and different things that we're compounding, testing. We're looking at All the backgrounds, are doing backdoor, references and stuff like that. I don't really care about references because no one gives you a bad reference, but the cool thing is when you're in business, you can actually backdoor a lot of people and you don't need to ask much. Hey, john, yeah, john's cool. Yeah, was he good at your company? Yeah, man, he was great. That's all you really need to know. Like you have to believe people on the outside of what they're telling you and what they've done in the business. Right, that's our process, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing. I think what I also like is just in terms of bringing in the team to get their thoughts and see who they would like to work with. If you have two very strong candidates Because, let's say, if they're relatively close in terms of abilities, the person that has a better rapport with their team is probably gonna perform help bring out much better performance from the team.
Speaker 2:Yep 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, really cool. Hey, Jimmy, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a great conversation. I know everybody tuning in is gonna learn a lot, so I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and share your insights with everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. So for everybody tuning in. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time. Take care.
