One way to enslopify your startup is to be too rigid with the years of experience you need from people
Every hire you make lowers the bar of talent
This compounds the problem
An example:
"We want an SDR with 1-3 years of experience"
(A real quote I've heard many times)
- Being an SDR doesn't require experience
- The good ones aren't still SDRs 3 years down the line (and they're DEFINITELY not moving 2 years in for a chance to work with you, unless you are at Databricks or OpenAI)
Here’s how this looks in graph form:
Should you look for relevant experience?
Yes
But you need to actually match this to the job
If you are negotiating million dollar contracts, then hiring people who have done that before makes a lot of sense
If you are hoping to negotiate million dollar contracts in the future, but your biggest deal to date is $80k, maybe give people a chance to grow with you?
(Plus, you're going to be upset when you can't afford people in the first bucket)
But that brings us to another problem: how do you know if the profile you’re looking for even exists in the real world?
You and I both know there are going to be clueless hiring managers right now trying to hire people with 10+ years of ChatGPT experience
They are enslopifying the companies they work with
Thankfully, the solution is simple - and it’s like most things with startups: you need to talk to your users
In this case users = potential candidates for you
Instead of writing a job description (or using ChatGPT to write it for you) for an Account Executive, you go out and talk to 10 people who have that job
What does the candidate pool look like if you hired a Sr SDR?
What sort of comp package do you need to attract someone who’s done bigger deals in your space?
What does the talent pool look like if you hired locally?
How about in New York?
What about Denver?
These are all things that can be figured out
If you want to see how this can be done (and how you can do this), take a look at this video of me finding quota killers
If you’d like help getting this done for you, book some time to speak with me here