Cody Voorhees. Good to see you, my friend. How you doing? Great to see you, Tom. Thank you for having me. Yeah! Hey, looking forward to this one. Um, Maybe if we could just to sort of start for the viewers just a background on your sort of sales journey, how you’ve got to kind of where you are today, if you can.
Yeah. So I think you and I met early 2020s in San Francisco. We were both up in the area. I was there for about 10 years. I live just South of the Bay area now, but I started my tech career at Yelp. I did about five and a half years there, moved to a startup called product school, where we were at for about four years, did a little consulting in between.
And now almost the last two years, I’ve been leading a health tech team based out of Brooklyn in the mental health space call at a company called Alma, which I’m super grateful to be at. And have just been loving working with SaaS sales people for yeah the last 12 or so years of my career. Very cool. Five years, five plus years at Yelp, that’s sort of 20 years elsewhere. So hopefully we have some stories from there or thereabouts. But yeah, let’s get into it. Uh, Cody, so numbers wise, how many people have you hired over the course of your career? So as the hiring manager, low hundreds. Uh, I would say 120, 130 plus or minus 5 or 10%. As involved in the hiring process, uh, really leaning into my time at Yelp, it was several per week over five years.
So I think that puts me up to seven or 800 hiring conversations that I’ve been in, uh, with, with different account executives or sales managers. Very good. I think that definitely gives you some credibility to talk on these matters with those kinds of numbers. And with those kinds of numbers, surely some surprises along the way.
I’m looking for maybe the best and worst hiring surprises. Yeah, so I think my best was with a rep who’s now a good friend and actually a CRO of a health staffing company.
And he was referred to me by another sales rep on my team. And they had been in the military together and they were in the CrossFit community together. Uh,. But the rep referred to me had really no sales experience outside of some retail things. And, uh, you know, I talked to the sales rep on my team, um, “Hey, does he have software sales experience?
No. Does he have inside sales experience? No. Has he ever used Salesforce? No. Has he used a CRM? No. Has he done phone sales? No.” He’s coming to me with a strong reference telling me about him. And, you know, the idea was like the work ethic was just there. And that’s what my sales rep said is that this guy will always pick up the phone.
He shows up every day. He’s gritty. He’s hardworking. He’s sharp. Um, And we made the offer to him and he, yeah, he was my best rep by far. He moved into being a sales leader and he moved into eventually being a VP of sales and a CRO all very quickly, all over just several years with no SaaS experience whatsoever.
Uh, But I think it was really, it was exciting and just validating that you can hire for the core competencies of what will make a great SaaS seller. And if those are there, you can train everything else. Couldn’t agree more.
Would love to hear a worst one if you have it. Don’t want to throw anyone under the bus necessarily, but uh, possibly a shocking one or maybe the worst surprise you’ve had in hiring.
Yeah, Tom, to tell you the truth, I feel like I’ve blocked most of this stuff out. Uh, I tried so hard to rack my brain here and I want to tie this into I think the weirdest moment I’ve experienced as well. It was all kind of one, one experience um, and I also think I maybe have been lucky. Maybe I’ve been surrounded by really great interviewers as well who have enabled me to, I think, maybe dodge a lot of those bullets early on.
Um, But we did have a sales rep at one of the startups I was working with that had just an incredible resume, president’s club everywhere, top 1 percent everywhere. Like all of these accolades. Absolutely nailed the interview um, Um, but something always just felt slightly off with the timelines and the explanations of a lot of the accolades.
Like it was hard to pinpoint, and there was always kind of a story or an idea that referenced or put everything in context. Um, But it just, you know, even you have that feeling where this just doesn’t quite feel right. Uh, And a lot of the answers felt researched. Uh, This was before ChatGPT. So, you know, it took some good research to I think come up with completely fabricated answers.
Uh, But again, nailed the interview and everyone on my hiring team, the senior account executives, the sales managers, they were all really, really excited. So I was about to make the offer, uh, but I asked for two references. And we didn’t backdoor references. I just asked like, who can I reach out to? Do you have a two people for me, someone you’ve worked with and someone you’ve worked for?
And I reached out to the references. The person he worked with, I could not get a hold of. Uh, So there was just no answer. And I knew my emails were getting opened too, but I wasn’t, I wasn’t hearing back. And his former manager who was his reference picked up the phone and the first thing she said is, uh, “He told you to call me?”
And I think I’m like, yeah. Tell me about, tell me about your experience, uh, working with this person. And she said, something along the lines of I can confirm his dates. Right. Uh, Okay, great. Can you tell me more about working with him, more about his experience, more about his, his accolades here?
And, she basically said like, I plead the fifth, I got nothing to say. Uh, And that was kind of the end of the conversation, right? So we didn’t make the offer after that, because again, these were references given to me by the candidate that were either no showing or not vouching for him and almost validating just the sense of something had felt off the entire time, just a little bit.
Um,. And then, you know, we got from that candidate, we, all of our review sites got one star reviews. Uh, I got several emails on the team with, you know, everyone that he possibly could have emailed. And it was fine because in my mind, like that was so much less work than having made the bad hire because we didn’t follow through with the references or trust that sense when dates aren’t lining up and when stories aren’t perfectly lining up and you’re getting a little bit of that feeling.
