Today we are specifically talking about talent solutions. And in order to do that, we are bringing in a fabulous, fabulous guests. We are, should we bring her in now? What do you think? Let’s bring Jen in. Hi, Jen. Welcome to the show. Thank you. First time on this type of situation. So excited to come in and chat with you both and get into it. I can’t believe it’s your first time. What an honor.
Truly an honor. Well, we’re very happy that you’re here for sure. And I think just at the stage, let’s kind of rewind things just a little bit. So that way, as Jen, you’re our expert here today, you give everybody the rundown on things. Yeah, absolutely. So, I am a director on the Hirewell team here at Hirewell. I have been here for coming up on a year, which is crazy, but, I was part of a company called the Collective Search for about three years prior, and we were an acquisition over to the Hirewell team.
At the collective search, our specialty, has always been partnering with VC backed SaaS startups, typically in the C to series D stages. And so our bread and butter was always foundational sales roles and then early team scale outs. So we’re excited to help Hirewell partner a little bit more strategically on some of those, searches. I think we just need a quick reminder of Hirewell’s talent solutions.
What better way to give a reminder than with a visual? So, we’ll talk about a few different things today, but first and foremost Hirewell is an advisory. We’re partnering with our clients on a variety of different talent solutions, and we offer a few different ones.
So RPO, one-off search, and interim. And today with Jen being on the show, we really want to zoom in on one of our one-off search offerings and kind of talk a little bit more about specifics, discussing, the talent solutions for founding sales teams today. So we’re really excited to walk through everything. But figured this little visual might help set the stage for what we’re going to talk about. I think this is really, really good grounding. And I think with that-
that center column, right? Search in general, we’re going to do a little bit of one-off chat, a little bit of volume chat. We mentioned Jen is the expert. Jen, before we force you to dive into this, it’s been so fun. I have to say, like, I know you mentioned you’re a director on Hirewell as am I. I’ve learned so much from Jen and I mean, in the year you’ve been here, we’ve already worked on countless of these. Again, we’re zooming, we’re really zooming in today on this specific type of talent solution, working with these founder led sales teams, hiring.
I know we’ve done a few this year, hiring, founding account executives, sometimes one, sometimes like five hiring, founding SDRs. We had a sales engineer search. Sales leaders. So really excited to zoom in on this with you because it’s been fun. It’s been fun doing this with you the last year. Yeah, likewise.
Time flies. I can’t believe it’s only been a year, but in the same capacity, like how fast that time goes for sure. So we’ve talked about the specifics of what we’re going to focus on today. We’re looking at things with a pretty narrow scope and lens.
Jen, when you’re working on these specific types of engagements, can you maybe share a little bit more about what else you’re offering to our clients that we’re working with, aside from just, you know, presenting great candidates?
Yeah. So I think the most helpful thing to kind of go in and kick off these engagements is really getting an understanding of what the experience has been of the founder so far in terms of hiring. And I do want to also preface, like we work with a lot of different types of founders. Some of them are sales founders, some of them are tech founders, some of them are product founders, and each of them have a little bit of a variety in terms of how they look at go-to-market.
And that’s, you know, based on their experience as well as also their product and where it sits. And so, a lot of times, especially if they’re more on the tech or the product side, hiring for sales is just not something that they’ve done before. And so really kind of getting into the nitty gritty of how comfortable and how experienced are you with hiring for sales is the absolute best place to start.
And that kind of building out a process from there. The easiest thing to do is to start off with a rubric and in recruitment, we love hiring rubrics and different, you know, hiring process. We talk about it all the time. And so, you know, foundational is a little bit different. You know, it’s really, it’s a marriage of kind of the art and science of hiring, like a true, true, true matchmaking effort there.
There’s a lot of emotion that goes into hiring a foundational salesperson and a lot of trust and transparency that needs to be involved in the process. Not that it doesn’t, you know, for future hires, but you know, we really kind of like to get in the weeds of really establishing that hiring rubric.
