Scaling Verticals and New Regions

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Chuck Brotman: Hello and welcome to the talent GTM podcast. This is Chuck Brotman hosting today’s episode. this is your source for real conversations on hiring and building the best exceptional GTM teams. it’s been a bit since we’ve run an episode or since I’ve hosted one, I’m really excited today to have Brenda Lando Fridman on the podcast.

Brenda, thanks for your time.

Brenda Fridman: Thanks, Chuck, and it’s great to be here with you

Chuck Brotman: I am really excited to jump into our conversation and I’m I want to ask you a bit about your bio, but I’ll kick things off and share a little bit with our audience. Brenda has a degree in chemical engineering and started her career at Merck where she shifted from manufacturing engineering into pharma sales.

almost became a banker. Brenda asked you a little bit about that as we go forward and, eventually joined Google and spent 17 years in big tech. much of that time at Google, later at LinkedIn, she spent six years [00:01:00] in Latin America and found a niche building and scaling high velocity sales operations.

Like me, Brenda lives in the Bay Area with her husband, daughters and dog. she’s active coaching sports teams and trying to learn golf, playing softball every Sunday. Is that right?

Brenda Fridman: softball. You’ll find me playing softball every Sunday. You’ll find me playing golf usually on Thursdays or Fridays.

Chuck Brotman: That’s awesome. It’s great to, it’s great to stay busy and active, and it’s nice that we can do that almost year round in the Bay Area, right? I’ve known a few, chemical engineering majors, and I recall from my days in college, it had a reputation as being one of the most technically difficult majors in college.

I’m interested, if you don’t mind kicking off, I’d love to hear a little bit about, you know, your studies and, kind of the engineering work you did at Merck and then kind of what led you, Brenda, to get into sales in the first place. I’d love to, to hear more and, and, share with our audience.

Brenda Fridman: Sure. Well, great introduction. Thank you. Some of this stuff I haven’t thought about in a while. chemical [00:02:00] engineering. Certainly chose that because I couldn’t, think of anything else to study. So I figured I’d pick what I deemed as the most difficult, and I could always pull back from there if needed.

I ended up Making it through the four years and jumped right into Merck into a very cool rotational development program. I know a lot of companies still do these, and they’re one of the best ways to kick off a career. And that’s what drew me to Merck in the first place.

Chuck Brotman: The concept sounds similar, but what, exactly is rotational development? what does that mean?

Brenda Fridman: So you bring in early career grads into what’s usually a two year program. You’re in a cohort and there are fixed rotations that you get to choose from. So you’re essentially building your own career early on with the premise that none of us know what we want to be when we grew up at 21, let alone like 25 years later.

So I got exposed to four different parts of the business within the first two years, not to mention a built in mentorship program. a lot of. Really cool experiences within those two years.[00:03:00]

Chuck Brotman: That’s awesome. So did you go into Merck and the rotational program knowing that you might be interested in sales or like more commercially oriented roles? Or is that something that just sort of fortuitously came out of your time at Merck?

Brenda Fridman: I’m like nodding my head. Yes. No. At the same time.

Chuck Brotman: Yeah

Brenda Fridman: commercially minded. Yes. In fact, one of the questions I asked myself constantly as a factory engineer was. How does this company make money and how does this product impact the end user? And so I think those are my first clues that maybe a life in the factory wasn’t going to be it.

though it wasn’t immediately clear to me that sales was the next step on the journey that came to me kind of in a funny way. I can share that if you’re interested.

Chuck Brotman: I’d be really curious. But yeah, please

Brenda Fridman: Okay. anytime I told a friend or a new acquaintance, that I work at Merck nine times out of 10, the response would be, Oh, in pharmaceutical sales. And I’d say, no, I’m a factory engineer [00:04:00] supervising, 15 very tenured manufacturing employees who are mostly male. And it’s a very humbling experience to me to be able to go out there and learn from them every day, but yet keep things running operationally.

So after hearing so many times, In my, Pharmaceutical Rep, I started to think maybe I should look into that. There must be something people are seeing in me. It’s like wisdom of the crowd.

Chuck Brotman: Right and What do you think they saw in you that and what did you find and kind of getting into pharmacy? What did you find that? you enjoyed about the work and that made you exceptional at it,

Brenda Fridman: Yeah, Merck is great. They really valued science based backgrounds because you have a very technical, science y product to sell and you’re doing that with a very educated audience of physicians and their staff. And you also have to be able to, be okay with rejection. And so something in those interviews, I was able to convey that I’m really [00:05:00] great at establishing rapport.

Quickly, with anybody in the, physician’s office, the gatekeepers being one of those that a lot of folks just jump right over. and then being able to keep my composure while getting told I have 30 seconds to go through my whole product pitch and close, and also being okay with the door slammed in your face.

