Hi, you're listening to The Get, the podcast about finding and keeping
Speaker:great marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:I'm Erica Seidel, your host.
Speaker:On The Get, I talk to a lot of awesome marketing leaders.
Speaker:But my guest today is actually not a CMO.
Speaker:Instead, he plays the role of a 'talent whisperer' for CEOs who are hiring CMOs.
Speaker:Bryan West is the head of talent at Resurgens Technology
Speaker:Partners, a private-equity firm investing in enterprise software
Speaker:companies in scaling mode.
Speaker:If you're a CMO looking to work in a private-equity-backed business,
Speaker:or a hiring leader in a PE-backed company, you could come across
Speaker:someone in a role like Bryan's.
Speaker:You'll learn about the role of the PE talent partner in recruiting CMOs.
Speaker:You'll hear about the soft skills framework Bryan uses to vet candidates.
Speaker:In particular, listen for his definition of agility, not just being adaptable,
Speaker:but being proactively adaptable.
Speaker:We unpack the difference between a candidate who can go into a new
Speaker:situation and figure it out versus a candidate who has a plan of attack.
Speaker:We discuss whether prior experience with scaling is or is not the best
Speaker:predictor of future scaling success.
Speaker:And we talk about failure.
Speaker:We all know it's important to have a failure story, but what
Speaker:if you have more than one?
Speaker:Is there a sweet spot of failure?
Speaker:Bryan has had quite a career.
Speaker:He was a fly fishing guide, he spent several years in the U.S.
Speaker:Marine Corps, and later McKinsey.
Speaker:Then, he was with the leadership advisory firm ghSMART before joining Resurgens.
Speaker:He also has a great radio voice.
Speaker:Let's get started.
Speaker:So welcome, Bryan, to the show.
Speaker:Thanks for being here.
Speaker:That's a really high bar.
Speaker:I thought about making a joke voice there just to crush your hopes
Speaker:and dreams on the radio voice.
Speaker:I've been looking forward to this.
Speaker:I look forward to every conversation I have with you, Erica.
Speaker:So looking forward to diving in here.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Super, can you talk first about the role of the talent partner in PE and how
Speaker:you interact with CEOs and candidates?
Speaker:Because what I'm seeing is more and more PE companies are cropping up and investing
Speaker:in software companies, and then as those software companies look to bring on a
Speaker:new marketing leader, you have that CMO candidate who's not just interviewing
Speaker:with the head of sales and the CEO and the team that they'll manage, but they're
Speaker:interviewing with somebody like you.
Speaker:And then other people that work with you more on the investment side as well.
Speaker:But can you talk about that and the value you provide at the
Speaker:end of the day to that process?
Speaker:I'll do my best on the latter, but I'll talk a lot about things I do,
Speaker:and maybe then we'll figure out if there's an ROI to it on the back end.
Speaker:So first actually I'll - not to provide too deep of a history lesson, but the
Speaker:talent partner role with any investor group, to include venture firms or things
Speaker:of the like, it's a relatively new thing.
Speaker:The history of investor groups and private equity firms is, originally
Speaker:it was, let's flash back twenty, twenty-five years ago, and the history
Speaker:of private equity predates that.
Speaker:But the operating models started evolving about twenty, twenty-five years ago, where
Speaker:originally it was, hey, let's go buy a business - I'm going to oversimplify - do
Speaker:a lot of financial engineering and then hold it for a few years, and sell it for
Speaker:a 'profit.' Then return that money back to the investors that had given them money.
Speaker:The next horizon was is there something we can do to help these
Speaker:companies we invest in along the way to increase, or juice our returns, so
Speaker:to speak, improve their performance along the way so that then bore out
Speaker:portfolio operations, support teams.
Speaker:And frankly, there's a whole lot of different versions of
Speaker:that out there still today.
Speaker:And then the final or currently the next frontier that's really been
Speaker:tapped into pretty materially over the last three to five years is
Speaker:having someone dedicated or some group dedicated to maximizing the 'value
Speaker:creation' through the talent lens, i.e.
