TECHRE RUITER Q4: 2018
YOUR INDUSTRY NEWSLETTER
INSIDE: Top 10 weird and wonderful job titles SaaS Sales LinkedIn tips... Get to know GRC: Q&A with Navex Global's Ricky License PLUS: The hottest jobs on the market
WELCOME TO THE NEWEST EDITION OF
TECHRE RUITER Welcome back to TechRecruiter, Brought to you by Adaptive Tech. A newsletter focused on the topics of career development and recruitment in the industry, both from the employer and employee perspective.
Within the coming pages you'll find industry insights, interviews with some of the biggest names in the business - and a few highlights from the Adaptive consulting team - not to mention some of our hottest jobs within the field at the moment.
Published quarterly, this publication aims to be a forum in which Adaptive Tech's network of We hope you enjoy our latest business owners, leaders and edition and gain some valuable professionals can share their intel from this publication. expertise to discuss a range of issues and hot topics.
David James - CEO Adaptive Business Group es David Jam
ADAPTIVE TECH'S
HOT UK JOBS
Sales Lead - London - Unified Communications Start Up - £70,000-£80,000/ Double OTE Enterprise Sales (IC) - London - Search & Discovery API - £80,000-£100,000/ Double OTE Account Executive - London - Email Marketing Company - £60,000-£70,000/ Double OTE Senior Sales - London - FinTech Start Up - German/French Speaking - £50,000-£70,000/ Double OTE Senior Sales - London - RegTech Global Leader - £50,000-£70,000/ Double OTE+ Green-field VP of Sales - Paris - RegTech Start Up - Previous start-up experience required - Up to €100K/ Double OTE To explore job opportunities, visit our website or get in touch with our recruitment team: info@adaptivetech.io
8 POWERFUL SAAS SALES LINKEDIN PROFILE TIPS MONEY-MAKER OR DEAL-BREAKER – IS YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE OPTIMIZED TO HELP
YOU SELL?
A busy sales rep’s LinkedIn profile gets views from hundreds of people for hundreds of different reasons, reaching far beyond direct prospects checking them out online. Every post, comment, like or share reverberates through the online community of 500m+ members, and building a powerful profile that pro-actively contributes to pushing new and existing prospects along the sales funnel can be an investment worth many thousands of dollars in its cumulative impact. Looking to turn your LinkedIn profile from a static bio into a lead-gen engine? Here are the essentials: 1. Photo
LinkedIn profile photos have the simple purpose of presenting you as an approachable professional. You might be amazed that this point even makes our list, but… let’s just say that there are some wide-ranging interpretations out there of what this concept might mean. Remember, the function of your photo is to help bridge the gap that exists from not meeting your customer in person. So, if your picture shows you cropped out from a blurry wedding group photo, behind reflective ski goggles or zoomed out to 1,000 yards on top of a mountain peak, you’re creating a needless barrier that can be solved with a neutral background and a cell phone camera.
OK, let’s get through this one fast Easy fix.
2. Banner image Your profile’s banner image is freely available advertising space – why not make use of it? As a minimum, it should represent your brand for topof-mind awareness – ideally with your company’s tagline. At best, have your marketing team create a banner image that delivers an elevator pitch of your offering, compelling headline sales data, an engaging screen capture or a client quote. What’s likely to move prospects down the funnel faster – a generic cityscape backdrop or a powerful customer testimonial?
3. Headline
As well as an engaging overview of your product and how it LinkedIn offers you the chance to helps customers, remember you customize your ‘headline’. This is can drive prospects to even not the same as your current job more compelling sales materials title – it’s what sits at the top of – product overview videos, your profile, and what people will customer testimonials etc. see when you pop up in their news feeds. Use specific page links - don’t make prospects work to find To get the most out of it, tell good information about your people about the results you offering. create, not your job function. If you want to frame your Who’s going to get a foot in the solution with some context door faster with target prospects about the company behind your in the video adtech space? product, try and keep it concise.
difference between prospects returning calls or answering emails… if they look for evidence that you’re engaged with your community but your profile is a ghost town – you have to work that much harder.