You know, anytime from five to 10 times a day.

Chuck Brotman: Do you think, is that a natural, like trait or set of characteristics that you have? interested, you know, having that degree in chemical engineering and obviously the work you were doing in a more technical sense at Merck, I’d imagine that you had. More confidence as a result of that work to have, conversations that maybe were also more technical in nature with, Demanding physicians, and I’m sure that there might be a more nuanced answer, but I’m curious like, did your technical background itself get you to a place where you were able to handle the pressure rejection because you weren’t taking it [00:06:00] personally?

You knew, it wasn’t a deficiency in your ability to understand these concepts, or was that a separate set of traits or skills that you had that coupled with the technical background?

Brenda Fridman: Yeah, I’d say that what prepared me to have great conversations was my technical background. What prepared me to be okay with rejection was my athlete background, if that makes sense. So there’s a lot of great resilience. just a lot of, interesting feelings that, that, come out of me being a college athlete and identifying it as an athlete for so much of my life, even up through today.

that’s I think what got me through the. Made me good at rejection.

Chuck Brotman: What sports were you in college?

Brenda Fridman: I’m a softball player, pitcher. So, I’m involved in every play.

Chuck Brotman: So it’s partly, I mean, this may be cliche, but in softball, baseball, often, like, you know, if you’re batting 300, 400, you’re, still out more often than you’re getting on base. Is it as simple as that? Or just the fact that you’re seeing as you practice the craft, like incremental improvements and the importance of just staying [00:07:00] committed to your development that helps you

Brenda Fridman: It’s the mental rigor of I need to get better. I need to be disciplined. I need to like live and breathe the sport in tandem with a chemical engineering degree and like really figure out a way to keep everything in balance while, staying, true to, myself and my other commitments outside of those two things of which there was not a lot of time, but made it work.

Chuck Brotman: Awesome. It’s a, powerful combination. So let’s talk about the move to Google. I could be wrong. I feel like you joined Google at a time when it was really in its ascendance in terms of, diversifying with new products and, it’s long stretch of hyper growth.

What led you to Google to make that move? if you want to talk about the, almost shift into, banking, I’m curious to hear about that.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah. It was the first big fork, in the career, which was fresh out of the MBA. I could join Goldman Sachs in prime brokerage sales, which it was 2006 in New York. All of my peers were, doing the eye banking thing, but I decided one night to leave my [00:08:00] marketing class early to go to the last half hour of a networking night onsite at campus.

And I ran into a Google recruiter, or I should say, he ran into me on purpose, come to find out. And he says, I always come to these things. At the end, because that’s where you find the people who are like more, more dedicated, more committed, the ones who stay till the end. And he says, Would you be interested in coming to have a conversation with Google for a sales role?

And I said, no, thank you. I don’t like marketing. and I am going to work at a bank. And he said, why? And I said, well, three things. I want to go somewhere with really smart people. I want there to be innovation and I am also interested in making more money. And he said, check, check, check, come talk to Google.

And I was like, by the way, he says, and we have a great culture. And that’s the moment that I realized how important. Culture is to me when choosing a company or finding that match.

Chuck Brotman: That’s really interesting. Do you think he passed those notes on to the teams? Like, did that play a role in the recruitment process in terms of understanding some of your drivers [00:09:00] for possibly making that decision?

Brenda Fridman: Yeah, he, I’d say so. He was a very, Chris, he, I remember him very well. what an awesome partner on the talent side and just somebody who did things, right. he brought, he connected me directly with the hiring manager. He made sure to call out that we both came from the same, League of Schools, me being Bucknell, him being Colgate, how we had so much in common.

I think he also had his MBA from the same school and we, lived in a similar geographic area and had a similar career trajectory. So he says, just have a conversation that’ll be the telltale. and certainly went in with an open mind. I will always say yes to meeting interesting people.

You don’t have to convince me. and needless to say that was, I, transformative moment for me. And then as we talk about how the rest of the Google recruiting unfolded, that was before they actually had a process that was the, Hey, you should meet someone [00:10:00] else. Hey, you should meet someone else. And then 15 meetings later, they’re making a hiring decision.

But I do think that there is one common thread throughout all of those conversations, which is what they were looking for. Not a, Plug and play been there done that hit the ground tomorrow. I can do this with my eyes closed They were looking for going back to our prior conversation a general athlete somebody

Chuck Brotman: Right.

Brenda Fridman: Can because they knew they were changing so quickly that if they hired the perfect Account executive for the healthcare vertical in 2006 that very quickly that person would be above their ski tips, because the role would be completely unrecognizable 12 to 18 months later.

So there are hiring people instead who were, able to demonstrate critical thinking, people who were okay with change, in fact, embraced change, people who could work cross functionally and in teams, people who really challenged themselves every day to stretch and grow that growth mindset.

