Rethinking Networking Hiring

Krissy Manzano: Hello everyone. We are fresh off the Thanksgiving holiday, and that means we’re doing another episode of the Challenge G TM Podcast. So thanks for tuning in again. I am so excited to have Craig Rosenberg here. Craig, before we, you know, dive in, I, I would love it if you could give everyone a quick. Look into your background and and what you’re doing.

Krissy Manzano: Sure, 

Craig Rosenberg: Sure. Happy to. So is this the Thanksgiving episode or the post Thanksgiving episode? This is important. 

Krissy Manzano: This is Post. 

Craig Rosenberg: Post. Okay. All right. Yet someone else got the Thanksgiving episode. Oh no. I mean, 

Krissy Manzano: Okay. We’re after Thanksgiving. You are The Thanksgiving. Okay. In that case. Okay, good. You’re the Thanksgiving episode.

Krissy Manzano: So. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah. Like I’m 

Craig Rosenberg: old enough where it was always the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special was on only during that time of year, so it was like, it was the Thanksgiving special. Right. Um, right. So, so I’m, uh, thanks for having me on. I, I, um, so my background overall is in go to market.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, and so I, right now I’m the Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners. So my team, uh, works with, uh, portfolio post-investment, you know, and, um, we’re primarily focused on. Go to market. So strategy, people, process, technology, tactics. You like the second one, right? The people part. And, um, that’s been my life though.

Craig Rosenberg: So before I joined scale, which was about three years ago, I had founded a company called Topo, which was a, um, a SaaS, um, sales and marketing advisory firm. And, um, did that for about eight years, then got bought by Gartner. So I spent three years as a analyst at Gartner. Which if you know me sounds crazy because I was an analyst for a long time, but I’m like a, just a little odd for, for that business.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, and then, you know, yeah, uh, before that I had founded another, uh, online media company, but my, my background has always been driving revenue, whether it’s marketing, um, you know, sales, development, sales, cs, and, and that’s what I bring to the table here. So, um, yeah, that’s me. I hope that helps. Oh, wait, I have a podcast too.

Craig Rosenberg: It’s called the Transaction. My team always gets mad at me ’cause I never mention it that 

Krissy Manzano: Well, I was gonna ask about that once we got through, but I’m glad you plugged it again. Oh, is that question five? Plug again? We’ll, we’ll plug it again. Um, all right. It’s great. So we need, we need more, um, business podcasts that people actually wanna listen to and can give good advice, um, versus people just listening to themselves talk.

Krissy Manzano: So 

Craig Rosenberg: I That is true. Yeah. 

Krissy Manzano: You have a very interesting background. Um, even as an operator and an analyst, right. What shaped your point of view on hiring, and specifically why you believe relying on your network can limit founders more than they realize? 

Craig Rosenberg: Well, first let’s talk about hiring, and then let’s talk about how you do it.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay? Okay. So, well, first of all, I, I think, you know, so at, we’ll go all the way back to Topo. Okay. Which was, so we would go into sa you know, SaaS was, you remember the days, like, it was just like, wow. It was, people were moving from spreadsheets to this thing and like, yeah. Um, from client server to this thing.

Craig Rosenberg: And it was, so it, there was, it was like now, except there was like clear category winners. So we were working with all these amazing companies and, um, so there was a lot. And what, what I saw from my experience was that, um. Um, you know, for particularly with startups, I feel like the mature companies have a little bit of a different process, which you can teach me about, but like from companies, and by the way, for me, startups are until you’re, what?

Craig Rosenberg: 400 million? Like you, you’re still figuring things out as you go. Right? And so I saw a number of different flavors. So one was, so we were giving advice, right? And we were giving. Rubrics tactics, you name it. Like in sales, we did everything all the way down to sales training. In marketing, we had, you know, here’s how you run a BM programs, right?

Craig Rosenberg: But if, if you didn’t have, this sounds so obvious, but there’s, there’s nuance here. If you didn’t have really good people doing the job, uh, it didn’t matter. We saw it every time. Now, what is a good person is something you and I talk about because, you know, we, you and I both deal with startups. The I. The issue is, is making sure that you understand who that right person is for your business.

