You can be a bit slow in recruiting in the early days, a few great hires mask it
You can still be a bit slow in recruiting up to $2m-$3m ARR, great growth masks it
But after $4m-$5m, you just have to get great at recruiting
— Jason ✨2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 ✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 20, 2021
Love him or hate him, Nick Saban is the most successful college football coach of the current generation. Â Winner of 3 out of 4 straight national championships.
And how often is he recruiting? Â Every. Â Single. Â Day. Â In fact, every single day he and his team go into their Recruiting War Room, and analyze every single possible recruit coming up the next four years. Â And he seals the deals himself. Â All season long, off-season. Â 50/52 weeks a year, every day.
I’m going to suggest to you that, at least from Initial Traction until Initial Scale (say $1m ARR until $10m ARR) — this is the single most important improvement you can make to yourÂ
SaaS company: Â To recruit every single day. Â Or 20% of your time. Â The equivalent of one full day a week.
Later, when you are bigger, you can still do the same, but you’ll have more help surfacing the candidates, from your VPs and Directors and team members. Â But in this phase — you need to be Head Recruiter yourself. Â 20% of your time.
Because it’s this stretch from Initial Traction until Initial Scale when many SaaS CEO and founders fall down a bit in recruiting.
At first everyone is sort of great at recruiting — by definition. Â You have to assemble a great founding team, which can be a full-time job (which is fine, as you have nothing else to do at this point). Â Then, you need to add a few key engineers and folks to the team. Â Then a sales guy, a marketing lead … one at a time. Â You tackle them as individual, sequential challenges.
And then you hit Initial Traction, and the painful stretch from $1-$2m in ARR to Initial Scale ($10m ARR or so). Â And there’s so much to do in this phase, with not enough resources. Â And you’re probably doing so much yourself, because you don’t have any redundancy, any extra management, any fat, any room to breathe. Â And you don’t have to make any specific hire, on any day, anymore. Â You have a bit of an engine going.
And recruiting suffers. Â Because episodic recruiting doesn’t get it done anymore in this phase. Â It won’t kill you on any single day, but it won’t get you from 10 to 50 employees. Â And most importantly, it won’t get you the 2-3 more senior managers you need to get on your team in this phase to help you get to Scale. Â And without those hires, it’s going to be soooo much harder. Â And soooo much longer.
Not enough https://t.co/KT0JLRlIWB
— Olof MathĂ© (@olofster) September 28, 2020
I don’t know what the gaps are on your team. Â A missing VP Sales. Â A VP Marketing. Â A VP Engineering. Â A head of client success. Â But after Initial Scale:Â I’d spend an hour a day at least, period, on recruiting. Â That means:
- Meeting every possible great candidate — irrespective of if you need this hire today. Â Already have a VP Sales? Â Well, meet with a great one anyway. Â You can learn. Â Maybe this guy can get you another candidate. Â Or be your VP, Biz Dev. Â I don’t know. Â But meet him/her. Â Meet all the great ones.
- Working and paying recruiters — and being highly responsive to them. Â Don’t cheap out on recruiters anymore. Â You need the help — your individual network is tapped out already at this point. Â And remember recruiters work on contingency, generally. Â They’ll give up on you if they don’t think they’ll ever make any money off you. Â So be responsive — respond back to them on every candidate they send you within 24 hours.
- Network more, not less. Â I know from Initial Traction to Initial Scale you want to dial down the networking and dial up the execution side. Â But don’t cut back on events, on networking, whatever you do. Â You have to connect with as many quality people as possible.
Whatever it is, as CEO at least, spend 60-90 minutes a day or more recruiting. Â Every day. Â Some of these activities may seem low ROI vs. other pressing matters, post-Traction. Â Some may take years to connect to anything tangible. Â And I know it’s a grind. Â But if you don’t put in the time, you won’t get the help. Â You won’t find the unicorns. Â And you’ll suffer — hard — as you run out of oxygen and air to get to Scale.
A few more tips on how to get better at recruiting here:
(Note: an update of a SaaStr classic)