Congratulations — your business is showing signals of product/market fit. Customers love your service, usage accelerates, and revenue is growing!
You start to ask yourself how you will grow off of a larger base each month, which keeps getting tougher.
Pressure starts to mount.
You need to keep growth rates high — for yourself, investors, employees. You need to keep pushing the limit.
At the same time, other parts of the business need your attention: the product lacks features, support response times are slow, and engineering productivity slows as you hire more to keep up with feature requests. You hear about “Growth people” and there is a strong allure to pass off the mounting responsibility of growing the business.
The good news is that you’ve already made it this far. Before moving forward with hiring someone, answer these five questions to make sure it is the right time to invest in a fully-fledged Growth Team.
Next, focus on finding the person who is a great fit for your startup. There are generally two types.
Type 1: Generalist who figures it out
Few people start off with the marketing skills to be successful; your hire will need a push in the right direction and be self-directed to figure it out.
I fall into this bucket. At Rev, our CEO moved me from a traditional Product Management role to a Growth PM to kickstart our Growth Team.
To figure out what was needed to be effective, I relied heavily on outside resources — including the Reforge program — to establish Rev’s playbook for approaching Growth problems.
You can find generalists with experience from a failed startup, where they got to wear many hats. They have the right set of experiences and skills but not yet applied to the right problem to get a win under their belt. The difficulty here is determining if they failed due to the company being unsuccessful overall or poor execution.
Benefits
- More affordable
- Not beholden to channels they match with their experience
- No preconceived notions for resources required
Drawbacks
- No experience to lean on
- Will need direction, either internally (from you) or externally (experts)
- Harder to determine their quality due to few data points
Type 2: Experienced marketer
If you go this route, then make sure the marketer has experience with the channels that match up with your best channels. You want the marketer to know how to execute what is currently working while being able to test new ideas quickly.
Benefits
- Faster ramp time
- Easier to assess the work they’ve done due to track record
Drawbacks
- More expensive
- They focus on what they know instead of taking a holistic view
- May not want to test new, unfamiliar channels
After deciding the profile you want to join your team, you need to meet that person where they are at.
How to Find Your Growth Hire
- For a generalist, you can transfer someone internally (someone with analytical and business skills, likely from Product, Operations, or Analytics). Make sure they are data-driven, results-oriented, and scrappy.
- For an experienced Growth hire, Search on LinkedIn for a marketer with expertise that aligns with your company’s current successful channel— reach out to them for expertise on how to approach hiring for this channel as each channel has nuances. Focus on specific skills that you want this person to tackle (e.g. Content Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, Facebook Ads)
- Post on Growth-focused job boards(GrowthHackers, Grow.co, AngelList, Hey Marketers, GrowthJobsList)
- Reach out to communities who are training Growth Marketers (Tradecraft, Bell Curve)
- Post on LinkedIn and tag me, I’ll share it for you
How to Vet Your Candidates
- Find someone who can define your company’s growth as an equation — they should help determine the key inputs and outputs, then find the key levers that will take the company to the next level.
- Case Study —make sure your candidate has the right aptitude and attitude. Give a small assignment that is related to the actual work they would be doing on a regular basis.
Note: Feel free to email me for Rev’s Growth Marketer Case Study. I will be writing a follow-up article on what makes a great case study - Dig into their curiosity and willingness to learn — they will have to wade through uncertainty to find what works and bring long-term success.
- Ensure they are self-sufficient — you are hiring this person to get leverage.
- Discover their level of risk — if they find a channel that outputs $5 for every $1 investment, then they need to be ready to pour on the gas.
- For experienced hires — research their channel so you can test the extent of their knowledge. Make sure they fully understand the channels they have experience with. If they don’t have a strong grasp of those, then they certainly won’t be able to figure out new ones.
Key Questions to Ask Yourself
- Are you ready to pass off this piece of the business to someone else?
- Is your top candidate culturally aligned and share your values?
- Do they level-up the team?
- How will you measure the success of their efforts?
- Will this person have the resources they need to be successful?
- How will they know if something is working? If it is working, are they afraid to step on the gas?
- For an experienced hire — would you be happy with this person’s previous results applied to your company? Do you think they would be able to get the same results for you?
Final Thoughts
Your first Growth person is not an easy hire. You have to balance the needs of the organization with the team’s culture and resources.
After deciding which route to take — the scrappy generalist to figure it out from scratch or the experienced marketer that knows how to operate some channels on day 1 — you will be off to the races to find and vet candidates. As you evaluate candidates, it is critical to see them in action.
You know you found the right person if they are able to execute and get results.
Hire slow, and reach out for a second opinion: Barron.Caster@gmail.com