301: The Best Way to Hire Top Talent - with Beth Nevins

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this week’s episode of Scale Your SaaS, we unravel the complexities of scaling your software business with host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach and Beth Nevins, the Founder and CEO of Developa.io. 

Beth brings a wealth of experience in the people and talent space, guiding software startups through the intricacies of hiring and team scaling. Explore key insights and advice Beth shared on attracting top talent, avoiding common hiring mistakes, and tips for early-stage software leaders. Read more to find out how to hire top talent for your software business.

PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE

Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach

Episode: Episode No. 301, “The Best Way to Hire Top Talent - Beth Nevins”

Guest: Beth Nevins, Founder & CEO of Developa.io

Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor

Sponsored by: Leadfeeder

TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Unpacking Your Journey
• Avoid Common Hiring Mistakes
• Apply These Pieces of Advice for Early-Stage Software Leaders

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• Strategies for Attracting Top Talent
• Challenges in Hiring Unfamiliar Roles

TOP QUOTES

Beth Nevins

[07:30] "Focusing on high performance and intentional people and talent strategy is now more important than ever. The time was great to really give that value to get more out of the existing teams that we currently have and really double down on what a play actually means to companies in this new conscious era of scaling and growing."

[18:20] "Hiring for attitudes is what makes us ultimately, right. So that's really key."

Matt Wolach

[08:11] "Do your homework on the role, understand what that is, and have a strategy to understand what's the best value for money you can get."

LEARN MORE

To learn more about Develop.io, visit: https://developa.io/about/ 

You can also find Beth Nevins on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethdevelopa/ 

For more about how Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com.

Head over to leadfeeder.com and sign up for a 14-day (no strings attached) free trial: https://www.leadfeeder.com/ 

Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:

• Sales Tips
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

Transcript

Matt Wolach: 0:07

Hello and welcome to Scale Your SaaS Thank you very much for being here. By the way, we are super excited to have you this is a show to help you scale your SaaS do exactly what it says. So if you want to drive more leads, if you want to make sure that you're closing those leads, if you want to scale your team, hire the best people to do that. These are the episodes for you. Make sure you're subscribed to the show, hit that subscribe button right now we're going to help you grow through putting you in front of amazing creators, innovators and leaders throughout the SaaS industry. And we've got one of those today that I'm super excited about. I'm here with Beth Nevins. Beth, how're you doing?

Beth Nevins: 0:41

I'm good. I'm good. This is the most enthusiastic intro I've ever seen. So I'm very excited about this conversation.

Matt Wolach: 0:47

Well, great. I teach my clients to be very passionate when they're talking with a prospect. So I hope that I embody that. So thank you very much for saying that. Beth. Let me make sure everybody knows who you are. Because you're awesome. So founder and CEO at Developa.io Beth, she's an accomplished leader in the people in talent space. Transitioning from a stellar career in agency recruitment to leading in house people and talent strategies in startups. Beth has gained a wealth of experience that equips her to understand startup needs swiftly and offer specific guidance and advice develop as a people and talent consultancy with deep expertise and experience operating in and supporting startups backed by Tiger global Sequoia, target global balderton and atomic coastal. She absolutely knows her stuff. And we're so glad to have her Beth, thanks for being here.

Beth Nevins: 1:34

Thank you for having me. And I hope that that is actually true on this chat. But yeah, great. Well, I bet as you know, I'm based in the UK and pretty relatively new as a consultancy in this space of people in talent, we support seed to Series C. tech startups, that is a demographic pretty early stage. And they do have different needs at different stages. And there's three sort of core services, we're quite full stack intentionally because we care about staying longer, with less clients. So sort of entry point typically is on the candidate front, across commercial engineering and product, and then supporting more on the strategy consulting on the systems design as they start scaling. And then of course, coaching, which is much more about the investment into high performance for the founder, but also the leadership team as well. And that's, that's us.