'Account Executive' or 'Helping marketers improve ROI on video ad spend'
You can still showcase your personal performance, but take a look at the difference below:
Quick hint – it’s best not to go overboard here. Remember to keep it intelligible and relevant. You’ll see plenty of quirky and well-intentioned headlines that actually confuse more than they help, e.g. "Delighting customers with awesome user experiences" OK... so what do you do? 4. Summary
A deluge of stats about growth, investment, awards etc. can obstruct your key message – the problem you solve for your customers. 5. Activity This is where prospects can see what you’re up to on the LinkedIn platform. If you’re a real solutions expert in a niche community, that should shine through – what do you like, what do you share?
Your summary sits right under What do you comment on, what your photo and is the centrepiece do you say? of your profile. Who do you engage with? This is your chance to promote your solution - not yourself. Details like this can be the
6. Experience When top sales reps summarize their experience, they find a way to intertwine their experience with results they’ve achieved for their customers.
'Exceeded sales quota by 15% for 3x consecutive years' vs 'Exceeded sales quota by 15% for the 3x consecutive years, helping over 120 accounting firms save an average of 30% on payroll processing costs' 7. Media Attaching media to your profile (in the form of flyers, product overviews, data sheets etc.) is a chance to get any visitor who lands on your profile to explore your product.
It often takes weeks of emails, calls, voicemails and old-school prospecting to get a chance to show a prospect the highlights of your solution – why miss the chance if they’re on your profile, ready to learn? Just make sure it’s up to date, and work with marketing to ensure content is evergreen. Outdated market reports, product releases or company news weaken your relevance and can do more harm than good. 8. Recommendations While you’re not in control of any unsolicited recommendations graciously bestowed by benevolent co-workers or customers, it’s common practice
for mutually respecting peers or business associates to request recommendations to round out their profile. If you do pro-actively seek recommendations (plenty of people do), it’s worth asking if connections can reference your business impact as well as your personal qualities. Again, the difference can be powerful: 'Helen was a pleasure to work with - responsive and professional' vs 'Helen was a pleasure to work with responsive, professional, and helped us dramatically reduce the amount of time we spent finding key data across our organization.' ***
IN SUMMARY: Photo Banner Image Headline Summary Activity Experience Media Recommendations Adaptive Tech recruits on behalf of high-growth SaaS vendors, filling roles at all levels including SDR, CSM, AE, Sales Engineering, VP and more. You can check out Adaptive Tech's SaaS sales vacancies in our job listings here.
ADAPTIVE TECH'S
HOT GER JOBS
Account Executive – collaboration SaaS-Vendor - €50K base/€90K+ OTE Senior Account Executive – online content publisher - €80K base/€120K+ OTE Senior Account Executive – AI optimisation – 95.000€ base / 180.000€ OTE + benefits Sales Development Representative – leading Cloud Solution Provider – 45.000 / 60.000 + benefits Junior Account executive – Leading HR Tech – 60.000€ base / 90.000€ OTE + benefits Business Development Representative – International Communication Vendor / 38.000€ base / 50.000€ OTE+ benefits To explore job opportunities, visit our website or get in touch with our recruitment team: info@adaptivetech.io
ADAPTIVE TOP 10: WEIRD & WONDERFUL JOB TITLES
Here at Adaptive Tech, we spend our days and weeks searching for perfect candidates and it leads us to look in some of the dark corners of the job-seekers section of the internet. As we search through many webpages, job boards and speak with a lot of our clients and candidates, we come across some fantastic job titles – from Mischief Maker to Wizard of Lightbulb moments. We recently discovered that there’s a market for an Emoji Translator – what a job that would be, especially as Adweek reported in 2017 that
more than 60 million emojis are used daily on Facebook, with a further 5 billion (plus!) on its Messenger platform. So, after a few laughs in the office, we thought we’d share our top 10 picks of the weird and wonderful we’ve discovered across a range of industries and have translated them for you… do you fancy doing any of these?