Chuck Brotman: I mean, it’s interesting in a way, like the very fact [00:11:00] that you had what, what may have been some, misconceptions about what it was like to work at Google, what their focus was in the market. It’s almost like that. That was their opportunity. They didn’t necessarily want folks who knew exactly What they wanted, but the question maybe was how you know, how would you respond to the opportunity?

Right,

Brenda Fridman: Exactly right. And that worked for them. That hiring philosophy, I think, set Google apart in a major way. Their product wasn’t necessarily better, the best search product early on, but I do think that how they hired, those growth, folks with growth mindsets, set them on a course of differentiation,

Chuck Brotman: And how long did that process run from that first conversation with that recruiter on campus who found you? It’s you had stayed late in and pursued you to Getting an offer

Brenda Fridman: about two months. And that was fast for them back then.

Chuck Brotman: But, and you spoke to, like, we’re talking about dozens of people, like, what was the, what was that panel?

Brenda Fridman: a dozen and some very senior folks. [00:12:00] In fact, one of the most hurt, like mortifying moments was when the president of sales in our interviews said, Oh, okay, Brenda Lando at Yahoo, I’m going to go ahead and send you a Gmail invitation. And I was like, how did I not think of this before I got into this meeting? But

Chuck Brotman: Oh, you were using a different email, at the time?

Brenda Fridman: I was using a Yahoo email address in 2006. Yeah.

Chuck Brotman: The rest is history. Well, I, maybe pivoting to, so you joined Google, and at some point in time, you, took on a focus on LATAM sales, I think in Argentina. I’d love to hear about that. Like what led you to that focus? What was the context and, and you, how did you make that shift?

Brenda Fridman: So I joined Google when you were about 8, 000

Chuck Brotman: Total, total in the company at the time.

Brenda Fridman: Total in the company. Now, when I left, they were almost 150, 000, 15 years later. So I saw a lot of growth. I was part of a lot of growth. so after four years in New York, [00:13:00] I, had such an incredible trajectory. at the same time, I started to notice kind of like the question I asked myself at Merck of like, how does this company make money?

how do we impact the consumer? I was starting to ask the question of this is international company. What’s going on outside of the U. S. This is like, that’s where the growth is, really taking off. And I’m seeing friends, peers, mentors going to Singapore, India, Australia, Brazil to open offices, open teams.

And at first I was like, that can’t be me. And then, you know what? It can, right? Dig back deep into those, that athlete mindset, the growth mindset. It can be me. and I had done about, you know, Four weeks abroad in Argentina during the NBA during, NYU has a great program called doing business in Argentina.

So that was a comfortable, interesting, intriguing place. I didn’t feel like I was done yet with Argentina and I saw it as a place ripe for, digital transformation. So I [00:14:00] sort of raised my hand to go to Argentina. It wasn’t like I pushed a button and next thing you know, I’m on a plane. I spent three years.

Networking and selling myself to the leadership down there so that I could get my first chance, to, work abroad

Chuck Brotman: Because it was a competitive process.

Brenda Fridman: Was there were a lot of people who wanted to go on rotation. We had a very robust rotation program at Google. In fact, every 6 months or so, there’d be this rotation website, which would be refreshed with about 50 new rotation opportunities across the globe, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months.

Every time that was about to launch, hundreds, thousands of people would get to that website and start applying. And I think what separated me was that I didn’t just go to the website and hit apply. I had been working the network for three years and trying to make it clear that when there is something, I’m your person.

Chuck Brotman: Really interesting. so you get the opportunity and you relocated to Argentina

Brenda Fridman: It did. And, I just brought a house, a [00:15:00] small one, in fact, more of a condo in New York City where I used to live forever. And I spent maybe six months there. packed everything up, rented it out, went to Argentina, one way ticket, and yeah. The interesting thing about that though was that Maybe a month into it, my boss called me and said, Hey, we’re going to be going from three segments to two common sales structure, problem.

And he says, so we have to tell all of the people that, you know, you just took on, your team that they no longer have a role that everything’s going to be fine though. And so that was my first time managing my first time in another country, my first time operating in another language. And that was a very big, curve ball to go back to softball.

Chuck Brotman: And how did that go? I mean, what was that experience like?

Brenda Fridman: You know, I think that the reason why they hired me into this manager position was because they saw that I was very aligned with Google’s culture and values. And, one of the things that I think has always been true for me as a leader is that I’m a very Trust first, psych safety first person. So I’d [00:16:00] invested so much in that foundation in my first two months there, that when I had to break some unfortunate news, it actually wasn’t as difficult, as if I hadn’t had those relationships in place because I was just genuine. I, I, Listen to everybody process differently and we did have a plan, right? It was, going, there will be more roles. Here’s how it’s going to work. the world is not ending.