Matt Wolach: 2:28

I'm excited to dive into all of that. But I want to go back to where where did this idea come from? How did you say"this needs to happen?"

Beth Nevins: 2:37

Yeah, I mean, we're at a really interesting point, generally, and I'll get onto that. But my depth is as a recruitment agent. And when I started off out of university, the agency I started on only specialized in tech, but more interestingly, in the startup space, so I was working with co founders early stage from 22 years of age, and it's very, very early on. And on that side, you know, I learned a lot about the dimensions and what they needed, the pain points, and so forth. But eventually, I got headhunted and then moved on the other side, internally working and reporting directly into those founders there. And there's just a wealth of insights and just don't see, you know, as an agent, so I gained all of that experience. And then organically broadened my experience just out of talent, but much more. So operationally, then on People Operations, leadership, development, reward strategy, and so forth. And I kind of got to a point where I've worked in full stack deep tech AI, I'd worked in FinTech, very, very different modules loved both of them. And I was advising other startups for free during that time, as well. So I had quite a big network. And given that we are, you know, moving out of this grow, or cost, right into much more conscious scaling, you know, why now, focusing on high performance and intentional people in talent strategy is now more important than ever. So the time was great to really give that value to get more out of the existing teams that we currently have, and really double down on what a player actually means to companies in this new conscious era of scaling and growing rather. And for me, also, I was at a point in my life, where I built a lot of experience and made a lot of mistakes, and I now make many of those mistakes by sharing those stories. You know, that's the value you can bring as an advisor. And, you know, I had a lot of founders that I already was connected with. And the thing that came back to my purpose constantly was, I love helping founders when I'm a massive believer in entrepreneurship. It's all I'm going to do is all I'm ever going to do. I'll retire still probably doing startup stuff. And yeah, it was a great time for me it just felt right to go off and do this at a more portfolio level.

Matt Wolach: 4:57

That's so cool. I love that story. I want to understand Because you talked about that high performer to top talent. So what strategies are you finding right now most effective in attracting and retaining top talent in this really competitive market?

Beth Nevins: 5:11

I think, you know, there's all the obvious academic stuff which I can run through. But I think the big problem I find is understanding your definition of actually what an A player is. And you see so much content about this, which is great with different definitions. But for me, there's only one definition and I go back to Jeff Smart in his book, why the a guide, I can't remember the whole title of it, I'll remind you at the end. So there will be a guide to hiring or the WHO A Guide to hiring an API definition is, what is the best talent we can get with the money we've got to pay? It's as simple as that. And this is where you need advice on what are the best skills? And where can you find it at that price point, plus, then your values alignment to that market match. And that's never done very well. So it's been doubling down on that very, very simple formula intentionally now and bringing that together early stage in a founding team. So that can then you know, scale beyond that. And then more on the academic side, you know, that the framework is, you know, what is your candidate persona? If so, what does your ideal candidate look like? What's their motivation? Where is that audience and so forth. And then you can build your value prop. So one of the things he wants to double down on to appeal to the very talent we actually want. So that is a strategy in itself. And then there's more granular things that attract talent, like, you know, I'm hiring top tier engineers for a client right now. And honestly, the reason they're applying is they said, What an amazing job spec. You know, it's these little details actually matter in recruitment. And it's the detail oriented people that usually win. So that's really important. And then you've got branding. And the reason for that is when you're looking at cost per hire. Typically, what you're trying to think about over time is how do you move from where you usually start, which is high sourcing, and a more of a higher cost strategy, because you're trying to just get talent through agents or just a sourcing strategy versus then more of an inbound strategy, but you can turn it into high caliber, inbound, generation over time. So how does that play out is something also to double down on the attraction piece. And then a tactical move, which I think a lot of startups don't do enough of is leveraging your top performers. So let's say your top performers doing 200% output compared to the average, you know, what's the 300%, the 300% is actually using them in your attraction strategy. Whether that's referrals or personal branding, shouting out about new talent, and whatever you've got, you know, career site wise, and so forth, and leveraging them then as part of the interview process, because they're probably statistically better evaluating talent, or identifying similar traits to what makes them so great. In that process. And then the last thing on attraction, I'd say is, it depends on the founder and what the founder needs. This is an education piece is explaining to them, okay, you know, top top cat talent, I don't mean passive, I mean, proper, headhunting like, Absolutely, you've got no interest of moving right now, the amount of effort you need to sell, and appreciate that within a couple of conversations, they may not flip, the switch may not have you know, food yet, because they want to do their own homework. And it's a bit more intentional if you're not prepared to understand that is how that A player market can work so that you can literally go to a company and I want that word, and you actually can get it. And that's what it takes versus, okay, we just want everybody to fall in love with us, when the second they speak to us, then that means that your attraction strategy is going to be more palatable or more logically aligned to an applicant channel. So you know, there's all those conversations you have with founders, then on that big attraction piece that you go back and forth and find somewhere in the middle or try and test very quickly that can work. But that is generally the the main dimensions early stage that you start considering