Speaker:have somebody that's actually thinking about talent and ROI all the time
Speaker:as owned by the investor group.
Speaker:Now, these roles, though - it's funny, I'm really well-connected
Speaker:with people in similar roles, boy, they all take form in different ways.
Speaker:There's former recruiters who step in where the primary function that
Speaker:role plays is to help turn on the talent acquisition machine, if you
Speaker:will, across the respective portfolio.
Speaker:There's forerunner CHROs that take the role and just basically make the function
Speaker:become a shared service for anything and everything when it comes to HR.
Speaker:And then there's folks like me who are former talent advisors and CEO
Speaker:coaches and/or leadership coaches.
Speaker:So that archetype of which there's a number of us out in market, and the
Speaker:good news is we get to share our misery in good cocktail hours here and there.
Speaker:Our role, really, is to help translate with a CEO and, of course, our
Speaker:colleagues, which is in effect the board for an investment, our role is to
Speaker:help translate whatever that strategy is for a business into a clear set
Speaker:of priorities for the business to go execute and help that inform what the
Speaker:org structure and key roles should be.
Speaker:Like, what are the capabilities that we need to deliver on
Speaker:our growth plans confidently?
Speaker:And by the way, fortunately, I work at a private equity group that all
Speaker:we do is buy small companies and try to grow them and make it bigger.
Speaker:I don't play the other game.
Speaker:With that lens, though, it becomes a non-stop - of course, it's early
Speaker:on it's pretty heavy, but it becomes a nonstop problem-solving game and
Speaker:strategic game of, hey, what are the capabilities you need for tomorrow?
Speaker:What are the capabilities you need for several years from now?
Speaker:And what are we willing to invest in?
Speaker:What do we need to invest in now?
Speaker:That conversation with the board or with the CEOs directly becomes a
Speaker:pretty dynamic one because you could keep it very academic and talk about
Speaker:capabilities and whatnot, but at the end of the day, these are human beings
Speaker:and we're all a little imperfect in how you engage one another and how you
Speaker:actually help elevate the performance of an individual early and ongoing in their
Speaker:time, in that seat, and in their career.
Speaker:It's a pretty dynamic, ongoing conversation.
Speaker:I play, I'm the grease in that conversation often between the CEO and
Speaker:the board and the CEO and their team because I just want to make sure that
Speaker:anything and everything we can do to elevate the performance of people in
Speaker:the seats to whatever degree their capability ceiling is, we're getting
Speaker:the most out of them that we possibly can both for our benefit, candidly,
Speaker:yes, we are selfish, big, bad private equity people, but also for theirs.
Speaker:Look, growth is fun.
Speaker:Good performing is fun.
Speaker:Let's all go have a little bit of fun while we do really hard things.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In my experience recruiting, there is often a CEO and maybe that CEO has
Speaker:not hired a ton of marketing leaders before, or maybe ever, depending
Speaker:on if maybe they're the founder.
Speaker:It can be very helpful to have somebody who has this muscle developed every
Speaker:day, like you, who can say, okay, here's how you prioritize this.
Speaker:Here's how to pay attention to the signal and not the noise and
Speaker:not get emotionally wrapped up in it because that can happen a lot.
Speaker:It can happen a lot.
Speaker:And to your point, founders in particular, understandably so, by
Speaker:the way, my goodness, the empathy you develop for founders at a
Speaker:firm like ours is pretty real.
Speaker:Number one, we are often convincing them to sell us a
Speaker:majority stake of their business.
Speaker:It is often their baby, their third, if they've got two
Speaker:kids, this is their third kid.
Speaker:And sometimes the company is actually at the top of the list.
Speaker:So that attachment they have to what they know and what they know to be
Speaker:true based on their own personal experience is often really high.
Speaker:When it comes to marketing leaders, though, and the marketing
Speaker:capability overall, you're dead on.
Speaker:Pretty material challenges to navigate and helping either a founder or a CEO.
Speaker:The difference, obviously, often those are the same human beings and often
Speaker:though founders do transition out of the CEO seat on this next wave of
Speaker:growth that our businesses go through.