Chuck Brotman: Really interesting. And so after that, you. Relocated to Mexico City. Is that right?

Brenda Fridman: Yes. So after my 1 year rotation wrapped up and that was mostly preparing for the new segmentation and getting that off the ground, they actually, Mexico was growing faster than Argentina for, I’d say, obvious economic and political reasons. And so they knew they were really having a hard time to find enough talent to fill these open roles in Mexico.

So they asked me to move there for six months and just continue doing what I was doing before, in a different country. And I said, [00:17:00] well, yes. Because you say yes, when there’s an awesome stretch opportunity in front of you.

Chuck Brotman: And I’d love to hear about kind of your experiences. So you, when you picked up this new remit, I mean, you were tasked to, and I’m, what am I showing this right? You, own some new verticals, but you also had some significant hiring due to drive new vertical industry success there, right?

What kind of growth go objectives did you have and what was required of you in terms of adding heads like, I don’t know, on an annual or quarterly basis at the time?

Brenda Fridman: There’s two parts to this story. So the first is the overarching. I was in Mexico for five years, and I was the 19th employee in the Mexico office. The second woman. And over the course of the time that I was there, our office became over 500 people. I hired directly, the 40, 40 of those people, over the course of two years.

And the, there’s. Finding talent to join those teams at that time was actually fairly easy once you got into a rhythm. The hard [00:18:00] part was, we were 19 people, and there was a culture, and it was, I equate it to Google at the core, Mexico wrapped around. And that’s exactly the spirit of Google as it expanded internationally.

You want to allow the Google culture to be there at the core, but you need the local presence to, the nuances to live. With Mexico, because we doubled head count every six months for quite a period of time, we were hiring from companies. There was no digital. There were no competitors down there yet. So we’re hiring from other industries.

And very quickly, we lost the essence of the Google culture. And that was challenging because we had to muscle the culture back to the forefront.

Chuck Brotman: How did that manifest itself? I, it may, I know we’re going back in time a bit, but what, where did you see indications that you were kind of losing that cultural essence?

Brenda Fridman: Well, there, there was an element of speed here. And, actually one of my favorite books, which was [00:19:00] written, by Laszlo work rules, bright yellow cover, highly recommend. So Laszlo had a very strong perspective on hiring. And one of the stats in that book, which I’ll totally botch is that you, you’re, top performing hire.

Will be something like 40 times more productive than your average, not even your worst, than your average hire. And I think one of the sources or roots of this challenge in Mexico was that we were hiring so fast. And the folks that we hired in as leaders didn’t really have that mindset in their DNA of respecting Google’s four attributes that we searched for in every hire taking our time. If we don’t have a good candidate pool, we start all over again with the new pool until we find someone who is good for Google and will be effective in this role. we were moving so fast. We were cutting corners.

We weren’t looking for the attributes. and then those folks then [00:20:00] repeated the same thing as they hired and built out their teams. And so it was really this. We lost the essence. Of, hearing

Chuck Brotman: So, what appeared to be easy hiring in hindsight, maybe it was too easy from what I’m hearing here. Is that right?

Brenda Fridman: Likely, which Google is very big on. We don’t, friends don’t hire friends can refer friends and we want that all day. But everybody’s going back to the same rigorous hiring process. And by the way, this was a time where Larry and Sergei were still reviewing and approving every single person who entered the company.

Chuck Brotman: so

Brenda Fridman: that was, it was that

Chuck Brotman: Every hire was, went, did they interview with them or did they have to just approve like a

Brenda Fridman: There is a hiring packet that volunteers would put together once we got to a certain point of scale. And now that’s out the window, but there’s again still there’s still that high bar. And not to say it’s GPA based or how many activities did you do? It’s the whole package, the whole person, and there’s no cutting corners.

In fact, I mentioned the four attributes of hiring. I wonder if it’s

Chuck Brotman: I was going to ask [00:21:00] you, I’d love to hear what those were.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah, because these have stuck with me forever and I continue to look for this whenever I hire. number one, in no particular order as I think of them. Googliness, I think about that as teamwork and, you know, collaboration, cross functional collaboration.

Number two, leadership. Number three, cognitive ability. Or that critical thinking, and number four, role related knowledge. And actually I would put that one in fourth place, mostly because we know that if you have the other three, you’re likely to grow into the role that we’re hiring you for. and.

There’s an element of growth minds that I say sort of comes through the tones of it through all four of those Attributes so no matter what level what refunction what country? We’re looking for those four and I love it because it saves you a lot of time as a hiring manager or leader To think through what capabilities am I going to look for?

You’re looking for four.

Here it is.