TOP 10: WEIRD & WONDERFUL JOB TITLES 1 Wizard of Lightbulb Moments
Marketing Director
2 Emoji Translator
Not sure where to begin…
3 Mischief Maker
Content Creator
4 Chief Evangelist
Brand Ambassador
5 Sales Ninja
Sales Executive
6 Disruptor in Chief
Head of Daily Business Operations
7 Problem Wrangler
Counsellor
8 Talent Delivery Specialist
Recruitment Consultant
9 Digital Overlord
Website Manager
10 Great Service Agent
Receptionist
We're sure all of you have seen some weird and wonderful job titles in your time, why not share with us your favourite ones? Better still, find out if we can get you a new job with an even better title. Get in touch at info@adaptivetech.io or check out what we've got on offer over at our jobs section.
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GETTING TO KNOW GRC: Q&A WITH NAVEX GLOBAL'S RICKY LICENSE
WHAT'S THE SECRET BEHIND YOUR
RECENT HIRING SUCCESS? Navex Global was formed in 2012 by merging four GRC (Governance Risk and Compliance) industry leaders, they specialise in protecting the reputation of their clients globally. Adaptive Tech partnered with Navex earlier in 2018 to help recruit talent for their West London office and have since added an additional six new sales professionals to the team, Adaptive Tech's Fiona Bond caught up with their Senior Corporate Recruiter, Ricky License, to find out what the secret to their recent hiring success has been. FB: Hi Ricky, thanks for catching up with us at such a busy time of year, it's been a very successful 2018 but let's go back to the start, tell me a bit about the history of NAVEX Global just to get us started. “We were formed in 2012 by merging four GRC companies together and from there we have gone from strength to strength, really. Our overall mission is to help organizations protect their people, reputation and bottom lines. We have a number of different products that we offer; PolicyTech, NAVEXEngage, whistleblower hotline and case management solutions, RiskRate and corporate code of conduct. We were actually the first company to offer anonymous hotlines too! We acquired another company in 2015 and now we as a business provide the world most comprehensive Ethics and Compliance platform. There are a lot of competitors out there, but our suite of software solutions provides a business with a more rounded solution then offered by any of our competitors.
I think businesses around the world are really starting to recognise that they need to be proactive rather than reactive, especially in the world we live in today.
FB: Can you talk to me about the USP of NAVEX Global?
Previously, companies would hit a problem and look to try and conduct “damage control” but now there is a market where companies are being much more proactive. I think that’s what makes us different, it’s why we are the industry leaders.
GRC is such a high growth industry right now.
We don’t just offer companies one solution, we
offer them a suite to manage everything from hot lining though to training so they don’t have to worry. The second USP for us is really to do with the businesses we work with right now – we have over 13K clients worldwide and 95 of them are Fortune 100 companies. To be able to say that 95 of the World’s most successful companies trust us and what we do is a testament to our people and our solutions and I think that in itself is also a unique selling point to our business. FB: When you are hiring then, what do you look for? It varies across departments really, and I say that because I personally work across different areas of the business. We also have multiple office locations too, so it’s important to take the difference office cultures into consideration when we hire, as well as the department that we are recruiting into. In the London office, it’s amazing to be working with Steve Smith, who is our Head of Sales in the UK. Steve knows what he likes and what he is looking for, so when we are hiring for the UK, we consider his sales approach as well, to make sure we hire candidates that will really excel. Steve is such an
experienced sales person and has a direct and hands on approach. The GRC space is still relatively new, so we understand that people might not necessarily have had direct experience, which is why culture fit and passion is really important to us. Ideally, SaaS sales experience is number one, home run if they had it in GRC! But we are fairly open on people’s experience; if you can come in and understand our business and what we are doing, and feel passionate about us and about working for a growing software company, then attitude can go a long way to making sure we build success for Navex and for that person. FB: Do you think your approach to hiring is different to that of your competitors? Good question! I don’t know how flexible our competitors are when looking to be honest, but I think that the way we work means we are more likely to give people the chance to show what they are capable of and that gives us the opportunity to be really open minded and find really amazing people. Our hiring managers are really good at digging deep and