That hiring rubric also helps really carve out what the founder is looking for in a sales hire. It really forces them to get down to the nitty gritty of what’s going to be an impactful person right now. Candidly, a lot of times what they needed, you know, three to six months ago, up to right now. And then when we look at like six months or a year down the line, what you want this account executive or foundational sales go-to-market hire to accomplish.
And so I think that’s a helpful aim of the rubric as well. Definitely. So it sounds like from the rubric perspective, you know, there’s a couple different things that we’re outlining there just to recap for everyone. One is basically like, how are we evaluating talent? Like you said, for many folks, this is the first time that they’re going to be hiring for these positions.
So they might not have, you know, comparisons or processes that they, they can look back on from previous ones. Also, once we get into the process, how are we talking about interview debriefs. What are the processes? Do we have to train interviewers? Like, we’re really outlining all of this information and asking these questions before we get to the process of getting people into the mix. Yes, exactly. I think you touched on some really key pieces there too. Like the rubric, you know, is a really great outline of like the beginning stages of the interview process and how we’re funneling candidates through the interview process. Like what is their experience?
And I think that something that is a little bit easy to forget in the early stages of a founder hiring for these sales roles is that it’s a huge, huge, huge hire for this founder, but it’s also a huge commitment from this first employee really creating the sales effort at your organization. And so making sure that, you know, everyone’s really in lockstep around how to talk to these candidates and to give them what they need in order to make the decision. So it’s like definitely a two way street of recruitment, you know, helping kind of establish, okay, what are we selling here? How are we setting people up for success? I think that that’s a huge piece that’s needed in this like early stage. What’s in it for them? Getting into the weeds of what this big leap means for this new employee.
And then interview panels, who we’re bringing in to really establish will they be successful and can we make them successful? Is this the right time for this hire? And then again, what success really looks like. How are we really assessing that in the interview process and then down the line a couple of months or year into the actual hire itself.
And I love that you said, I mean, like the very first thing you said is you always ask, like, have you done this before? Right. Just to kind of zoom back out and remind people, like the original question was like, what are we doing other than just like providing resumes, right?
Like just to remind people that is like, I’d say that’s honestly like a small fraction of what you’re doing, especially with these founding searches. Like you said, like a lot of the times they’ve never hired before and you really have to walk them through like how they even pitch their own company.
How much have you seen, like the one-off search in comparison to like the volume searches? Yeah, so I think that the hope is that what we’re establishing in this kind of first hire, we can scale out for that first team hire. And so I think that’s a very natural progression of what we’re able to support is really coming in, you know, kind of having that expertise in what does this first person in seat look like? How do we ramp them up? How do we have them do what they need to do to take your company to the next level?
And then how do we look at adding support around them? And adding, you know, more sales velocity around that initial hire. And again, hopefully what we do is we use what we’ve created from this first hire to be able to scale it out successfully for future hires typically happens.
I’d say within, you know, 6 to 12 months, we’d be looking at additional sales hires there. Excellent. That’s great to hear. Just in terms of timeline and you know how the scope of work starts to translate. I mean, it sounds like you’re frequently working on these types of searches. I can imagine that at this point you have a very solid understanding of what the right type of candidate looks like for these founding sales roles.
Like what’s your network of folks looking like for these types of foundational sales people? Yeah, so that’s a great question. I think it definitely takes like a certain personality and person to be able to really thrive in this founding AE role. We’ve really developed a really solid network of folks that just love it.
Like they love the excitement. They love coming in at taking something totally brand new, crafting it, figuring out what works. And honestly, like a lot of the time, those people’s motivators are a little bit different than, motivators of a account executive that likes a little bit more stability and kind of likes knowing what they’re getting into.
I think it’s really important that there’s a lot of up in the air in this and a lot of change that can occur and being able just to kind of iterate and pivot. And it definitely takes somebody that genuinely thrives off of a little bit of that chaos to be able to really make an impact in this role.
