Growth Hacking Your Career
Applying the lessons from the expert speakers at the Growth Hackers Conference 2014
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Growth Hacking Conference in London to gain some insight, tips and tricks on growth hacking in startups. This got me thinking into how you could apply the theory from the speakers, to growth hacking your way to employment and career progression in general. Here are some of my thoughts.
Product/market fit = skill-set/market fit
Sean Ellis, (previously of Dropbox & Eventbrite among others, now CEO/founder of Qualaroo & GrowthHackers.com) talked about “product / market fit” and how you need a large group of people to consider your product ‘must have’. In terms of your career, you need to find “skill set / market fit” — hone your skills to become something employers are looking for, not the other way around. Too many times we see people saying things like “I’m interested in finding a digital marketing role” and when it comes down to it they don’t actually know what half of the required ‘digital marketing’ skill-set actually is — they draw a blank at terms like SEO and PPC. In today’s climate, technologies are improving and changing every day. This makes it even more important that you learn what is in demand and stay current. Our co-founder Andy showed in one of his talks the most popular coding languages of 2014, and showed that traditional technologies (e.g. PHP, Java etc.) are in decline. This idea is further reinforced by what Morgan Brown (also at GrowthHackers.com) had to say at the end of the day, when he stated “Growth is never done”. You’re never done growing your career and learning to be better at what you do. Always be gaining skills, expertise and experience to turn yourself into Sean Ellis’ ‘must-have’.
With this in mind, Sean also talked about prioritising ideas for growth. He said you should always be capturing ideas to test — you can never have too many. You can also link this to capturing ideas to grow your career and specifically your personal development to find your skill set / market fit. There are countless resources and courses out there (Treehouse, Udemy, Skillshare) and knowing what to do first can be difficult. Sean described his method for prioritising, which can easily be applied to personal development and career growth — state the following three things and give them a score from 1–10.
- Idea’s impact
- Confidence of success
- Ease of execution
Then take the average of the three scores, turn them into a percentage and rank them from highest to lowest. This will give you a great to do list in order of priority.
Saul Klein (on the original teams of Skype & Lovefilm, now investor at Index Ventures) said that for investors, the most important factor (over growth) was the need for evidence of demand. As a candidate you should make sure you have evidence that the skill set you have and/or want to learn is in demand and therefore prove you have skill set / market fit.
The Hustle Stage
Zack Onisko (Chief Growth Officer at Creative Market) said that once you’ve found product / market fit comes what he calls the hustle stage. This involves doing things that don’t scale and finding channels that work for your specific market. We will be doing a blog post on hustling your way to a job soon so stay tuned for that, but for now just a few pointers. Get experience. Hustle an internship. Help someone out on a side project. Another of Morgan Brown’s points was that doing what everyone else is doing is the wrong strategy. With an average of 85 applicants per available position, you have to do something that makes you stand out. A great example of this was one of foursquare’s first employees, who actually did the job he would have been doing if they were to hire him, before he even applied. He wanted to apply for a business development role, so he went out and managed to make a number of sales even though he didn’t work for them yet, so that when it came to foursquare interviewing him he had a huge headstart over any other candidate as he had already proven himself.
Alex Depledge (Co-Founder of hassle.com) emphasised we must do more than talk to customers — you have to think like them. This is especially relevant during the hustle stage, and the same can be applied to thinking like potential employers. When hustling your way to a job, try to think like your potential employer and/or interviewer in order to understand what they’re looking for and how hiring decisions are made so you can strategise a way into the role. Also, your natural thinking should be in line with your employers vision and you should be able to clearly communicate why you would be a great fit for the team. We have talked more about this in our post on joining a tribe.
Another aspect of the hustle stage is networking. Nilan Peiris (VP Growth at Transferwise) spoke of the importance in driving recommendations for growth. Networking is incredibly important when it comes to recommendations, both in terms of a business or product and in terms of personal or professional recommendations. Simply put, you get more referrals & recommendations when you know more people. A direct connection and / or recommendation by someone within the company is often a very successful way of getting hired.
Branding
In relation to recommendations, Nilan argued that there are 2 sides to what drives them — the rational vs the emotional side. The same can be said for what drives employers to make the final decision on who to hire. You can have the best CV of all the candidates, but you have to think beyond that. You still need to be able to tell your story — show your personal brand.
Sophia Quintero (Head of Growth at Geckoboard and teacher at General Assembly) talked about ugly ducklings of growth, and one of them was branding. The main reason for this was that generally, branding efforts can’t be measured. However, this doesn’t retract from its importance. As Sophia put it “embrace the fluffiness”. Your personal brand has become more and more important as technology improves. If you showcase your personal brand by being 100% digital, it can make you relevant, and if potential employers see this, it can make you really stand out.
On the subject of being relevant, this was one of Rand Fishkin’s (Founder of Moz) criteria for great content. He states content must be unique, relevant, helpful, uniquely valuable and provide a great user experience. These can also act as criteria for your own content, both in terms of your personal branding efforts and your spoken content during interviews.
Growth = Change
Another of Sophia Quintero’s ugly ducklings was Change Management. She argued that while everyone hates change yet wants growth, growth is change. In fact growth is constant change. The current generation is embracing change within their careers far more than before as they see having a ranging CV as proof of career growth. However, there is still work to do — loads of people are just stuck in a routine of going to work in a job they don’t really care about. No matter how long you’ve been at a company, if it’s not the right fit, embrace change and see it as growth, not failure.
Having said that, as Saul Klein says, you can grow too quickly. You need to put the fundamentals in place, and if you see your career growth in terms of solely your pay packet, this could hinder you in the long run. This means the best option may be finding a role which sacrifices short term monetary gain but with great personal development perks in order to improve your career growth and success long term.
I hope these links don’t seem too far fetched and that this post has given some food for thought on growth hacking your career. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how growth hacking can be applied to your career progression, so please do get in touch if you have any experiences, knowledge or thoughts to share!
This post originally appeared on Zealify’s blog.
This post was written by Liam Nolan, Product Manager at Zealify. Feel free to follow me @LiamNolan90.