Chuck Brotman: great lesson for companies of all [00:22:00] stages. And we, you know, are often preaching the importance of simplicity and defining the competencies or skills you’re looking for, because it’s hard to run like a rigorous assessment for any given competency, right? And if you’re not able to narrow this down and simplify it, Ultimately, even if you are taking your time and hiring and trying to be thoughtful, like so many companies, you’re going to get things, you’re more likely to get things wrong, right?

Brenda Fridman: Exactly. Exactly. And I’ve seen both sides of that.

Chuck Brotman: Really interesting. So we’re, so sorry, going back to kind of losing the culture essence, where were you falling short on those attributes initially? Was it you were, you just didn’t have a process to assess or those hadn’t been properly defined, codified and systematized? Like what was the miss there

Brenda Fridman: very simple. We were all, all in on RRK, role related

knowledge.

Chuck Brotman: too? You were focusing too much on that.

Brenda Fridman: Too much, and I would hear it constantly. This person is just plug and play that can start tomorrow. They have the relationships with the customers already, [00:23:00] and that’s one way of doing it. And that might still work in certain companies.

Maybe, but in a company where things change. So quickly. that’s why for me, the role related comes in fourth out of four, as the, capabilities or attributes go.

Chuck Brotman: You know, when you initially said that, the hiring was easy at the time, I was a little surprised that you just based on, where Google was at the time, but I wonder, I mean, it’s in part, is there a little bit of like a, almost a little bit of hubris here in so far as you had.

Such incredible brand recognition in Mexico globally by that time. And so you were able to be even in a market that maybe didn’t have the same level of tech talent and pedigrees as you might’ve found in the U S you were able to be More specific. There were more people who were interested. you could actively recruit from, other large tech companies.

Was it almost a matter of like, because that you were focusing more on folks that had kind of the role experiences and pedigrees and [00:24:00] everything else is kind of falling by the wayside as a result of your brand reach and the opportunity to do that.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah. Everybody did. It felt like at least, we had no shortage of interest in coming to work at the company. And for my first two years down there where I wasn’t yet hiring at a high velocity. I’m more, all of these observations are more of what I was seeing happening around me as we scaled from those 19 people into the hundreds.

Now for the back half of my time in Mexico, I had the chance to build out my own organization. This is where I pivot pretty much permanently into the higher velocity sales, side of the business. And I saw the opportunity to bring Google’s products and services to small businesses because people were interested.

Small businesses were, thriving in Mexico in 2012, 13, 14 when I was there, and yet there was nobody to help them grow with us. And so I pitched that the idea that we should have a team. [00:25:00] That I should lead the team and that, we would, you know, bring in a substantial amount of revenue for the company.

And, I got the approval and I got five headcount. and this was an interesting, it was like a startup within a pretty sizable, probably 60, 000 person organization at this point. And when I, You know, sat down to start sketching out the segmentation and build some pipeline for talent. I was like, there’s no one who cares about this like I do, right?

So I had to first invest in finding those, fractions of, you know, operations, talent, teams, time, who would just lend me their brains to help orient me around how do I build type, you know, pipeline for talent? How do I think about segmentation. And so I sort of DIY the first six months of it, found five amazingly talented people, sort of started to go counter current to the not so great hiring we’ve done and really made a commitment to [00:26:00] to bring, you know, us back to the essence of how we hire at Google, even if it’s hard.

And so I spent a lot of that early time. Finding pipeline, finding candidates to interview and really tapping into, folks with great networks. And we found that there are, it was not, there was a shortage of talent in Mexico. We were just having a hard time finding them and having conversations. So once we got the flywheel going, which required that initial effort, then it became something that worked beautifully.

And I could then start to pivot my attention on to customers and, you know, making sure that we were segmented properly and had the right

Chuck Brotman: You scaled it.

Brenda Fridman: That’s exactly

Chuck Brotman: And, how many hires did you make in that period of time?

Brenda Fridman: about 32.

Chuck Brotman: One of the things I wanted to ask you, Brenda, you know, we’re obviously in a different market today than we were in, I think, for much of the teens and, you know, certainly from what we saw three plus years ago. And, you know, a lot of companies have obviously [00:27:00] made cuts, have slowed down on hiring.

We’re seeing hiring processes take longer. Getting more convoluted. You know, I’m very much on record that there’s actually been a regression in the quality of hiring because people are overcomplicating it. I’m curious. You may agree or see things differently. But when you think about your experiences, both in that latest, you know, role at Google, but across your tenure hiring.

You know, they’re for the industry side and previously, in Argentina and even in the U S like what are, some lessons that you think that companies today could take from the way that you all ran your hiring process and focus on key attributes and drove alignment with your internal talent teams.

I’m curious if you have some general things that you, would submit, matter for companies, perhaps of all sizes today, as we think about hiring in this different world we’re in.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah. I have to say, I, I completely agree with what you said and to build off of that, what I see [00:28:00] today is maybe a bit unprecedented because you have situation where companies have downsized their TA teams. So you have fewer talent folks, you have an abundance of candidates, for not that many roles.