Craig Rosenberg: That’s hard. And like that’s, you know, part, you know your business. Just so everyone knows. A good recruiter, recruiting firm, you know, recruiting consultant, whatever. They help you think through what you’re trying to hire a hundred percent and then follow you along the way as you figure that out. That was the interesting thing.

Craig Rosenberg: So, ready? So here’s the nuance to the nuance, which is, so you hire, so let’s say we were working with really hot companies and they would say. We want from these four companies. And they were all well ahead of what they, what they did. And that was a mistake because they were able to hire those folks. So they thought, well, this is great.

Craig Rosenberg: Those people weren’t ready for a, the bus, you know, this was a, like the example I’m giving was a PLG open source company. So you can’t hire people from Salesforce. They, they, you can, but you have to really dig deep to figure out can they understand this business. Number two is like they couldn’t understand that everything was still broken, even though it was a $250 million company.

Craig Rosenberg: And a, it requires a certain kind of person to say, not say, well, it’s broken. I’m outta here. Here’s my badge to. It’s broken. How do we fix it? Um, and then, uh, so, so that is a, that was part of that unique experience. The, the other part was even if you’re trying to scale, you have to be able to get these types of people and you have to do it fast.

Craig Rosenberg: Yep. You have to do it fast. And so when we talk about sort of how you do it, that that shaped me in a big way. I just kept, it was hard because we would, you know, like, so we had two, by the time we got bought by Gartner, we had 200 cu uh customers. So I had a lot of sas. I’m going still back in Tobo. Yep. I can relate this though.

Craig Rosenberg: We have to our 60 portfolio companies today, we can generally. Uh, you know, when we get to know, you know, the folks in the seat that are going to go execute this isn’t gonna work. Um, and it’s for a variety of different reasons. Um, and mainly what we just talked about, which is this, the, this requires fit.

Craig Rosenberg: The second part of that fit though, is like what you’re trying to do in a, um. At that consultative approach of trying to figure out who the right person is. It’s not just where you are. It’s, uh, you know, what you’re, what you’re trying to do, and can that person, um, be able to help you think about that in the right way.

Craig Rosenberg: So, um, I just doubt that’s what shaped me. I know that you have to hire well, and I know you have to hire fast, you know, like we do series A investing, you want to be B in right? 22 months at the latest. That means. Man, I don’t even know what kind of numbers you try to get people in the seats at, but you gotta, right.

Krissy Manzano: Oh, okay. Sa So you said something really interesting, right? Like obviously when SaaS started and I, I think in like the golden age of SaaS, right? 

Craig Rosenberg: Oh God, yeah. It 

Krissy Manzano: was a great time. Right. We all, those of us that were in it, we, you know, we did well and it was, it was a different, it was different than it is now.

Krissy Manzano: Right. Um, even though there are still a lot of opportunities, right. Including, like with ai, but you talk about hiring fast and right now, what I see a lot of people saying and, and doing from investors, telling them to, you know, founders that we work with, they’re like. Hire slow, fire fast because we’re in this era of responsible growth.

Krissy Manzano: What would you say to that? 

Craig Rosenberg: I’d say hire fast, fire, fast. 

Krissy Manzano: Why, why not the higher flow? I hate the 

Craig Rosenberg: fire part. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, yeah. 

Craig Rosenberg: Well, because you don’t have time and, um, I, I mean, I’m Okay. Look, I, I’m okay with making the right well, because there’s a second part which you, which is important for when we talk about recruiting.

Craig Rosenberg: I also believe that in a short amount of time to go higher, you need to talk to as many people from a de as many different flavors in and outside your network. That you can, because that will help you figure out who is the right fit. And so that does take time. I agree. But like sometimes the higher slow thing gets really, really slow.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, I’m like 8%. Yeah. And you don’t have time for that. And the second thing is you do have to take chances. So like, you know, I did mention that’s why I, I hate the fire fasting, by the way, when I said that I, my heartfelt to even say that I, it’s like people’s lives. But totally the point is, the point is, um, you do need to do that and then, and you by the way, you should.

Craig Rosenberg: Like they, you should learn from the recruiters and keep talking to people no matter what in your business, right? So like, 

Krissy Manzano: yeah. 

Craig Rosenberg: An example is, uh, this old guy that I used to eat breakfast with every quarter. I used to say, what’s the one piece of advice you gimme, he said. Ask everyone, who’s the best sales guy you’ve ever run into, and ask for an intro and meet him for breakfast.