Speaker:But one is just simply understanding what role marketing can play and
Speaker:should play in value creation.
Speaker:Fortunately, this is evolving and has evolved in software businesses because
Speaker:the pattern recognition of seeing how value is created in software businesses
Speaker:over time has become pretty clear in that, hey, marketing is going to help you
Speaker:actually drive demand and drive revenue.
Speaker:Again, at a high level.
Speaker:The problem is a lot of CEOs don't fully understand tactically
Speaker:how that comes to bear.
Speaker:So they don't have the confidence to manage or lead it that well.
Speaker:So they just put it over to the side, go lean in on the things they do know.
Speaker:But even for CEOs that have worked alongside a great marketing leader,
Speaker:it's not often that function that has needed strongly to express more than
Speaker:one axis of marketing, if you will, and you're probably going to have better
Speaker:terminology on this than I would.
Speaker:You've also seen this in some of our partnerships already just to work with
Speaker:each other, the scorecard, so to speak, for marketing leader A and company
Speaker:number one that we partnered on, pretty doggone different than the scorecard.
Speaker:Even though these are two software businesses, what skill set needed to
Speaker:get expressed and leveraged the most was quite different across both of those.
Speaker:And CEOs often don't have, and this is true of the leaders alongside
Speaker:the marketing leaders as well, the peer level, they'd only seen one
Speaker:skill set expressed materially.
Speaker:They've never seen more than one.
Speaker:So that becomes a challenge because the CEOs often don't know how actually
Speaker:to think about it and manage it unless it's something they've seen before.
Speaker:The most a non-commercial background CEO can really coach a marketing leader on is
Speaker:the interpersonal leadership skills and how better to present a business case.
Speaker:Those are absolutely essential and critical skills, but if the marketing
Speaker:leader's broader toolkit is not refined and some of it needs to get tapped into
Speaker:or elevated further, the CEO needs to figure out a way to solve that, help that.
Speaker:That's some of the role where I come in, not to coach them on the skill
Speaker:set, but to help solve for how do we find a way to elevate that skill
Speaker:and/or develop that skill further?
Speaker:So it can become an interesting dynamic, again, if the CEO just has
Speaker:simply little exposure to it in the first place, or at least a full breadth
Speaker:of what marketing can do for you.
Speaker:I often feel in a search, what the CEO is really looking for, beyond the scorecard
Speaker:that you're inevitably going to have, is just the marketing leader that they
Speaker:can feel comfortable admitting that they don't know it all and the marketing
Speaker:leader that they want to learn from.
Speaker:And that's it.
Speaker:So the CMO that gets the job is the one that is the best at being that
Speaker:Sherpa or that coach for the CEO.
Speaker:I'm curious, you're seeing people grapple with questions behind the
Speaker:scenes when they're hiring the marketing leaders and other roles, of course.
Speaker:Is there a particular question or questions that come up, those behind
Speaker:the scenes questions when there's a tough hiring situation going on?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good lens to reflect on because yes, there are some common themes.
Speaker:It's funny, some of them are just bespoke to personalities.
Speaker:That's shame on us, in a way, cause I always say, hey, at the end of the
Speaker:day, we can find a way to make it work.
Speaker:Let's just latch onto what are the capabilities we need and can we get
Speaker:aligned with this individual and build an effective working relationship with them?
Speaker:I don't need everybody to be exactly the same type of human being.
Speaker:The main questions I see folks wrestle with - and maybe a touch more
Speaker:context on the types of businesses that we invest will be helpful here.
Speaker:We're investing in $10 million businesses and trying to get them to fifty at
Speaker:a high level, both through organic growth and inorganic growth, i.e.
Speaker:M&A.
Speaker:The best set of data, in crude terms, that we at the investor side, and, of
Speaker:course, we typically are working alongside a founder and/or a CEO to help make
Speaker:these decisions on who to hire, as well.
Speaker:But the best set of data that you can get to help drive conviction is past
Speaker:performance data that is exactly, extremely analogous or a dead-on match
Speaker:to what this needs to happen in this next chapter of growth in the business today.