Matt Wolach: 9:10

What I'm getting from this, and I hope all the audience is as well is the amount of stuff and thought and focus and strategy you just went through. Like I've run several companies, I've hired a lot of people, and I've never gone through that level. And just to hear an expert like yourself, talk about here's the right way to approach it just totally proves your value right away. Like, yeah, I met this guy on LinkedIn. He looks cool. All right, let's go and the way that you're focused on exactly how to I just love that. So I hope that everybody is listening to that. And one of the things you said also, Beth was, you know, hiring an engineer. A lot of times if you're not a tech person hiring those kinds of crazy, unfamiliar roles within the tech industry can be difficult. So how can business leaders overcome a challenge like that?

Beth Nevins: 9:58

Yeah. I mean, I mean this happens a lot, right, because the whole point of startups is you're usually making decisions and working environment that you've never seen before, particularly for first time founder, or, you know, you're a disrupter, or whatever. And it's the same, often with hiring. So if we're thinking about unfamiliar roles, it can be, I don't know, first of all in the department, so that's like a new creation thing that's going on, it can be a role that no one's ever hired before. So it's new for the company, it's a first role, whether it's a principal engineer, we don't have one yet, or whatever. So it's not more of the same roles that we've got. Or it can be like a super niche role, that not only is it new to us, but many other companies don't have this role either. And it's a very small talent pool Consequently. So they're kind of the angles that often crop up then in this unfamiliar sort of space. And for me, I go back to a few discussions then with the founders, and the hiring team is okay, so what is the reason we're hiring this role? So go back to the why, like, what is the pain points here, because sometimes, when you've got unfamiliar territory, the gap that we have can be filled in other ways. Actually, it might not even be a hire. So that's the first like qualification asset we go through. But the second core question to unfamiliarity is milestone fix. And what I mean by this is, what does this role actually need to do in the next 12 months that we can absolutely slap bang. So we know this role made sense? And the reason I say that, and it's less perhaps on on the tech side, but I'll give you an example. Founder comes to me and goes, I need a Chief of Staff. Okay, fine. The whole definition of this role, new role for them was on responsibilities, which is great. But we dug into those two questions I just told you, and I said, Okay, Chief of Staff, by definition, is to make the founder CEO more effective, that is basically objective or what that role is. And they either classically come from an EA background on one side, or the other side is more generalist consulting that contain the highest and most structured things and figure things out. Well, we double down on this find, actually, the very clear view on the milestone was actually go to market strategy, and business development. And sales was that gap. So even though we said okay, titles can stay as they are, we've now got a very different role description, consequently, and now a very, very, very specific targeted candidate mark, that we want to go after because there is a actual milestone and their pain point here that hasn't been thought through in the initial job spec, and that this happens all the time. You know, another one. I had a company in Germany last year, who came to the COO role they were so early stage, I said, you know, why do you need a COO? Because they're mostly executing through teams, as opposed to being a purist, individual contributor, and they were pretty early stage. So we, we kind of went through again, I've seen two questions. And then the answer was, okay, right. So the big problem is product market fit. I've been working with you for several weeks now, we haven't really moved much forward with the product, and the discovery or hypothesis. So we have a problem. Yes. So actually, we need to fill this product gap more more important than the CFO role that you're saying. But what we're also recognizing as you're worried about, you need some time off, because you've got other things going on