uncovering talents in candidates that our competitors might not see from just looking at their CV, so I think that our approach gives people the opportunity to really be amazing. As an example, our project implementation team recently hired new project managers; our hiring managers were amazing at finding some phenomenal people who didn’t necessarily have software implementation background, but who’s experience and enthusiasm means they are now an invaluable part of the business. FB: What do you think the biggest challenge with recruitment is? For our London office I think really it is the location. We are based in West London, which means the commute is really difficult for anyone based in East London, but we are not really out far enough for talent in Reading. We outgrew our Richmond office really fast, so we moved to a much bigger space, but I do understand that some candidates really just want to be working in central London so that can be a challenge. We do have on-site parking though, which is a huge bonus and great to give people more flexibility
"The world is waking up, so that in itself should show you how important it is to have a really solid suite of ethics"
any vertical anywhere in the world – we have only scratched the surface. It’s such an untapped market and such a booming industry, but maybe 5-10% of people we speak to really get that. So the understanding of the opportunity in the GRC space can be a challenge. FB: What advice would you give someone looking to join NAVEX and this industry? Do your due-diligence! Get to know us, other companies – just look at the news! You can turn on the news right now and there will always be a company or a C-Level or a business in hot water for doing or not doing something they should have. The world is waking up, so that in itself should show you how important it is to have a really solid suite of ethics and compliance solutions in place in your company. If you don’t, you’re setting yourself up for trouble! Understanding that and coming in to an interview with us, or anyone in the GRC space, with that knowledge and a good amount of questions is so, so important. I think that’s the best advice I could give anyone!
that we didn’t have in the Richmond location. The second challenge is the understanding of the industry, and this is something we found mainly with sales people. People seemed to have some knowledge, but they didn’t grasp the opportunity. We aren’t a well-known brand name yet like some of your biggest software vendors in London, but to have 13K clients already, 95 of them being Fortune 100 brands, and to think of all the other businesses out there, that’s the opportunity! We can work with almost any size business in
*** Navex Global is a GRC specialist and can help protect your reputation, visit their website to find out more. Adaptive Tech recruits for start-up, scale-ups and industry leaders in multiple SaaS sectors, including MarTech, AdTech, FinTech, HRTech and more.
Feel free to reach out for a networking conversation, or browse a full list of Adaptive Tech’s sales vacancies here.
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DOES BRANDING MATTER?!
DOES PERSONAL BRAND MATTER IN SAAS SALES? What does personal brand mean, how do you build one… and do you need it to sell software?
The idea of ‘personal branding’ doesn’t seem to fit naturally into the software sales space at first. Personal branding for, say, a life coach? Sure. Life Coaches are what they sell, so it stands to reason that they work hard on building their own reputation as much as that of the service they offer. Software sales rep? Perhaps not so obvious. Sales reps concentrate on promoting an existing brand – that of the software manufacturer whose product they’re representing. Why would they need – or want – a brand of their own? And yet some of the world’s greatest brands (many of them
in tech) are closely linked to the reputations of the key individuals who are behind their success. Apple had Steve Jobs, Microsoft and Bill Gates are inextricable for many, and the visionary leadership of Jeff Bezos continues to push Amazon to new heights. In these high-profile instances, personal brand and corporate success intertwined to create an enhanced reputation and ultimately drive spectacular results. In the era of social selling, can sales reps learn from this marriage of personal and commercial brand-building pioneered by entrepreneurs, and what benefits can it bring?
What is a ‘personal brand’? It can be helpful to start by clarifying what personal brand is not. Despite the efforts of many would-be internet entrepreneurs, a personal brand is not about working meticulously to create a publicfacing image which is at odds with a concealed reality. Instead, personal branding is about taking action to ensure that your passions, values and experiences are clearly and authentically communicated to an audience – ideally a targeted audience that moves within your commercial field and will derive value from being included in your network.