Craig Rosenberg: I know you, you do that all day. We should just copy, you know, recruiters on that one because you just gotta keep talking to people. All right. I get so you can see I’m all over the place. My point is though, uh, you need to, uh, you need someone to help manage you through the recruiting process, and you need someone to go hunt as many people as you possibly can talk to.

Craig Rosenberg: Until you can truly narrow it down. Then when you do, you can’t be like, well, they have pink hair. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. You have 

Craig Rosenberg: to be like, you know what? They have pink hair, but we’re gonna go 

Krissy Manzano: right, 

Craig Rosenberg: because we, we know enough to be really the issue. I understand the higher slow philosophy I do because they’re trying to say, well make the right decision.

Craig Rosenberg: The issue is you shouldn’t say hire slow. You should say, let’s have a process that’s thorough. That reaches as far and wide as we can so that we can meet, um, candidates that what we believe is a profile and are pretty close to it, and take chances on talking to people that are even crazy. Like if Chrissy’s like, you gotta just talk to this guy.

Craig Rosenberg: I know he’s not the judge. Do it. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. 

Craig Rosenberg: And then, you know, and then, you know, you, you have to have a, you know, a process for whittling it down. But like, these things make you also, it’s not just the hiring, it makes you a better manager. It makes your company better. Yeah, I, uh, I just believe that. But anyway, yeah, I, I think you, you hire fast, but under the tenets of the higher slow, which is let’s make good decisions, let’s make sure that we’re talking to as many people as possible.

Craig Rosenberg: I just don’t believe it should take a year to go do that. 

Krissy Manzano: This is why I really enjoy talking to you and just for the people that listen to this, I swear I did not set him up to say that. And you have a very unique perspective. Um. At the, the VC and investor level, right, of just, um, you, you know, it’s, you hire fast when you have a good process and everyone is aligned with what they’re looking for versus letting fear and anxiety and panic run the process and.

Krissy Manzano: That’s what leads it, right? Like, well, if it’s a what if it’s a miss? And then that, what if it’s a miss drives everything and you miss great talent, right? And you don’t trust the professionals you work with. You second guess everything and it’s a, and it’s a nightmare, right? So. I totally agree, but that kinda leads me into, you know, from a conversation you and I had offline, right?

Krissy Manzano: Which was you talk openly about something most VCs won’t, right? That relying too heavily on your network can actually hurt hiring outcomes. And I’m curious what got you thinking differently about that? You know, was there a moment or data point that shift to your perspective? Because in this era of responsible growth where hiring is totally different for SaaS now, like when I.

Krissy Manzano: When I tell you, when everyone says like, I want someone really specific, and you know, they’ve gotta have this specific industry. I mean, they literally want someone who’s done the job like twice and is a unicorn. Right? Um, I’m like, sometimes I feel like we’re unicorn hunters and unnecessarily, but mm-hmm.

Krissy Manzano: Most will, you know, if they get an intro from their network Right. Or if they will abandon all of the criteria. Or a lot of the criteria or make, you know, exceptions. Right. And, but that’s also said, well, they trust them so they know, they seem to have, they performed elsewhere. But like, why do you actually think that that’s an issue and doesn’t work?

Craig Rosenberg: Well, I don’t know if I’d say that’s an, uh, well, it’s an issue and that you abandon everything. Uh, so first of all, I believe in both. Right. Okay. I, I, and that’s where I was saying before, you should talk to as many people as possible. Okay. And look, here’s the thing, that’s the, the unwritten rule for me.

Craig Rosenberg: This is the same for sales that, um, you know, luck, which is your network’s. Like, Hey, I’ve got this person you should go meet. And it hits, uh, that actually, so let’s say that happens once and you haven’t done everything that will happen once. Yep. It will keep happening. You are doing what we just talked about, which is you have a massively wide net of recruiting.

Craig Rosenberg: You have recruiters. You should, in my opinion, maybe this is why I’m on the show. I believe you should hire a recruiter, uh, because they hunt. We want to hunt, we wanna find people that aren’t in our network and talk to them. Um, but that doesn’t mean you don’t use the network. Sure. It just means you don’t do what you said.