Speaker:Of course, it is exceedingly rare, not impossible, but it is
Speaker:exceedingly rare that you find that exact perfect set of data.
Speaker:So you have to find yourself making a few leaps of faith here or there.
Speaker:And that's totally normal in any hiring practice, but particularly,
Speaker:candidly in our end of the market.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because when you're going from ten to fifty, often your best leaders
Speaker:are, not always, again, those people who've gone from ten to fifty, if
Speaker:they're ambitious and driven, often they want to go do the bigger thing.
Speaker:And they go off to go do the next fifty to 100 march.
Speaker:So that ten to fifty is often a first-time leader every time, either stepping
Speaker:into the seat for the first time or stepping down from a bigger business
Speaker:as a number two role, coming down to a $10 million business and running it.
Speaker:The struggle with the decision is can this person balance the need of executing
Speaker:and being really hands-on and building for scale and being strategic enough and
Speaker:disciplined enough to build for scale as they add onto their team over time?
Speaker:Finding that data, if it's not obviously right there, or finding analogous data
Speaker:in crude terms throughout the interview process can be a struggle because it's
Speaker:not, it becomes an imperfect science.
Speaker:Hiring's a subjective exercise.
Speaker:You've just got to apply a lot of lenses to it to make it as objective as possible.
Speaker:Yeah, it seems a lot of my searches, that's what companies want.
Speaker:It's somebody who has done that climb before, that ten to fifty,
Speaker:or fifty to 200, or whatever it is.
Speaker:So you're right, there's that interest in the been-there-done-that.
Speaker:That prior scaling experience, is that really the best indication
Speaker:of future successful clients?
Speaker:Because it seems there's so many things that can come into play.
Speaker:You were successful because the market was growing or because the culture was
Speaker:a great fit or you had a great boss or a great team under you, or whatever.
Speaker:And I can see how that increases hiring confidence to have somebody who
Speaker:has been successful, in any context, growing and scaling a business.
Speaker:But is it really?
Speaker:Well, at the end of the day, this is actually true of any hiring exercise but
Speaker:particularly investors, we're making bets.
Speaker:And then we do everything we can to maximize the creation
Speaker:of value, but also critically mitigate the risks on the downside.
Speaker:And risk is everywhere now to be sure.
Speaker:So, too, is opportunity.
Speaker:As much as I love finding the best in people and candidates that I connect
Speaker:with and find reasons to say yes to someone, the statistical best predictor
Speaker:of future performance and behavior is still past performance and behavior.
Speaker:It's not perfect, but it's still the best - doesn't mean the
Speaker:only, but it's still the best.
Speaker:It's just the one that folks can latch on to the easiest.
Speaker:So the best case scenario is finding someone that's been there, done that.
Speaker:But as I shared earlier, you can't always assume you're
Speaker:going to be able to find that.
Speaker:It's not just for the psychological comfort of it, by the way.
Speaker:It is also a knowing that the individual would show up and be effective by tapping,
Speaker:not just their intellect and base of skills, but the pattern recognition.
Speaker:That equals speed.
Speaker:And guess what, we're also in a game of moving pretty quick and there
Speaker:is something very real to that.
Speaker:Because scaling is hard.
Speaker:At our end of the market,, some of this is a little bit bespoke
Speaker:to us in our operating model, but going from ten to twenty to thirty,
Speaker:it requires some athleticism.
Speaker:It requires some dynamism in the role.
Speaker:These leaders will have quite lean teams early on, so they'll need
Speaker:to be doing some of that doing themselves in the early stages.
Speaker:That can lend to some execution risks, no surprise.
Speaker:If they've seen the movie before, it makes them all the more effective
Speaker:in how they allocate their time and advocate for further resources.
Speaker:Those are lenses that bosses, CEOs, and boards just love.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because we're all about advocating and making further bets and
Speaker:making further investments.
Speaker:It sure is helpful when somebody can articulate exactly what they've
Speaker:seen before, what they can do, and what the payoff would be.
Speaker:That helps everybody see the movie and bring folks along in that vision.