WHAT IS PERSONAL BRAND? In it’s simplest form, personal brand is how others see us. While sales reps may work for someone else’s organization, represent a product they didn’t build, or earn a living by selling a solution they didn’t design, each person is an individual with a unique trajectory and set of experiences. Throughout their careers, sales reps (while following a broadly similar career pattern): Help different customers in different markets Encounter and solve different commercial challenges Read, analyze and react to different news sources Network with different peers, managers and out-of-industry contacts Attend and learn from different events, conferences and trainings Develop different methodologies, approaches and values The sum of these factors – plus many others – creates a unique profile. The sum of these factors – plus others – creates a unique profile.
If the prominent characteristics of this profile can be accurately and regularly shared with a relevant community, the result is the development. How does it help? The way we develop our professional personas can have a direct impact on our ability to exert influence, attract opportunity and ultimately drive sales. An easy way to understand personal brand in action is to take a moment to think about the people we would turn to in our personal lives for guidance or advice. They often have a lot in common with one another. They’re usually people we trust, people with integrity, experienced in the field in which we’re asking for assistance, and – if they’re outside of our immediate circle – people we’ve heard positive things about from our own close contacts. Personal brand in business replicates this pattern, and helps professionals in all disciplines to establish a reputation in their domain which draws business and opportunity towards them.
That reputation can differ greatly from one individual to the next. One person’s personal brand ay be anchored in work ethic, another’s in innovation. Someone else may build their brand around thought leadership within a niche field. Whatever the foundation, personal brand provides people with a platform from which to communicate with an engaged audience – ultimately creating the opportunity to impart advice, generate discussion, facilitate introductions, share content or recommend a purchase. How do you build your brand? Although the power of personal brand lies in its authenticity, it does require careful definition in order to be consistently communicated. As with any brand, this exercise involves some fundamental categorization: Your audience: who is it that you help, what is the market sector in which you hope to attract a following and develop a reputation?
Your value: what core problem do you solve, and what value does your network and audience derive from their connection to you?
Once you’ve defined your personal brand, it’s time to put yourself out there and engage with your audience.
Your authority: what is your credibility founded on, what is your experience and what have you accomplished?
Opportunities to develop brand identity are all around, as long as activity supports brand objectives by sharing relevant value with a target audience.
Your identity: what’s your story, what are you passionate about, and how does this fit your brand narrative?
Common steps to build personal brand include:
Defining a brand and inventing a brand are not the same thing. Where inventing implies plucking a set of values from thin air in order to create a desired (and unsubstantiated) veneer, definition means working out what’s at the heart of your professional identity and making sure brand-building activities are aligned with this.
Twitter LinkedIn (articles, vlogs, groups and thread discussions) Podcasts (personal and guest participation) YouTube channels (explainer videos, Q&As, tutorials, reviews) Webinars Blogs (corporate blogs, Medium articles, industry publication guest blogging) Meetups and networking events (hosting, organizing
and attending). Conference and event participation (panel moderation, round table participation, keynote speaking) Whether it’s solving a specific business problem, reposting an article or patting yourself on the back by sharing positive customer feedback, there are abundant opportunities to connect your daily professional experience with your target audience in a way that creates value for them while strengthening your persona. Telling stories, teaching and entertaining all help to reflect your values and interests. Build the right connections with the right people, and the rewards will soon follow.
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Adaptive Tech recruits on behalf of high-growth SaaS vendors, filling roles at all levels including SDR, CSM, AE, Sales Engineering, VP and more.
You can check out Adaptive Tech's SaaS sales vacancies in our job listings here.
***
ADAPTIVE TECH'S
HOT US JOBS
Enterprise Account Exec (Finserv Focus) – Big Data Company – NY - $300k OTE Enterprise Account Exec – Fleet Management Software Company - $250k Enterprise Account Exec – Marketing Technology Company – Atlanta - $250k OTE Customer Success Manager – Marketing Technology Company – Boston $140k OTE Healthcare Account Executive – Consulting Company – Philadelphia - $230k OTE SVP of Sales – Mobile Gaming Company – San Francisco - $250k Base
To explore job opportunities, visit our website or get in touch with our recruitment team: info@adaptivetech.io