Craig Rosenberg: The way you set it up was like, well then you abandoned everything. No, you do not. You do not. Everything should be multi-channel and I can promise you that if you have like a massive hunting exercise, uh, that you will get lucky. Yeah, like from the network, but I promise you it only happened once or twice in the, you know, in the Star.

Craig Rosenberg: And you’re gonna be like, wow, I’m just gonna use network. No, you hear this all the time. I’m sure. It’s like you’re running processes and then they say, well, we found this guy in the network. Well. That, that is great. I’m, I don’t know what it is. It’s some karmic thing, but it’s because you’re out having the, you know, you’re out recruiting, you’re doing all these things, but you can’t rely on it because Yeah, it’s a, if you wanna scale, like, you know this, the fastest growing companies on the face of this earth.

Craig Rosenberg: Who have big companies with the best people in it, that have great networks, have recruiters. 

Krissy Manzano: Yep. 

Craig Rosenberg: Lots of them. 

Krissy Manzano: Yes. 

Craig Rosenberg: And it’s because we have to hunt and find the, the, the best people with sometimes with the different background than we thought. In order for us to find the right people for our business, often a diverse group of people in our business.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, you know, and by diverse, I don’t just mean the standard word of diverse. Yeah. I mean like, yeah. You, you know, you came from, I, you know, I came from company X, so that little sort of ecosystem there, I go to that. No man, I need someone who’s gonna go out to go way over there. Yeah. And go bring those. ’cause I, we don’t know until we go hunt.

Craig Rosenberg: And so for me, like if you take the, so I do, I believe you should. Of course. Why Wouldn wouldn’t you use your network? You should do it. Sure. But like, if you wanna do the speed. You wanna hire fast, fire fast, you’re, you’re gonna need a hunter. You need someone whose life they spend all day. That’s the thing that people don’t quite understand is that, uh, like the recruiting and the recruit, you know, these, these folks that recruit, that’s what they do for a living.

Craig Rosenberg: They know where to hunt. They know how to hunt. Yeah. They, they know how to go get people. They know how to bring ’em in. And I think the second problem for, for recruiters, especially with, uh, early stage is. Um, they don’t realize in the start you’re gonna miss. Yeah. And, and, and you have to talk to them and come back, and then you gotta come back to the recruiter and say, well, here’s what I did.

Craig Rosenberg: ’cause they will adjust. They’re that they wanna make money, so they’re going to adjust the issue often in early stages, like, well, they, they sent us these candidates and didn’t work. Yeah. And actually that’s fine. Honestly. Yeah. Like, I mean, and they’re like, well, you said hire fast. I’m like, yeah, but like, if you don’t.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. You know, like I, you know, all us old folks would say, like me, I’m old, you know, I got the gray beard. We’d say, if the, the first candidate you like is rarely the one you’re gonna hire because you just have to keep going. Yeah. And, um, and you, you just need a recruiter to go do that. That’s the issue on the network thing is that you’ve put, you should put it out there, meet as many people as possible and you might hit 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: But like to win fast, um, you got a sick. You gotta stick the dogs on this process. And the second part I like about hiring recruiters is they’re so experienced in how we get it done internally and how you should be thinking about things. That having that, um, resource is really important as well. But you know, I got, I got a really, uh, company that’s just killing it.

Craig Rosenberg: They’re doing so in the hundreds of millions, and they’ve got recruiters up the wazoo because they want to hire fast, they wanna hire the best people and they want to say no. You actually can’t say no unless you have a full funnel of candidates that are flowing, right? And that’s that, that, that is what, uh.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that’s kinda where you and I talked about that conversation. I mean, I wouldn’t discourage the network. I would just say relying only on that is dangerous. Yeah. Um, you want a multi-channel approach to talking to as many people as possible that could fit the role. Um, second thing I’m sure you see is like, you know, look, when you do that too, you’ll talk to people who are like, um.

Craig Rosenberg: You may not hire ’em now. Um, but if you’re good and you know, like a good, I have a lot of really good founders that never forget those people that they met. Totally. And you know, as things keep going, you know, it’s like now they’ve got this network of potential folks. But you don’t get that unless you talk to a lot of people.