Speaker:And frankly, marketing leaders, can be really good at that, at least
Speaker:the good ones are because they can help paint that picture of how
Speaker:exactly this is going to play out.
Speaker:You have, I remember, a framework for hiring for potential.
Speaker:We were doing this search and you were evaluating candidates and you
Speaker:ran through all these lovely, soft skills that you were looking at.
Speaker:Can you review that?
Speaker:Potential, to be sure, is one thing that we're looking for.
Speaker:We do, of course, look for hard evidence of things they've done before
Speaker:that are analogous to what we're asking them to do in the future.
Speaker:Park that to the side, 'cause you've already heard me say we're going to have
Speaker:to take leaps of faith here and there.
Speaker:So the best way for us to fill in those leaps of faith are on what are the
Speaker:markers for potential this person has?
Speaker:I break potential down into four categories.
Speaker:And this is not, nothing in my brain is fully organic to me, or originated by me.
Speaker:I'm informed by my own background and experience set.
Speaker:Some of this I pull from my ghSMART days, my days as an advisor.
Speaker:There's four categories.
Speaker:First and foremost, cognitive quotient or just smart.
Speaker:I recognize that's an overly simplistic thing, but it's not
Speaker:just, is this person booksmart?
Speaker:Is this person really savvy or quick in a room?
Speaker:It's things like, are they proactive in identifying opportunities and
Speaker:risks that the regular person, a regular candidate just wouldn't?
Speaker:Are they thinking of things their boss should be thinking about
Speaker:one and two years down the line?
Speaker:Are they thinking about the organizational impact of one of their initiatives
Speaker:before they even bring it to the table?
Speaker:That's one.
Speaker:Two is drive.
Speaker:Drive doesn't need all that much explanation.
Speaker:And drive is not just somebody who has sharp elbows and is willing
Speaker:to advocate for themselves just for their own career advancement.
Speaker:It's drive so they can pull people along with them, and drive so they can
Speaker:actually advocate for a course forward.
Speaker:And you can absolutely look for these in the interview process, in crude
Speaker:terms the "data collection" process.
Speaker:Third, is relationship quotient.
Speaker:Think of that as a more robust version of EQ and that is, can you relate to others?
Speaker:Can you understand others' motivations?
Speaker:Can you navigate team and organizational dynamics to
Speaker:advance, ultimately, your agenda?
Speaker:Can you compromise your agenda and still achieve the organizational goals,
Speaker:and understand what those trade-offs are and help others achieve theirs?
Speaker:That's that part.
Speaker:Those are things you can really test for.
Speaker:Then, that fourth category is agility.
Speaker:And agility certainly has grown in popularity in recent years and,
Speaker:as a result, it's been defined probably ten different ways
Speaker:over the last five or ten years.
Speaker:I've simplified it as being much more proactively adaptable.
Speaker:Often you hear folks say, 'That person is really adaptable,' or, 'That
Speaker:candidate is really adaptable.' ' Hey, over time, they're going to settle
Speaker:in and adapt to the situation and eventually become successful.'
Speaker:Agility is proactively identifying how do I need to evolve my formula
Speaker:for success to be successful in this environment, in this context?
Speaker:So that when they come in, they're not just figuring it out.
Speaker:They've already started to think what are the things that I need to tweak in
Speaker:my own approach before you even step into that situation to be successful?
Speaker:The markers you look for in their interview process is whatever that person,
Speaker:across their varied types of roles in their career, have they been successful in
Speaker:different types of environments over time?
Speaker:If the answer is yes, odds are, they're pretty doggone agile.
Speaker:Odds are they didn't just figure it out over time.
Speaker:They are actually figuring out they need to be proactively
Speaker:adaptable right out of the gate.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:I love this idea of not just adaptable, but proactively adaptable,
Speaker:not just, I'll figure it out, but I'll have a plan of attack.
Speaker:I've seen some people come in and they're like, oh, I have
Speaker:a playbook for all of this.
Speaker:And I think that can go overboard too far in the oh, I'm going to just smoosh
Speaker:this same playbook on this company.
Speaker:So I think what a candidate needs to do is have the playbook, but
Speaker:see where it needs to be adapted.