And then this proliferation of AI tools that are supposed to make everybody’s jobs easier, but we are still trying to figure that out. And in a sense, it’s, more chaotic than it needs to be. So I think to answer your, the essence of the question, it’s staying being standing strong in what you know, to be true and successful about hiring at your company.

And if, I think it’s simple is, better. Don’t over engineer it. And if you don’t have a good sense of what you need, I think pause, step back, recalibrate, realign with the folks who are helping to make this decision. It shouldn’t be made in a vacuum and then get that back out there. And if it, even if it means it feels like you’re taking a [00:29:00] step back because you have to pivot your talent profile a little bit to the left of where you’ve been, it’s going to be worth it back to the, Hiring the right person is going to give you that 40x productivity.

it’s worth every single ounce of time that you take up front to, to figure things out.

Chuck Brotman: So where do you think we talk about pivoting that talent profile and taking that phrase? You know, my, my sense here is I feel like what’s happened is as, as companies are trying to take stock of the depth and quality of talent, you know, on the market, right? They, you know, nobody wants to feel like in hindsight that they rushed a process or even like moved briskly through a process when in fact they could have been more selective.

Maybe they are in a healthcare vertical and could have actually found somebody that had Like more in depth experience in that category, but they, had the aperture, to open they should tighten more. I feel like a lot of what we’re seeing in terms of that chaos and complexity is,people understandably, they want to make sure that they’ve got regular, what they’re looking [00:30:00] for, you know, from what you share.

Like, I feel like in a way, like. One of my takeaways from the over indexing and role related knowledge is like, look, that’s not what this is about. Like tighten your process all you want, iterate on it. But like, if you’re like main takeaways from this market, either you should be looking for more industry experience, more SAS background, more stage experience. that’s a pitfall, right? That’s not taking you in the direction you need to go, but maybe that’s an oversimplification. Like, I guess, how would you think about, from the perspective of a hiring leader or, a company hiring today, how does one properly like take advantage of these market conditions where there are more people out there, but in a way that’s productive versus

chaotic?

Brenda Fridman: Hey, we’re in sales, right? So, I think about this as a pipeline. So if you’re on the hiring side, whether you’re a hiring manager leader or on the talent side, this is a perfect opportunity to build those relationships with candidates, even if you can’t hire them immediately. And this goes against the whole, like, TA teams are strapped.

How are they going to have time to be proactive? But I think you have to force it. Force, [00:31:00] some time as a, as somebody who’s in a position to hire today and tomorrow to be proactive, build pipeline, meet candidates who will be wonderful for you. Someday and find a way to create a process around that so you can keep a relationship going because everything in this world is cyclical and at some point, there’s going to be way too many jobs to fill in not enough people.

So you want to be well positioned to take advantage of every single stage of this cycle. I also think that 1 of the areas that we didn’t talk about, but it’s so important is hiring is a team sport. It’s not something that we do in. In a vacuum or in isolation. And one of my big learnings, after probably doing this for like a while was every time we have a lot of people to hire, it is pulling teeth to get folks to sign up for interviews.

And I had to reset an expectation and say, this is your job expectation. Like you 20 percent of your time on bringing in great talent. [00:32:00] And that is, so if you think of the expectation. Is there, then you will have a much more successful time in getting folks to be committed to the hiring process, and then you’ll get a better outcome.

and then finally, I think building a diverse team, you know, the job descriptions are a window into the company. It’s hard to always articulate what’s listed there. What’s the most important to the team today. And so something that I always look for and it’s difficult to be the person who knows, you know, what, to, how to demonstrate this.

Cause you don’t know what’s on the manager’s mind, but I know what my team can do today. And I know what’s missing and so through all of those items in the job description, there’s probably something in there that is more important, because I’m missing that and I need to build a diverse team in all ways and shapes of the term of diversity.

So you could ask, you know, in the process, hey, what do you, what needs to spike really [00:33:00] high? What are you most missing from your, team that, you know, where I can fill that gap? So sometimes I just open up the conversation looking at that.

Chuck Brotman: So my takeaways here, really not about like, if you’re thinking about this as in the market today, like how tightly do I focus on X, Y, and Z, it’s the wrong way to look at hiring. you should always be recruiting, always looking at your team, your strengths, your gaps, your deficiencies.

And if you’re thinking that way and committed to continuously improving and achieving excellence, you’re going to be, you’re going to be recruiting all the time, and you’re going to be always prepared to make better hires as well as being out there all the time.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah, I agree with everything you just said

Chuck Brotman: Let’s pivot maybe in closing to the topic of diversity and hiring. I, you know, I feel like, You know, again, three, four years ago, there was a lot of content in my LinkedIn feed about the importance of diversity of recruiting underrepresented minorities and achieving gender [00:34:00] diversity and other forms of diversity and, a lot of that is kind of dissipated to be honest, right?