And also somebody that can work with a founder. We keep going back to it, but this is such a pivotal moment in the growth of a company. And it can be scary for a founder to give some power and give some autonomy over to somebody else to sell it. That’s a big moment. And you know, one, that like we’re really able to support, because we have a lot of folks in our network that have done it before. And again, they just love it. Exactly.
I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. Obviously it’s very market center for us to recruit for account executives, whether it’s like SMB, mid market enterprise, you know, and then some. But I think these searches are very, very different from your standard account executive search where we’re like finding candidates who have similar average deal sizes and similar length of sales cycles and like quotas and have they targeted this type of persona? Like it is so, so much more than that because we’ve created such an incredible network of these founding AEs who have that experience also, you know, yes, with those similar sales cycles, it may be in similar target persona, et cetera, but who have helped build out go-to-market strategies, right?
And have helped find market fit. Like you said, like that is not something every AE is willing to do. Jump in where the products like, you know, you’re still testing product market fit and finding the right market, et cetera, someone who’s okay with working with that founder. So, it definitely takes a very, very unique type of account executive.
And I think, you know, just to kind of bring it home, you mentioned some of the other challenges and hiring for founding salespeople, just the idea that it is such a pivotal and intense time. These companies are these founders, like babies, right? And like commonly, like Jen, you can elaborate on this, who is the person before we hire these like, go-to-market founding salespeople, who has been doing the sales before they come in? The founder. Exactly. Exactly. Putting yourself in their shoes like this company’s their baby they’ve been doing all the sales themselves and now like probably really difficult to be like, I’m going to hand over the reins and trust somebody else beyond myself to sell.
Yeah. And I think, you know, to carry off of that, it’s so fun to be part of this process. And honestly, like it’s a privilege to be able to like both sit as a partner to our clients in this like huge moment. It’s a really big deal for them for their business. And then also be able to sit with our candidates with that.
Candidly, like that’s what makes it, that’s what makes it fun. But you know, it’s, it’s really finding that right match. It’s never like fitting a square peg into a round hole. It really is. Like I always joke, like it’s the mix of art and science, like also like a little bit of Kismet. Where it really is just kind of a spark in someone’s career and like really that perfect match. That’s honestly like where it gets to be really fun. And, you know, you see people’s careers really take off and it’s really special to be part of a really pivotal part of somebody’s journey, both on the founder side and on, you know, the account executive side, and to be able to be a trusted advisor to our clients and really guiding them through this process is so rewarding.
And I think just creates such a great relationship between us as we continue to help scale additional hires for them. I so appreciate everything that you’ve shared today, Jen, because, you know, often in the Hirewell Update we’re constantly talking about how we’re crafting solutions that fit best for our clients.
And there’s truly no one size fits all solution, but there are different solutions that we’ve crafted internally that we can use as like a starting point. And here’s the foundation for us to start to like, put the nuances of specific organizations and roles and needs into it. And I think, you know, going over the rubric, talking about our deep expertise and these specific types of builds, it’s just really great to highlight and just understand the nuances of how you all have been successful. And you know, scoping out these solutions and truly putting, you know, those really important roles in place for our clients in this space. Yeah. Thanks for letting me come on and nerd out a little bit on it. I mean, honestly, like truthfully, I could talk about this with Jen all day also.
So I mean, if you are like a founder, right, you’re doing all the sales for your company right now. And you are at the stage where you are hiring your first go-to-market folks, your first sales folks, even if you just want to chat, right? Like that’s, again, the whole point for going back to that original graphic that Ryan put up in terms of like advisory, we’d love to just chat with you, see, you know, where you’re at and how we can help and advise and partner.
You know, we have a lot more to say about this. We sure do. We sure do. Well, Jen, thank you again so much for coming on today. It was great to have you. Thank you both. Thanks, Jen. See you soon. Bye. That is a wrap for this week’s episode of the Hirewell Update.
Thank you all so much for joining us. As a reminder, you can find all of our content at talentinsights.hirewell.com. Or if you’d like to learn more about Hirewell or our service offerings, check out our website, it’s www.hirewell.com. We’ll see you then. Thanks everyone.