Speaker:I had this other guests on the show.
Speaker:It was very interesting, we talked about being like a Sherpa where, okay, you've
Speaker:climbed a mountain before, but never with the same clients and never following
Speaker:the exact path up the mountain and never in the same exact weather conditions.
Speaker:So you have enough pattern recognition to put it all together.
Speaker:I love that.
Speaker:That's absolutely dead on.
Speaker:And it applies to both the functional toolkit, playbook, if you will,
Speaker:and truly how to engage others and influence and be effective in a
Speaker:certain working group of human beings.
Speaker:The best candidates that I've ever, that we interact with, and the ones that,
Speaker:really, a magnetism starts are the ones asking us all kinds of questions around
Speaker:what's the playbook, not just what's in place today from a functional lens
Speaker:and a capability lens in the business, but how do things get done today?
Speaker:Because we need that individual to come in and not just install a marketing playbook.
Speaker:We need that person to come in, of course, tailor the playbook to what it needs to
Speaker:get done in the future, but they also have to be effective within the working
Speaker:norms of that business and help evolve them in a constructive way pretty quickly.
Speaker:And to do that, that means you have to be proactively thinking about this right out
Speaker:of the gate before you step into the role, not just 'I'll go in and figure it out.'
Speaker:Let me pick up on that because I'm wondering what are the most impressive
Speaker:things you've seen candidates do?
Speaker:You've just mentioned one thing, but can you talk more about the candidates
Speaker:that have really stuck out in your mind?
Speaker:Because if you're like me, you interview thousands of people, and then there's
Speaker:a few that, just, you remember.
Speaker:There's a few that you remember.
Speaker:And it's funny, I have a problem that I kinda like everybody I
Speaker:deeply interview 'cause I just appreciate everybody's story.
Speaker:But I always have to come back and think.
Speaker:People ask me five minutes after an interview, 'What do you think?'
Speaker:'What's your recommendation?'
Speaker:I always punt and say I need at least several hours or even a day because
Speaker:I need to step back and think about that person's capability set, that
Speaker:person's way of getting things done.
Speaker:And I get back to these potential markers I was talking about and
Speaker:thinking about the scorecard.
Speaker:Hey, at the end of the day, what needs to get done here?
Speaker:What's that individual's odds for success?
Speaker:So I say that because, this sounds corny as all get out, but I really
Speaker:do think everybody I deeply spend time with is pretty doggone awesome.
Speaker:Especially if somebody like you has teed them up.
Speaker:But the candidates that really stick out are those that, when I ask them a
Speaker:question like the softball, surface-level questions of, hey, what accomplishments
Speaker:are you most proud of in your career?
Speaker:My disposition is to be pretty intensely curious after they list out
Speaker:accomplishment number one, and ask how?
Speaker:Tell me more.
Speaker:What would that other person in the story's version of the story be if
Speaker:I were to talk to them tomorrow?
Speaker:Those who take the time to reflect before they start answering the question and
Speaker:actually provide a compelling response, and also sometimes acknowledge they
Speaker:don't know, those tend to stick out.
Speaker:Those who just repeat what their talking points are that they've had scripted from
Speaker:prior interviews, those don't stick out.
Speaker:I always stress test myself to death on if you know, you know.
Speaker:But those candidates where I do have that feeling, I go back and look, and
Speaker:it's when I drill down with them, they are very self-aware in understanding
Speaker:what it is they did to affect the outcome of whatever their story was.
Speaker:Those are your winners because that way, that gives me
Speaker:confidence in that agility piece.
Speaker:They understand what their formula for success is.
Speaker:A lot of leaders, a lot of successful leaders, are just effective and they
Speaker:don't read really fully appreciate what they're doing entirely and
Speaker:what's leading them to be effective.
Speaker:There's that small, select few that just really are incredibly self-aware
Speaker:in understanding how they're applying themselves, their skill sets, and even
Speaker:their personality to be effective in different scenarios and how to adjust it.
Speaker:I have to ask you, since I ask everybody this, do you have favorite
Speaker:interview questions that you ask?