in your life, which means we need to cover that gap too. But it's not really a COO, full time role. So this happens a lot. And then once you get through that fit, you're then looking at who should source this role, if none of you have done this before, and it's very unfamiliar or super, super, super niche. And again, the default is, well, great. We've got internal recruitment team, so we'll just, you know, push it there. And you know, that's fine. You know, they're really, really smart. And they do have some specialism in this space. But if they also your actual recruiting capability, don't have knowledge of the role in this space, and it's unfamiliar to them, you've got a two fold approach. And you can either then outsource it to people who are experts in that vertical. And that's what they're paid to do. And that that needs to be thought thought about, or the second one, at the very least, then bring in some advisory people who have maybe been in that role that the board can refer or somebody trusts can recommend to be part of that experience or evaluation that can help you build out that process and give some insight. And the third point now with unfamiliar roles and strategy, which I see doesn't happen that often is then the pattern recognition. So what happens with with some founders is they will use that three part and the actual experience of the candidates coming through against that role to be there pattern recognition of learning about the role, and what then does good and so forth look like now, that's okay, but it's a high risk strategy because of many reasons why you might not recognize great in the beginning, and then they're gone because you've learned so many comparisons down the line, that three or four or five weeks later you kind of know and get the penny of what this role really means and they've gone. The recruiter gets annoyed because they're having to wait and do a lot of this back and forth waiting for you to kind of upskill yourself on the position. And you may miss candidates in the market, what you've been looking at, you know, finding out then down the line, what you're really looking for. So I always say, Okay, try and focus a little bit earlier, always be recruiting, always learn about roles, you know, benchmark and assess check of what might make sense in terms of your direct reports, and follow Brian Chesky's rules. So Brian Chesky does lots of podcasts, obviously. And he talks about this a lot. In the early days, he spoke to 10s and 10s and 10s of people who've done this role that he was thinking about hiring for, to build up his own pattern recognition of what this all actually did before he went off hiring. And that's really, really, really important. So that's the kind of three prong approach of, you know, go back to your why in your milestones, have an idea of outsourcing or their actual sourcing approach to get that bit right and de risk, and build up your pattern recognition on different roles that are likely to report into you before you go off and test the market.

Matt Wolach: 15:58

I love it so much gold here, Beth. And one thing. I really I mean, it's such such important stuff. But one thing I really want to call out, actually mirrors what we teach within the sales process, you talked about a leader came to you and said, Hey, we really need this COO, right, we need this thing. A true guide, a true consultant. And in sales, we're trying to be very consultative. So everybody who's been following me for a while should be seeing those types of messages. You said, Wait, hold on, let's identify is this really what is needed right now? From the sales side, when somebody comes to us and say, Hey, we're struggling with this, we need to be good enough to understand is that really the thing? Or is there something else? Because our goal is not just to solve what they think they need, but to solve whatever they need, and you're doing a great job of making sure that those leaders understand what the real challenges and who they might need more? I think, I think that's fantastic.

Beth Nevins: 16:52

Yeah. No, I agree. And I think, you know, like, kind of goes back to your point, solve the problem. Like, it may not even be that you are the solution. But you know, if you solve the problem on that call, or through the framework, you've added value, and that's, that's all you can do as a good consultant. Right. So, yeah, agree.