Trust your gut. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for that.
Key to understand a bit more about sort of your secret weapon, if you will, to sourcing top talent? What’s the, what’s the play? Well, obviously everyone needs to know someone like you, Tom. So I think that’s, I think that’s number one, is have good recruiters on your corner.
Uh, I would say network is really important. Uh,. Having spent so long at Yelp, I think I have a pretty well tapped into network, uh, and people I regularly maintain relationships with, so I can generally pick up the phone and get an idea of any talent on the market or coming up on the market that’s worth having the conversation with.
I think on top of that, you want to have your alumni groups, right? So think about Yelp specifically there, there literally is like the Yelp alumni group on LinkedIn, uh, where there’s this regular talent rotating in and out of people on the market, people getting ready to be on the market, uh, great references, great referrals.
So I stay plugged into that. Um, Fortunately at my current role, I have an internal recruiting team that’s just really effective and they target top talent and lead with the narrative and lead with the value and generally get those conversations going for us. So that’s ideal. But if you don’t have that internal recruiting team, you definitely want to know a great recruiter, or you want to just be using your network.
Yeah, I love the alumni piece. Um, I’ve seen that so effective and it seems to be especially if you’ve gone through somewhere like, Yelp, I don’t want to say gone through that sounds bad, but you’ve been on that ride that journey with people that kind of the after, of that, that alumni is pretty strong.
It’s a pretty sort of strong bond from that. And it’s a great way to,
to play into having these types of conversations with folks in your network. So I love the example.
Do you have a secret or unconventional interview question or tactic? I do like to lean into candidates who have some sort of college sporting experience.
And, you know, this doesn’t have to be D1. Uh, It can be club level. But in my experience, there is a strong correlation between grit and coachability and having continued something athletic, uh, past high school. And again, even at the club level, if it’s something that they’re opening to talk about and they have experiences of implementing feedback and receiving coaching and something physical, Uh, I think that typically transfers over into sales.
Uh, In my experience, there’s a strong correlation there. I also almost always do live implementation of feedback in a role play with every sales rep that I interview. And I’ll set the scenario. It’ll be a really simple sales scenario. I’ll try to lean into something they have experience with in the first place.
Ideally, something they’re really, really good at. We’ll have that role play. And even if the role play was excellent, I’ll still give a piece of feedback. I’ll still tell them, “Hey, I’d like you to do this differently” and then play the role play again, over again, and just seeing whether or not they’re able to implement that live piece of feedback on the spot. Especially if it might feel counterintuitive to them. Especially if it’s like, no, I just nailed that.
Why are you telling me to do it this way when that’s different and probably wrong? It shows me coachability. And again, I think that along with grit, those are the two most important things to hire for. Yeah, love those. Um,
Marker – most important picece of hiring wisdom you wish you’d known earlier:
Speaking of, do you have maybe the most important piece of wisdom on the hiring you wish you’d known earlier?
What is it, Cody? I think it’s not to settle. I think early on in my hiring career, I was typically incentivized to move quickly, stand up teams, go to market scale. And because of that, I was very okay with good sales reps, uh, just trying to get someone good enough. And I would always, you know, my mantra would always be, we can coach for that. You know, we can continue to grow through that. We can get training for that. Let’s just stand up and move forward. And I think in hindsight, you don’t want to ever waste time at the top of the funnel when you’re moving someone into an organization. I think the talent pools are large enough. The experience pools are large enough that you should really only aim for A players and it’s worth that investment upfront, whether or not that’s a longer interview process, whether that’s more detailed reference checks, whether that’s continued followup, whether that’s more scenarios or case studies.
I also, I love working on a project together, especially if it’s a sales leader hire. I think if it’s a independent contributor, that’s a harder thing to do. But when you’re hiring a sales leader, I like to find a strategic project and just work on it together and pay them if possible as well, like, hey, let’s just do a paid project together and see how that feels.
And in my experience, um, candidates are also super receptive to that because it gives them, well, you’re paying them for the experience and it gives them the opportunity to work with you ahead of time as well. And just kind of gauge how you each make decisions or how you each tackle opportunities together.
Yeah, it’s a cracking example um, and I think there’s probably not as many times you hear of the paid project together. So I commend you for that piece too. Very good. I guess sort of to finish up, are you guys hiring at the moment and who should reach out to your hiring team or yourself if you are?
Great sales leaders and great salespeople are always welcome to reach out to me. And if I’m not personally hiring at the moment, uh, generally, I know someone in my network is, and I’m very glad to make the introduction. Uh, I am expecting some hiring coming down the funnel on my side uh, into next year.
So in the meantime, um, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always open for conversation and uh, chances are, I might just refer them to you, Tom. Reach out to Tom. Cody, you’re a gentleman. Thank you. There’s some cracking examples you’ve given. I appreciate you sharing some of these insights from your time.
Yeah. Thanks again, mate. It was such a pleasure, Tom. I hope to stay in touch soon.