Speaker:Or is it just about the probing?
Speaker:Cause I always collect interview questions.
Speaker:I always give my clients these big, long lists of questions that they could ask.
Speaker:Then I think, it's really about, you were saying the second level question,
Speaker:the double-clicking that you do.
Speaker:But all of that said, do you have a favorite interview question
Speaker:that you think is most revealing?
Speaker:I've got two.
Speaker:I do think the second, more thorough questions have a ton of value.
Speaker:But two opening questions, if you will, not to a conversation necessarily,
Speaker:but really do lend themselves to excellent follow-ups and insights.
Speaker:I'm not going to claim original authorship on either one of these.
Speaker:We live in a world of plagiarism left and right, and I love stealing ideas from you.
Speaker:But one is who do you want to be five years from now?
Speaker:Full stop.
Speaker:Ohh, really, Bryan?
Speaker:That's such a...ugh, god.
Speaker:But I want to know where they take it!
Speaker:Because sometimes people take it professional, people take it
Speaker:personal, people take it skill set, people take it growth, people
Speaker:take it I want to be resting.
Speaker:It's really telling from an overall hunger perspective and fit perspective,
Speaker:and then it just lends itself to probably ten follow-up questions from me.
Speaker:Again, it's an opening question.
Speaker:It's not that great of a probing question on its own.
Speaker:It's a corny question, but it allows for amazing follow-ups.
Speaker:The second one, and this applies a little bit less to broader hunger, this
Speaker:is more capability testing, both from a functional lens and a business-savvy lens.
Speaker:If you were on a deserted island and I offered you this job, what information
Speaker:would you ask for me to learn to basically help yourself ramp up and
Speaker:be effective as fast as possible?
Speaker:For a marketer, boy, you can learn all kinds of great stuff about simply
Speaker:business savvy because there's a whole range of things you get asked for, some
Speaker:of them pretty doggone telling versus others, as far as how much coaching will
Speaker:this individual need on the business side should they step into the role?
Speaker:And the answer can be they need coaching on the business side.
Speaker:That's fine.
Speaker:But it's good to calibrate, especially if you're the CEO.
Speaker:That's an interesting one.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:I have to say, I like that better than the first one.
Speaker:You're right, it's not so much the question you ask, but the kind
Speaker:of active listening that you're doing and the probing afterwards.
Speaker:I think that's also a piece of giving candidates a moment to take
Speaker:a beat and formulate an answer.
Speaker:Big time.
Speaker:I was actually just with a founder, a similar lens to this, and to
Speaker:better defend my first answer.
Speaker:I was with one of our founders yesterday, actually, talking about interviewing
Speaker:and talking about scorecards and why scorecard's important and we believe
Speaker:strongly in outcome-oriented scorecards.
Speaker:When I say outcome-oriented scorecards, we say, hey, in two years from now, this role
Speaker:or this function will have delivered what?
Speaker:And then just go ask questions about that.
Speaker:So the founder asked me, 'Hey, wouldn't it make sense to share the scorecard with
Speaker:the candidates early on in the process?' Of course, there's a case for that.
Speaker:I actually say no.
Speaker:Reason being is I don't want candidates acting too much in our conversation.
Speaker:I don't want them performing too much and filling in blanks
Speaker:that they know I'm looking for.
Speaker:I want their organic selves as much as possible.
Speaker:Then it's on me to be really intentional about the follow-up questions I'm
Speaker:asking to find data in, crude terms, that satisfies some of that analogous
Speaker:data that would give me confidence that they would deliver on outcomes one,
Speaker:two, three, and four on the scorecard.
Speaker:If I spend too much time being too specific with a candidate on
Speaker:certain types of questions that are very job-specific, all I'm doing is
Speaker:constantly leading the witness and I don't want to lead the witness.
Speaker:I want their natural energy and their natural skill set and their natural
Speaker:way of being to line up organically with what we need to get done, full
Speaker:stop, as opposed to them thinking they need to fit themselves into it.
Speaker:And if I ask too specific questions, it's just leading them into that.