I don’t see it in my feed. I don’t see a lot of people talking about the importance of diversity. Of diversity. you know, as a recruiting firm, you know, we are always committed 24 to helping our clients like mitigate unconscious bias and run processes that don’t inadvertently. You know, index towards, you know, more privileged groups.

We know that it’s impossible to achieve perfection. There was something that we’ve tried to take seriously as a firm, because we think it’s the only way to help our clients make the best possible hires. And I’m curious if you can talk about, I think you’re an organization that’s committed to driving more diversity in the profession of sales.

Like what talk about the organization, what it is and why you’re a member of it. And maybe if you want, Brenda, I’d love to hear your perspective on DEI today and, And the state of it in a context where, maybe we’re not hearing about as much of it as we were a few years back.

Brenda Fridman: Yes. Oh, gosh, I love this topic. [00:35:00] I think this is a journey and, I would say that, this has been something that’s been important to me now that I look back on my career, since the beginning of time, in college, when I was, you know, in chemical engineering on the softball team, I didn’t have any free time.

I still found a way to. become really active in the Society of Women Engineers and ended up being the president. And that was like the first step on this journey of me caring a lot about diversity, in any context. and so I mean, the angle that I’ll come at this with is what’s the problem we’re solving.

And I do think that’s an issue because if we, you and I go out there 10 conversations we have, we ask about diversity and what’s the problem we’re solving. If we’re going to get. Dozens of different answers. and that in itself is a challenge. And so to tie it back to, the sisters in sales, which is to an organization that actually was created by one of the women who used to work in [00:36:00] my sales organization at LinkedIn.

And it became so successful. It’s almost a 10 year old organization now that it’s become a prof it’s become a for profit, company. And so she’s left her day job as a sales professional and now runs sisters in sales. Full time and I’m on her inaugural board of directors because it’s become that large. and we have so much more work to do. So now we’re equipped to just have more impact and, this is helping women of color in sales have more impact. More successful careers by creating infrastructure and support, so that they can thrive and there’s a lot of layers to that. But when it comes to the problem that we’re solving, I think that’s where, you know, we, and I can probably have different answers to the same question.

I find that while, you know, in earlier in careers, we have a pretty diverse. Talent pool, right? And over the, in the numbers, and a sizable organization. Inevitably, as you get closer and closer to the top, you start to see more of the, you know, [00:37:00] women, people of color, sort of

drop out of The

Chuck Brotman: The glass ceilings were real, right?

Brenda Fridman: Yeah.

So that I guess is what we’re solving, but I think that’s more of the lagging indicator. When we start to see those numbers improve the leading indicator or the problem we’re solving is how do we bring more people in, diversity and then how do we. I think this is the hard part.

Develop with them so that they’re not tempted to drop out of the workforce. And I think what’s difficult is if I have a role open and I hire somebody in who comes from a competitor, they might hit the ground running and have success. If I bring somebody in who comes from a different industry, There might need six more months of ramp time, and that has to be okay.

But the company has to be set up to pride in infrastructure for both profiles to find success. And that’s where I think it breaks down a lot. And that’s what I spend my time thinking about quite a lot as a leader in sales.

Chuck Brotman: How do you think about, so I understand the, and I appreciate that framework. what is the problem we’re looking to solve? And I think you stated very [00:38:00] clearly sisters and sales and how the organization thinks about that. This isn’t, you might disagree. I mean, this isn’t necessarily a problem that, startups, scale ups and large companies, it seems to me are as interested in solving today.

As they were three or four years ago, right? But I feel like

our economic and political climate has changed a bit. I think there are a lot of perceptions out there that, you know, D. I. is, a little expendable. Again, not as important in an organization where companies have to achieve, top line, bottom line results and success.

what do you agree, I mean, if there’s been this shift, like how do you position this? Like why, I guess, why should a given startup that, is trying by all means to extend their runway in a context where this is a really hard market, aside from knowing it’s the right thing to do in a social or civic way, like why should they be invested in these kinds of outcomes?

How do you think about that?

Brenda Fridman: Yeah. there’s a lot of data out there that shows diverse teams perform better. And if we’re not bought into that’s a good place [00:39:00] to start. I also had something popped into mind, which is put someone in charge. I don’t care if you have five people, 50, 500 at a company as large as a LinkedIn or a Google, you can have dedicated resources in full time capacities, chief HR, diversity officer, et cetera.

