CTO Learning — May 2022
Hello all! It has been a crazy summer/fall with travel and exciting news all over the board.
While this is a May entry, I am writing this in September, so you can see how behind I am.
Exciting news — HyperTrends just launched their first SaaS platform: TicketBlox and is currently building 3 others. It has been hard to keep up with our writing, but here we are. We promise that this will be helpful because we’re talking about HIRING.
These are from our notes in the CTO Learning from the month of May 2022. We have a lot to catch up with.
NOTE: If you’re a CTO, join 7CTOs (www.7ctos.com) and tell my friend Etienne DeBruin that I sent you. No, I don’t get any royalties/commissions. I just think that he has built an amazing organization to coach CTOs into well-established leaders. We are growing aggressively, and the ROI is outstanding. So why wait? Join now!
Alright, let’s get to it.
Hiring
We spoke a LOT about HIRING this month.
With COVID behind, many companies are trying to figure out the next play. Many companies, plush with money are ready to hire the best employees to take them to the next level.
However, hiring has NOT been easy. CTOs in our peer-group are finding it harder to hire faster.
It is difficult to attract and on-board A-talent.
As with everything, hiring should focus on root-cause analysis. Why does a company need to hire? Is it to fulfill a “narrative” i.e. “Hey, we’re hiring because we have cash!!” or is it to fulfill a “need”. As in, “We really need a data scientist to help us accelerate our product to drive up revenues by 10%”.
It is important to get clarity.
Excellent compensation is a great starter, but WHY would someone want to work at your company? Having that clarity will help you select better candidates.
Hiring is as much a marketing problem as it is a recruitment problem.
Before we start hiring, we should align on:
- the company culture
- it’s core values
- growth prospects for employees
- compensation and benefits
- roles and responsibilities
This will help us gain the clarity needed to recruit amazing candidates.
IMPORTANT: Don’t just rush to hire to fill a “narrative”. Hire to fill a need. Hire for your vision.
With the above clarity, we can work with the marketing teams to place more emphasis on in-bound as opposed to just outbound recruitment strategies.
You will spend less time and resources looking for the right fit and you will get genuinely interested candidates that align with your company’s culture and the narrative you have established.
Practical Tips
A practical tips once you hire the right candidates:
- Make an inventory of all the things you do and find room for delegation
- Create opportunities for employees to earn your trust, so that you can grant them the autonomy
- Spend time on things that are considered high-leverage
- Give yourself the permission to perform a different role to build different initiatives
- Get honest with yourself about your role and what you need to build
- Be at peace with yourself, you are growing, it is OK to not have too many responsibilities
- Mold people to grow into your vision
- Give room for deep thinking
- Create surveys to solicit feedback
That’s it, 4 hours goes by easy when you have so much to learn and talk about. Hopefully you learned something about hiring.