Speaker:That's interesting because sometimes I wonder if that style
Speaker:means that the candidates that are fastest on their feet get the job.
Speaker:I know me, I like to think about things before I answer a question
Speaker:and then I'm not going to be so articulate right off the bat.
Speaker:So there is that piece as well.
Speaker:There is that piece.
Speaker:And that's also just my interview, by the way.
Speaker:We could get into the interview process, but my interview is, I'm thinking in
Speaker:that dimension we just talked about.
Speaker:There are absolutely focused interviews and as you well know with us there's
Speaker:case studies and those things.
Speaker:And my vote is not the only vote either, but I want to understand how this
Speaker:person gets stuff done, and, really, think about how best to set them up for
Speaker:success should they step into that role, and how much of a lift would that be?
Speaker:And that's where if it gets to be too big a lift, then it's time to start talking
Speaker:about, eh, maybe not the right candidate.
Speaker:I have one final question for you and that is we all say we love a failure story,
Speaker:but how would you feel if somebody had multiple failure stories and they had a
Speaker:lot of energy and they're really excited about what they potentially could do
Speaker:and they have reasonably good reasons for why things have not worked out, why
Speaker:they haven't been able to scale as fast as you would have liked in the past.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:How much failure is too much to be not palatable anymore?
Speaker:Is there some sweet spot of failure?
Speaker:That's a good question.
Speaker:I think that the opposite version of that or another end of the spectrum
Speaker:is somebody who has never failed or at least claims to have never failed.
Speaker:And to be sure there are individuals out there who have never failed.
Speaker:Those are actually, there's some risk with that because you gotta
Speaker:be able to take a punch and get back up off the mat, so to speak.
Speaker:Too much failure?
Speaker:Sure, especially from the investor side of the house, or at least
Speaker:amongst my colleagues, yeah, red flags, you gotta find the truth.
Speaker:If somebody failed multiple times, let's just say to your point, simplify
Speaker:it with that, it is not a showstopper at all, but I do want to dig in and
Speaker:understand that context very well.
Speaker:I do want to reference check that very well and I want to understand
Speaker:what they learned from it.
Speaker:What do they do differently today as a result of the
Speaker:mistakes they made in the past?
Speaker:Whether it be on a grand stage or a small stage.
Speaker:Ultimately, that goes back to that self-awareness piece.
Speaker:If the individual has, if the candidate is able to articulate very clearly,
Speaker:and sometimes it takes some reflection on the spot, not a pre-canned
Speaker:answer of I did this reflection last year, here's what I came out with.
Speaker:But if they're able to articulate what it is they took from that situation and
Speaker:how they applied it differently the next time because life is an iterative learning
Speaker:process as it is, that gives me confidence that they could step into, like this
Speaker:situation, assuming the scorecard, the decent fit, and probably be successful
Speaker:and apply those lessons learned.
Speaker:But, no surprise, as an investor, we're going to reference check it.
Speaker:In full, not through back channels.
Speaker:We prefer very much having the candidates connect us to the references
Speaker:directly 'cause we're straight up.
Speaker:Here's what we're going to talk to them about.
Speaker:This is awesome, Bryan, thank you so much for sharing all of this great insight.
Speaker:It's great to talk to somebody who geeks out about interviewing and talent
Speaker:and in even more detail than I do.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Speaker:Thank you, Erica.
Speaker:And it's debatable that I'm more detail oriented than you.
Speaker:I've appreciated the partnership and the relationship so far.
Speaker:I look forward to the next one.
Speaker:That was Bryan West from Resurgens Technology Partners, sharing what
Speaker:it's like behind the scenes when CEOs hire CMOs in PE-backed companies.
Speaker:Next time on The Get, I'll speak with Jay Gaines about how a CMO
Speaker:in a scale-up should take the reins for overall growth planning.
Speaker:You won't want to miss it.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host Erica Seidel.
Speaker:Hiring great marketing leaders is not easy.
Speaker:The Get is designed to inspire smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:This season's theme is Solving for the Scale Journey.
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Speaker:call the 'make money' marketing leaders rather than the 'make it
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