Craig Rosenberg: I, I feel like the good founders are willing to do whatever amount of meetings per week. Now. I know they gotta run their business, but like they get it. Sure. They just get it. Yeah, 

Krissy Manzano: totally. Well, I think, look, I mean from a time perspective, right? Time, it’s hard. Hiring is time consuming, right? Which is a reason why you hire sometimes.

Krissy Manzano: That could be one of the main reasons that you hire a recruiting firm, right? Of, Hey, I have a good network and I know what to look for. I may not have all the tools, but I can do it well enough. But I don’t have the time to manage all of this. Right. And I think, you know, the only thing I would say is I, I actually don’t think you have to talk to tons and tons of people.

Krissy Manzano: I think the bigger issue is. Like actually knowing what you want, right? And working to make sure you understand what that looks like. Like an enterprise AE in FinTech as an example, is different. No matter the, the company that’s in, you know, FinTech, right? It’s what are the behaviors, what are the skills?

Krissy Manzano: And that ICP, that ideal candidate profile is something that I find a lot of people miss. They’re like, okay, here’s our job description that we went on LinkedIn to our competitors and others hiring. We copied it and then we made our own tweaks, and now we’ve put that out there and we have four steps in our process, and they think that’s an interview process.

Krissy Manzano: And then that’s where, you know, people just don’t really, they’re just trying to talk to people that make them feel good about the job description that may not e actually even like fully align with what they need. Right. Totally. What are they assessing? So, and then you miss great people that actually yeah.

Krissy Manzano: May not have some of those things on the job description, but have the, the areas that you need to just be. Rock stars. Right? Totally. So, 

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, I get it. I, on the talk to, you know, that that was sort of, there’s a contradiction in what I said in terms of time talking to people. By the way, there is another advantage to having people drive con conversations that time.

Craig Rosenberg: Like, um, my, my buddy Dennis Leandre, he was CO of Procore, you know, it was crazy. Every time he’d come back to me with a good idea, he learned it from someone he was interviewing. I, it was amazing. He’d be like, yeah, he was trying to get a VP of sales, and he kept coming back to me going, dude, do you know what SAP does?

Craig Rosenberg: When they do this? Yeah. He’s like, do you know what infor, you know, ’cause they were sort of talking to those, uh, enterprise ERP types and uh, and so there’s always value there. So, okay. I will give in. Maybe you don’t need to talk to as many people. That’s one of the reasons you hire the recruiter in my opinion.

Craig Rosenberg: One of the big things though, the recruiter does do is the hunting and these finding people agreed. That, that’s really hard. And the, the vetting, the initial vetting, I mean, if you have a good recruiter, you’re not wasting Yeah. Totally. Complete amount of time. Yeah. Um, because, you know, like I said, like a guy like Dennis would come back literally every week we’d meet on Mondays, he was a client and he’d have a new idea and I’d say, where’d you get that?

Craig Rosenberg: He’d say, oh, I was interviewing this guy. And he’d just, you know, he’d told me all about it. So, yeah. Yeah. There’s just, I know we gotta hire fast, but there’s just too much value in. The right kind of people and the, and the, the value of interacting with people. So, 

Krissy Manzano: totally. No, I completely agree. So when you look at early stage companies, where do you see a network, first hiring approach actually help, right?

Krissy Manzano: Versus where you see it quietly working against ’em. I know we’ve talked about it a little bit, but just curious where that can be valuable, especially for like hire fast, right? To actually get the reps in. 

Craig Rosenberg: Sorry, say the first part of the question again. 

Krissy Manzano: When No worries. When you, when you look at early stage companies, where do you see a network first hiring approach, help versus, you know, where you actually see it quietly working against them when they’re trying to hire fast, and maybe it’s their first, from a startup perspective, like it’s their first enterprise account executive, right?

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Which is the one that people or their, you know, founding sales ae. Well, by way, way that 

Craig Rosenberg: that’s you mean. Yeah. So, well, it’s helpful in that if it’s your first one, um, going to the network, uh, you can actually, uh, that actually is faster not to hire, but to have conversations. Yeah. Um, which is what you need to do because you’re, if it’s your first one, um, you’re, that, that’s a use case where you should talk to, um.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, as many reps as you can. The issue for is if you come to me, right, I’m in a venture capital firm and say, Hey, we’re hiring an enterprise ae. I am. The, the only people I’ll be able to recommend are the ones who have already made it. Now, those could be good ’cause they have that experience in building, but also they’ve already made it.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, like they’re, they’ve been through the process and now they’re earning, you know, three to 500 KA year with a patch that they understand, with a product they understand. And going back to the grind, even though they think they want it because they made a little money off stock and they want to go for a big one again.

