Background and Purpose

Firstly, this is a TEAM hire. Sounds like a paradox - yes, you’re hiring an INDIVIDUAL but ultimately you only win if the TEAM wins. This is not a lightbulb you plug into a socket and turn on. Either your TEAM has chemistry or it struggles, so ‘we’ need to commit to the process together. Getting it right is challenging but very achievable. Build, follow, and trust the process. It’s not that different from how you built your company or your product. When you read through this, it will seem like a lot. That’s understandable but given the investment and potential impact of this role, it will be well worth it in the end.

Success is measured with a lag effect. If you skip through a bunch of steps and make the hire, you will ‘feel’ successful but you won’t ‘know’ till 6 months later. And by then, it’s too late… A lot of this may seem like common sense and that’s because it takes a ‘first-principles’ approach.

Hope is not a strategy, and luck is not validation!

If you’re a marketer or founder or a talent/search professional, please feel free to clone, copy, edit, change this to make it better. This is just the starter kit. Please contribute back to the community. We can all collectively benefit from our shared experiences. If you want to download a deck, you can find it here.

Why you should care

A Note on Search Firms

There are many capable search firms out there who can be your partner on this journey. If you have the means to hire one, that’s fantastic. Congrats!

But you need to set them up for success:

• You need to actively partner with the firm or appoint someone who is empowered to be your delegate. It’s not enough to simply toss the objective over the wall and wish them good luck! There has to be an inside/outside collaborative hands-on approach.

• Do the pre-work! You’ll end up wasting time if you just show up and shoot from the hip in terms of what your company needs, why, how, etc. The ‘Define’ phase is impossible to side-step and doing a poor job here will come back to haunt you.

• It’s not good enough to just show up at weekly meetings and ask for candidates; build and follow a proper plan (just like you do when you’re building your company or product).

• It needs to be a two-way street. You should be opinionated based on what and who you want. Of course, no one knows your business better than you! But, you need to be equally humble and listen to your partners. They have a lot of functional experience and patterns in this area (which is why you hired them!).

• Disagree and commit. It’s okay to have divergent opinions between you and the firm but pick a path and jointly articulate why you’re picking it. It’s a hypothesis, not a perfect science; otherwise you’ll be in analysis paralysis and burn through interviews.

• Last but not least, you need to create a safe space where your search firm feels empowered and comfortable pushing back on you and challenging you. That will keep everyone honest in the process and maximize your return on investment.

By combining your knowledge and drive with their ability to execute - you can get amazing results!

Build and Trust a Disciplined Process

Step 1 - Define

Outcome / Deliverable: Clear description of your company vision, desired GTM motion, and ideal candidate profile

Tips

• Write your company vision in plain language, the current state of your GTM motion, the desired future state of your GTM motion and how you believe it will evolve.

• Based on that, what are the top 3 must-have strengths of your ideal marketing leader? What are the top 3 acceptable gaps in their profile?

• And what are the top 3 not-fit traits (e.g. communication, lack of technical background, etc.)

• You can’t have it all, so which archetype would you pick and complement their gaps with a team surrounding them? Set a deadline for yourself and publish an actual document.
  

Bonus

Write an Amazon style press release describing key accomplishments or imagine you were writing them a recommendation on LinkedIn. What would you say?

Step 2 - Calibrate

Outcome / Deliverable: Superset of real-world profiles (at least 5) ranked across a spectrum of candidates

Tips

• Use real-world profiles to create a 'representative' audience. This works both ways - it helps you crystallize what you really need and it also helps candidates either opt in or opt out. Help candidates opt out if they know this isn't the right opportunity so they neither waste time nor end up in a situation where they won't succeed.

• If you already have a sales or product leader on board, simulate how a 'representative' profile will fit as a 'team'. What will they add to the current mix, and what will they gain?

• Even if you’re early-stage, get someone from your team or an operating advisor to ‘spar’ these profiles with you so you’re asking the right questions.
  

Bonus

Speak with current operators or advisors to clarify and tighten your perspective. Ask them to challenge your opinions (not just validate) so you can stress-test them against real data.

Step 3 - Source

Outcome / Deliverable: Quantifiable pipeline of candidates with crisp view of pipeline stages and conversion

Tips

• Use real-world profiles to create a 'representative' audience. This works both ways - it helps you crystallize what you really need and it also helps candidates either opt in or opt out. Help candidates opt out if they know this isn't the right opportunity so they neither waste time nor end up in a situation where they won't succeed.

• If you already have a sales or product leader on board, simulate how a 'representative' profile will fit as a 'team'. What will they add to the current mix, and what will they gain?

• Even if you’re early-stage, get someone from your team or an operating advisor to ‘spar’ these profiles with you so you’re asking the right questions.
  

Bonus

Speak with current operators or advisors to clarify and tighten your perspective. Ask them to challenge your opinions (not just validate) so you can stress-test them against real data.

Step 4 - Select

Outcome / Deliverable: Clearly articulated and structured interviewing process to maximize consistency

Tips

• Run structured interviews with a standardized scoring system. You can use any system you want as long as it’s consistent (e.g. -2, -1, +1, +2).

• Pick your interview panel wisely, i.e. don’t just pick the most senior people or board members. Interview panels have a job to do, they need to have the relevant skills to screen and select.

• Assign specific topics to interviewers (Company-level thinking, Revenue/Business growth thinking, Product strategy perspectives, Customer-care perspective, Values and people orientation) and make them fill in notes for every candidate interviewed. Hiring is everyone’s job and strongly correlated to company performance.

• It’s worth repeating that you need to make a TEAM hire. Even though you're picking a single person, this person will be surrounded by others and vice versa, they need to fit into the company fabric. Think about whether this person will inter-operate and add to the chemistry and quality of your team.
  

Bonus

With your finalist, don’t just ask for a 30/60/90 plan. If you really want to be confident in your choice, set up a session where you build one together - with them taking the lead and bringing a simple framework to the table.

Step 5 - Onboard

Outcome / Deliverable: Vetted and socialized onboarding plan with regular check-ins to measure progress

Tips

• Wait, you're not done yet! First, get rolling on the ‘pre-30’ day plan. What needs to be in place or ready by the time your hire shows up? Why?

• Prime your C-Team; they need to play an active role in integrating their new colleague and co-investing in the overall success.

• Your new hire’s 30/60/90 plan is not just their plan - it needs to be aligned with their counterparts in Sales or Product. And you are the person who should help facilitate that.

• Establish a safety net - set up a buddy system to pair them with another person on your C-team and/or an advisor so that they’re not just floating on an island.
  

Bonus

Remember that ‘press release’ or ‘LinkedIn recommendation’ you wrote? Share that with your new hire and ask them to edit it or add to it based on what they want to achieve in the next 12 months!