When hiring a candidate for any role within SaaS, too often we see CEO’sinsist on finding candidates that have previous relevant sector experience. That could be a mistake. In our view it’s far more important to takethe most skilled candidate at what you’re hiring for (sales, marketing, CS,dev, etc), even if it means you have to hire a candidate outside your sector. There are few reasons:
Sectorexperience requirements mean you’re looking for unicorns. Individuals that have excellent sector experienceand excellent skills are the ‘unicorns’ of hiring. Suppose you’re hiring for an AccountExecutive. If you require the candidateto have relevant sector experience, you’ll end up with someone with that experienceyou’re looking for, but it’s unlikely they’re also the best of all thecandidates at selling. That’s too high abar. It’s unrealistic to think you canoptimize for both sector experience and skills, and since it’s far easier toteach the former than the latter (if you think the candidate cant figure outyour sector, that’s a bigger problem), optimize for skills and ability.
Hiringunicorns elongates time-to-hire. Candidateswith the best skillset and significant sector experience are hard to find, sofinding them naturally takes longer. Elongatingyour time-to-hire of course means an empty role you need, which hurts thebusiness.
Unicornsare hard to fire. Sinceyou spent so much time looking for your unicorn, if they underperform, you’llend up holding on to them longer simply because you’re trying to avoid buyer’sremorse.
Anoutsider’s perspective. Skilledindividuals that have experiences outside your sector will bring adifferent perspective or approach to problems. These different approaches may end up beingvery valuable, especially because your competitors wont be implementing them.
There is a lot of great talent out there right now, but there are nevermany unicorns in hiring. Take the mosttalented individual you can, even if it means you’re hiring outside of yoursector (obviously they need to be in SaaS though). Talented people can get up to speed on yourindustry easily, and long term you’ll be much better off.
Thank you for reading. Visit us atblossomstreetventures.com for more articles and SaaS data. Email the author at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com.