Craig Rosenberg: Uh, they may not be. Ready? Yeah. For what that takes. Um, but on the other hand, you want to talk to them because that is what we’re just talking about. Like, so you do go to the network. So when fo when people come to me, I say, go talk to these three people, maybe five. And I’m not saying they’re looking, I’m just saying this is the kind of person that you wanna hire who, you know, help build a similar type business as the founding ae or early, you know, early hire.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. 

Craig Rosenberg: And you should do that. That’s valuable. Hugely valuable. By the way, I do that for everything. Like even when we recommend hires, we’ll say, I mean, uh, recruiters. So, you know, if we said, Hey, go talk to, you know, blueprint. We would before, you know, as part of that say, and by the way, go talk to these three to five people from our network.

Craig Rosenberg: They, they’re close to your business. They don’t, they may fit the job description, they may be close enough. And go talk to ’em. I’m not saying they’re looking, I’m just saying go talk to ’em. And there’s huge value in that. Sometimes you pick people up as you know. Um, but nobody should be disappointed if they don’t like that.

Craig Rosenberg: That for early stage, especially on the higher you just brought up, like, uh, that’s one where, you know, going in the network and having the initial three to five, uh, conversations with folks that sort of fit that bill or have done that is hugely valuable. The issue, as you know, is, uh, a technical founder hiring their first AE should come to their network, ask, you know, you should ask your venture capital firms like, for, for some intros.

Craig Rosenberg: They’ll give you some that’ll get you going, that’ll help you gel kind of what you’re looking for and help you understand how these guys talk. And, uh, you know what kind of works and doesn’t work, uh, as well in the interview process, but you’re gonna need a hunter to go find 

Krissy Manzano: someone. Yep, totally. I, I love.

Krissy Manzano: Um, you talked about having conversations and differentiating between just like interviewing linear network, because that’s so spot on. I think the older we get and, and the more successful we get, even as if you’re a young founder, right? And you’re, you’re doing well, we can forget to be curious because we’ve become so successful, right?

Krissy Manzano: And so we’re not as, uh, we wanna just whe whether we want a fast result or not. Um, we become. Less engaged in actually asking questions and learning and trying to understand, hey, what does great look like? Right? And taking a moment to pause, actually have those conversations, which is always time to discover greatness, right?

Krissy Manzano: Because it will actually save you time at the end. So I love that. Yeah. No, 

Craig Rosenberg: I totally, that’s great advice. I totally agree. I, and you know, I gave you the story of the, the old guy I used to meet for breakfast who had that, you know, introduced me to your best sales guy. I’ve sort of taken that as like a life policy.

Craig Rosenberg: Now it’s like, so if I’m talking to. A CMO and I’m like, besides you, who’s the best CMO? You know? And if they say it, I’ll say, I want to meet ’em. I just meet ’em and I learn a ton. And now that doesn’t help on the speed hiring. I know. But like, it is a good piece of advice that I’ve received as just a person in business over the years and like, uh, it’s.

Craig Rosenberg: It’s valuable if, if it’s relevant, it’s valuable, you know? Yeah. So 

Krissy Manzano: I, I totally agree. I mean, even in my career, you know, I have a strong network of people just from hiring and working with them. And I’ve even seen folks that have worked incredibly well for me in the past, like just crushed it and didn’t work as well at another place.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And it wasn’t because they weren’t good, but, you know, the place I was at. Required a different skillset or maybe they were at a different point in their life. Right. I always remind people like human beings are not robots, and so what we did maybe five years ago, two years ago, or 10 years ago, there’s so many things that can happen that can switch what, you know, how we kind of interact in an environment that may feel similar or.

Krissy Manzano: It actually, the environment’s still similar, but they actually have a lot of differences and nuances that are not gonna apply to the skill sets of this individual. So it’s interesting and I think that’s where having those conversations is really helpful to help you understand, hey, who, what, what does great really look like?