In smaller companies, somebody can care about this and spend 5 percent of their time, 10 percent of the time thinking about it, which is absolutely okay. I think putting somebody in charge, accountability is one of the only ways to drive momentum. And we saw a lot of that accountability built into the system three, four years ago.

And as companies felt more pressure to downsize, I’ve seen a lot of those roles that were created are going away and they’re not being replaced with anything suitable substitute so that I don’t have the perfect answer apart from someone needs to continue to be in charge because it’s not. Who’s in my pipeline is been as a diverse pool of candidates. who’s doing the interviews? Am I showing up as a diverse company? am I [00:40:00] being thoughtful around the language in the job description, everything all the way through the entire, arc to the mentors that I’m choosing and all the way throughout the development curve later on, everything has to breathe that I care about diversity.

And I think that there are so few companies that do that very well. Yeah. and some, for some of us, it’s going to be feeling a little bit more deliberate at first until it becomes part of the DNA of

Chuck Brotman: Yep.maybe in closing off on this and, I’d love to kind of hear what, you’re up to now, but let me share kind of a theory and tell, me if you agree or disagree with you otherwise. But, most of our work as a recruiting firm is with, startups and scale ups, early stage companies is our bread and butter.

Unlike maybe the organizations that you work with, larger companies, these companies, frankly, they don’t have the size or budgets to bring on people who can, you know, formally ODI. Maybe the, VP of can take that as a core focus, but a lot of companies, they don’t even have that, right.

They might have like a fractional HR firm. companies running awfully lean as I’ve heard you kind of [00:41:00] going through, you know, your narrative, your successes and your learnings at Google in Latin. I’m not, I don’t want to come across like I’m complaining, conflating Latin recruiting with diversity goals in the U.

S. But I do feel like as you kind of walk through that going into new markets. And, recruiting, velocity talent that if one can at minimum learn the importance of having a process that’s focused in a simple and repeatable way on, you know, competencies and potential versus pedigree and role related knowledge, like that will generate teams that are better prepared to execute.

And probably that will be more. So learn, how to hire well and scale your hiring and it’ll probably tie back to the things that ultimately you’re talking about here. Is that oversimplified or would you

Brenda Fridman: No, it’s not. In fact, there’s a, I’ll even give you another framework, that you’ve come very close to arriving at, which is to be successful in a high velocity sales environment. I think you need three things. The first piece is [00:42:00] figuring out hiring.

The second piece is having an enablement function that teaches both sales acumen and product acumen, but always on, not just during onboarding.

And the third piece are incentives. So I think of those like bumper lanes, right? Like you don’t want to stunt innovation, but you do need to give them a clue in terms of what is the most effective and use data to determine what those things are. And so for me, if you have hiring figured out, you’ve got a decent enablement, process in place and you have, you’re constantly thinking through the incentive structure and making sure that you’re getting that repeatable desirable behavior, then you’re going to see 90 percent of the folks you bring in.

Be successful. And that’s great. And you’re going to pay a tax once in a while. if you’re, you know, hiring a lot of people quickly, despite having the best habits and intentions in place. And that’s okay. cause you learn from it and you act quickly, but I think that’s, what’s worked for me.

Chuck Brotman: And [00:43:00] you probably will have diverse team, more diverse teams as an outcome as well.

Brenda Fridman: No doubt. Great people, no great people. they still have to interview of course.

Yes.

Chuck Brotman: Well, I so appreciate your time and really enjoyed the conversation. Your narrative is, is amazing and I appreciate you taking the time to walk us through it. before we close out anything you want to share with our listeners and I think, You shared a couple of books that you’ve, that you’ve recommended.

I’ll see if I can extract that out and include in our posting on this, but anything else that you’re reading, anyone that you’re following that you want to, share before we close things out.

Brenda Fridman: Yeah. Well, as an NYU alum, I, follow, pivot Scott Galloway and everything that he writes, because I think he’s such a, both him and Kara Swisher are so insightful in terms of business landscape, global landscape, and, certainly get a lot of gems from what I learned from listening and reading Scott Galloway.

And, I also just, I think this is a humble brag moment, but I just became a Berkeley Skydeck mentor. [00:44:00] So I’ve been really, because I don’t have that startup experience, something that I find to be incredibly, motivating to myself is to help founders on their go to market journey. And really trying to, whether you’re, whatever vertical in you’re in, whatever problem you’re solving, whatever part of the world you’re in, stage of company, how do you get to the next stage of success in go to market?

So that’s been something that I’ve been working on, both as an advisor and trying to find some, angel opportunities that are in line with my, investment thesis. So it’s a work in progress, something new that’s getting me uncomfortable as I get into this space.

Chuck Brotman: That’s awesome. Well, thanks for sharing all this Brenna. Thanks for being on the podcast. Really enjoyed it.

Brenda Fridman: Of course, Chuck, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Chuck Brotman: Absolutely.​