Matt Wolach: 17:08

And you actually usually get referrals from those people, even if you send them Yeah, I think, I think you need this or that. Instead, I usually tell people, hey, send to go to this person, you're gonna love them. And I think it's great, because you just built so much trust you just showed I'm not trying to sell you, I want to help you. And so because of that trust, they're going to make sure other people get to you. Tell me, I know that this is, you know, important to make sure we're always doing the right thing. But what mistakes are software leaders making right now around their hiring process?

Beth Nevins: 17:41

There's a lot, so obviously, they do. Right. So I always caveat when I talk about mistakes, because, you know, I actually don't think we talk enough about some of the good things that they do are, but it's always well intended, right. But the common mistakes I do see is if I think about this a little bit. So first one, which is the most common is the technical assessments reduction. And what I mean by this is, if your technical assessment comes first before anything else, so pretty early on in the stage, which, you know, face value makes logical sense. If this candidate is amazing, technical hero, then they go into more culture related questions, or values or meet the team or whatever. And then there's some red flags and so forth. What you ended up finding in what we call the into worship, or the calibration, is in this really difficult conversation. And sometimes, you know, conflict or trying to win a competitive, where the line manager really wants to hire them, because they're just so good. And it's so hard to get these people, you know, it's really hard to get people to pass that test. Right. So that is, that's really difficult. So my recommendation, and I've made this mistake myself, even in process design. So this, again, is coming from not me being, you know, first time right time person is to put the more values and the attitude interview first. And then look at your technical assessment later on. Because you know, ultimately hiring for attitudes, as attitude is what makes us when ultimately, right? So that's, that's really key. And then I think the wider the hard challenge, when you're hiring for engineers, early stages is the wider dimensions and how do we look at everything that's important. And then the trade offs and how important coding and technical excellence fits into that because they're saying early stage, it's not just coding. It's like zero to one and appropriate systems design that fits into zero to one, its product chops, because you have to work very closely with product early on, or, you know, there may not be even a product manager, you've got a co founder product person leading. It's having to really be able to understand business value, which a lot of exit coders not always necessarily can communicate that part really well. And that's really important. So where do we fit in all of that assessment at the same time? so we don't just get completely our universe is just all around the coding, that we mess up some of these other dimensions that, you know, are almost equally if not sometimes more important than like a perfect code. Or if someone hasn't used the language straightaway, but they are a great engineer. And it's the reality is maybe a week, two weeks, and they pick that up, you know, we have to be careful as to how much that purism around the name bridge is important for the role that we have. So that's that's kind of the other big discussion that we usually go through. And then I would say, it doesn't apply just for software leaders, but it applies to everyone but is then the practical assessment is actually relevant. So there's no point having a really strong mathematical algorithmic sort of R&D type exercise, if actually, we're in like a pure play software engineering business. And that's what we actually need or just a problem to solve. And not any sort of relevant to the work sort of exercise or marketplace Relevant exercise is very different to maybe latency security. Other issues you might be thinking about in an exercise for FinTech or a high foreign trading platform, for example. So that's it is also important that I've sometimes gone in and see my it's, I've seen like bottle exercises, and all sorts of different things that just doesn't really match up to what we're trying to assess for here on the exercise. And then contentious point that is on diversity. So this is always a challenge of whether we do take homes or how we compress technical due diligence, blind exercises or not, because that's always a hot topic in the candidate market. And in my role is to represent the candidate, not just the hiring manager, and broker those together so that the placement can actually get done, right, we all want that common goal. And you hear the candidate feedback, often the minute you say like, you've got to do a five, six hour exercise, you know, they're like, nope, and parents often even more so. So you have to remember that aspect of it too. So you know, you have to make sure as I said, like, things fit your the value prop or the the way that you position yourselves fits the actual things that you want, you know, on on many dimensions. And then I suppose the last one is on time, it's less about a software leader finding this problem, because I think if you're an experienced hiring manager, you know, time to hire is absolutely critical. They feel the pain of competition, they've had dropouts they've had offers gone. So it's less on there. And if you've got non technical people supporting the interview part of a of a developer or software engineer, they don't recognize this market works very differently to a lot of other markets. This is probably one of the most competitive markets when you're looking at software engineers compared to non tech. So their time and their agility and thinking about that process. And their input is a very different way that they have to think when they worked with me on that if they're part of that process, then if they're hiring for, you know, to be honest, HR or you know, a different type of role. So, when there's more abundance against the supply and demand is slightly different. So yeah, that's, that's what I would say on all of that.