Krissy Manzano: And what am I wanting? Okay, so last question here. If. You had to give founders one simple rule of thumb for hiring beyond their network, like something they could implement tomorrow. Beyond conversations, what would it be? 

Craig Rosenberg: Um, you mean, and besides hiring, is this a, a setup besides hiring a recruiter or?

Krissy Manzano: This is not a setup. You don’t have to, you don’t have to talk about recruiters. This is not set up. You don’t even have to say hire recruiters. 

Craig Rosenberg: No, I know, I know, I know. I’ve, I, and I appreciate what you said because I have overemphasized the conversation thing. I, I think, um, uh, so the, the one piece of advice is, um, well, one is you should, you know, always, always be recruiting, but that’s a conversation type thing.

Craig Rosenberg: But the big one is, um. You, you’re, uh, in all likelihood, there’s, we talked a lot about the hunting and the talking to people, but the process by which you hire even in a small company, um, I, you know, I would lean on, you know, folks like you and, you know, there’s plenty of people I could talk because that is the other area where we, we can’t hire fast.

Craig Rosenberg: You and I talked about it in the start as this, like, how do you hire fast? The thing that I got from what, the way you interpreted my rambling was, uh, you can do the higher slow rationale. The rationale for it is get to the right people, right? And hire the right person. Uh, that is because that will, and that sort of philosophy is it’ll save time in the long run.

Craig Rosenberg: What, what, what we were saying is if you have the right process. That includes everything. Not just hunting, but like, you know, how do you know what’s a, what’s an interview thoroughly, uh, thorough interview process and how do we test for what we think we’re looking for? Uh, you can still hire fast and hire well, but if you don’t figure that out.

Craig Rosenberg: Um, then that’s actually where you can fall down. It could be anything from, uh, you know, I use the word test. Like I have a guy that works with me, Robert, that’s his big thing, is like, what are the four traits, you know, and four things we wanna look for. Well, let’s see, how do we test for that? And by, it doesn’t have to be like some, you know, uh, green Beret exercise, but it, it is important.

Craig Rosenberg: And then how do we get everyone on the same page that that’s what we’re looking for? We’re not worried if they have pink hair and like we have to all be on board to do this in a month. Uh, you can still hire fast and thoroughly, but that requires alignment process, like internally in order to be able to go do that.

Krissy Manzano: Well said. And I just wanna emphasize on that last point of the alignment, right? Because hmm. We had a, a client that had cs, they needed to hire a CS manager and they had had two failures and they couldn’t afford a third one, right? And so they needed someone that was gonna get their hands dirty, but also have leadership potential, which is like 90% of what everyone’s looking for right now, regardless of their role.

Krissy Manzano: And so. We spent three weeks before we started the search, making sure comp was aligned, making sure we had an ideal candidate profile, and wait, hey, what, what did we really need here? Right? There was like a lot of back and forth and so, and they, and you know, one individual like didn’t really want to do that.

Krissy Manzano: They’re like, I need to get started, like, we’re behind all these things. I was like, we, this is how we operate, like we are going to get this right. Once we did that, we, the hiring process was so fast. And I remember, uh, one of the executives saying, I was surprised at how smooth that was. And I was like, that’s because when you get it all, when you stop trying to fix it and figure it out in the middle of the process, right, it’s actually really easy.

Krissy Manzano: You know what great looks like. You know what you like, you’re not questioning yourself on if you wanna move them to the next level or not. Right? And so I just emphasizing on what you said I think is a great point because. The work and the time that you put in that might be a little bit slower is before you start the search.

Krissy Manzano: It’s not necessarily during the search. Right. Which is where I think people that’s, that’s, that’s a 

Craig Rosenberg: good way. Well said. 

Krissy Manzano: So give, makes up, but, well, that’s all the time we have today, Craig, where can people find you if they wanna reach out to you or hear your podcast? 

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. Well I look, I think I’m a LinkedIn person.

Craig Rosenberg: I’m always on there, so you can always just reach out to me there. But if you want to hear insights. If you like my constant rambling, uh, I have a podcast called The Transaction, which, um, is doing really well. It’s all go to market topics. So if you’re in to go to market, I’m your guy. You can go listen to that.

Krissy Manzano: Love it. Take a listen. Uh, thanks for joining us today. And with that said, we’ll see you next time. Bye. 

Craig Rosenberg: Thanks.