Matt Wolach: 23:09

I love it. It's such a great stuff. And I'm hoping that people are pausing going back taking notes, because it's really, really important when you want to hire and scale your team. But we're running out of time here. So quickly, what advice would you give to an early stage software leader who's like, Okay, I'm ready to start growing.

Beth Nevins: 23:28

Any social for leader I mean, that all the problems early stage, come back to hiring and talent and you know, talking super early stage, you've got more people, people problems as you scale and grow. So I won't get into that too much. But I think that goes back to summarize, like, do your homework on the role, understand what that A player is, and have a strategy to understand what's the best value for money you can get, and so forth. The second thing, which is more general, to software leaders, but I would say be smart on your budget. So it's better to have a smaller team paying a bit more for T shaped or hybrid people or people that consume the hands at multiple things have a high sense of action and urgency versus compressing your average salary data for a lot of B players, but you think you've got to hire people, anything happy days. So I always say less is more, but pay and price properly for less smaller team, but super super, you know, 10x like people. And then the third thing is understand your sector and dynamic. So I've done this many times of software businesses. So you know, I don't have sweeping generalize here. But just be very mindful. If you're new and you're in a FinTech, and it's super fast paced, versus maybe you're hiring a load of people from a different sector that's much slower, or they're not in a company that's disrupted a slower sector, just be very mindful of the environment, dimension of the roles that you're hiring, in terms of the nature of where your sector is and how that tends to operate. And it's a sweeping generalization. There are certainly outliers within that. But just be mindful of that if you're not assessing on that enviroment piece of where they're coming from, is, you know, often where I see things sometimes don't match in like a FinTech versus or somewhere else versus an r&d type company versus x, y, and Zed. So, you know, that's also important to consider. But they're like the three key like talent areas, I'm going to leave as my like parting advice.

Matt Wolach: 25:19

Very awesome, and such great stuff. So I really appreciate you doing that and sharing all that with us. I want to make sure people know where they can connect with you best. So what how best can people find you and developer?

Beth Nevins: 25:31

Well, my primary channel is LinkedIn. So B2B, so you can find Beth Nevins, Developa on LinkedIn. I post lots of snippets and you know anecdotes about my lesson learned Every couple of weeks or so. So yeah, please follow me there. That is the best way to contact me. And I pretty much live on LinkedIn these days. So start with one channel and then diversify after after I mastered that.

Matt Wolach: 25:57

Perfect, very good. That's where I live as well. But we'll put the show notes. So if you're watching or listening, you'll be able to see that in the notes. But Beth, this has been fantastic. Thanks for coming.

Beth Nevins: 26:07

Thank you so much. And if we talk again, I'd love to hear more on your opinions or some of those as well. But what would be your one bit of advice from your lesson? last parting question to you.

Matt Wolach: 26:16

my one bit of advice is go talk to Beth if you need to hire.

Beth Nevins: 26:21

That's amazing. Thank you so much for the plug. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah,

Matt Wolach: 26:26

absolutely. Thanks for being here and everybody out there. Thank you for watching. Thanks for listening. By the way, we are looking for reviews. So if you think this is helpful if you thought what Beth just share was amazing like I did, please go review the show. Go tell people that this is awesome so that other people can find it. You can help others. Thanks for being here. And we'll see you next time. Take care. See you soon. Bye bye.