The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
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The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations
EP 178: The Link Between TA and Psychology
Sara Chevrette, Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Sonatype, joins James Mackey, to unpack the connection between psychology and recruiting talent. She shares how values drive hiring, pushing for curiosity, and the importance of building a strong culture within the workplace.
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Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Today I'm speaking with Sarah Cheverett. She's the head of global talent acquisition over at Zonatype. Sarah, I'm really excited about this.
SPEAKER_00:I'm ready to rock. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01:I would like to just kind of take a step back, right? And we'd really excited to learn more about you. Maybe a good place to start is like, how did you get into recruiting?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a great question. Because it's not like when I was in school, you went to school for it, right? Like that wasn't a thing. Um yeah, it was interesting because I was working in financial services time, right? And in my head, I was like, oh, I want to live in New York City and I want to, you know, do the financial thing. And um September 11th happened, right? And they roll on the TVs and they can't get a hold of people at New York Life. And it was a it was one of those moments I think everybody can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing. But it completely changed my perspective on what I wanted to do. I actually had a couple of friends that were working at a recruiting agency, and they're like, you'd be really good. You're like good with people. Uh, and that was how I got into recruiting. So I started out in agency recruiting, did that for so many years, and got a little tired of chasing the carrot because you always had to find the opportunities to place people. But it turned out I was really good at sales too. So, but you know, you get to a period of time, I was like, ugh, maybe this is the time I really look to get into corporate. And I had a friend working at an agency. And my friend, as she watches this, Hather You Know Who You Are. I called her and she's like, You're done doing the agency thing, huh? I go, Yeah. And she was like, Are you ready to take a risk? And I was like, What do you mean? She's like, You're gonna have to take a risk, you're gonna have to take a contract. And and my I had never left a f like a full-time job to take a contract. To me, that was so scary. But it was the best risk I've ever taken because it completely propelled my career. And she even tried convincing me out of the gate to being a manager in corporate, and I was like, nope, I want to run a desk, I'm gonna lead people. I want my people to know that I can run a desk and I can run it well. So I, you know, walk the walk and talk the talk. So yeah, here I am 20 some ideas later. Still loving closing deals and and seeing people grow and develop. Technically, helping people with probably what sometimes could be a very tough decision in their life, right? You have somebody's life in your hands, you're helping them in their career. So it's a little feel-good to it as well.
SPEAKER_01:There is. I like what you said about staying involved to some extent with the hands-on work, as you put it running a desk while leading a team. Is that something you still do some of today with maybe executive search? How do you strike that balance today now that you're running a rather aggressively growing organization, as far as I understand? I mean, you're right in it in growth stage tech. How many employees?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I don't know what the total hit count is now because we're literally adding people every week. Uh, because we just opened up the office in India in June. Let's just call it somewhere around 500, maybe a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00:Which from a corporate standpoint is the smallest organization I worked for in my career. But it's great because I've been able to get my hands on a bunch of stuff. I would say where I'm not picking up wrecks and working them today. When I first when I first got here, I had to help and do some recruiting while I was building out the team. But I am heavy into the profiles and talking about, you know, is the profile this? Is it shifting? Does that make sense? What's reflective in the market? Um, and every so often I'll go in and I'll still do some sourcing, right? Just to make sure my chops are still there. And I will speak to be part of interview processes versus like the recruiter on the rack.
SPEAKER_01:Um do you still stay close to hiring leaders like the VP of engineering or head of product? Or are you still involved in some of those conversations strategically about the type of talent they need on the team, the gaps?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And actually, I'm probably doing it more often now because having an entity in India is new to my company. And so it's not just profiles, it's understanding the market, it's understanding the culture, how to be inclusive. We've done training on what to expect when you're interviewing folks from India because we have a lot of folks in the US, we have folks in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Colombia. And so when you work for this pretty globally diverse organization, there are different techniques, different processes that are important for people to understand. We do our budgeting every year. And so you have the executive leaders and their SLT members really putting together their plan for the following year, what they're going to be hiring for, in addition to everything else. And so I do get an opportunity to review it myself and HR business partner, and we're looking at comp, GL, everything. So that way when it is approved, one, we understand how it fits and if there's any changes that need to be made. It's better sometimes to get the changes made out of the gate versus going down. Sometimes you have to learn to see what's really out in the market too. And that can shape it, shape some of the roles in addition to that. So it is an exciting time. Very busy, especially Hyderabad is well, I think with the time change, now they're 11 and a half hours ahead. So I do love that global stretch because I can get up and get things done early, early in the morning. I can get a whole bunch of stuff done and give stakeholders and my team FaceTime during some reasonable hours. And then I can get the kid on the bus, come back, maybe eat some breakfast, and then hit the East Coast. So with some of those leaders, we are really talking about what it looks like. So when you think about sales and go to market and the market shifting, which is great. You're starting to see tech really pick back up. And I know there was like kind of some really ups and downs for some times over the past couple of years. And I think almost every tech company, except probably AI companies, probably felt it, right? So we've seen a lot of change here, and it's technically, I'll be here four years in two days.
SPEAKER_01:So hey, oh, congratulations. That's great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, the cool thing is so we're part of the VISA Equity Partners Portfolio. That's our PE firm. And there is this network. We meet every Friday and we're like, hey, what are some of the challenges you're going through? Here's what I'm seeing. Here's the things that I've done that's work really well. Have you tried this? And just really sharing within that leader network, because you know, the the porco is all tech companies, different tech companies, but we still experience some of the same challenges with talent. And it's nice, even working at a small company, right? You still have those resources where, like when I was at CVS, we were 350,000 in place, so you can imagine how big the TA team was. Like I could just phone a friend that was at a different location. Here it's it's a little different. Like you have to start to make your network and have it work for you within the pork code because we're all following similar playbooks. So we share on technology, processes, all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's huge to have a strong peer group, whether it's through like the PE community, right? Or through Vista, right? Or otherwise. I think that's also what one of my goals is with this show is to create a platform like for operators by operators mindset where people can come to the show and actually learn from other folks in a similar or same position. Also, like at this point, you've helped a lot of companies scale. Now you're in a growth stage organization a little bit smaller. I'm curious about what realizations you've had during your time at Sonicite. What do you think is most important when it comes to hiring for a scale at for a growth stage company? If you had to boil it down to like a couple key takeaways, one takeaway, what advice do you have, or what have you learned, or what light bulb moments have you had? Think about it however you want. Um about how to hire effectively.
SPEAKER_00:When you work for a small company, you do have to roll up your sleeves. There's no doubt, you just have to do it. I will say what has made this more successful now in comparison when I first walked in the door was one, looking at all your tools, looking at all your processes and understanding where you can clean it up, streamline them, and what you can do to help the leaders and the folks interviewing. I mean, interviewing they have to do their day job too. So if you can create an opportunity where you're streamlining the processes and you're giving them the steps, but you make them part of it, it really does help because you can take something that could take weeks to hire for and bring it down to less than 30 days. And so you really have to have your team saying the same thing and really believing in what you're doing. And you have to have your teams back. When you're going through change, there's always bumps along the way. There's no doubt. I it doesn't matter where I've worked. I always like to make sure whenever my team needs me, even if they don't think they need me, I'll join them on a call. We'll talk about it. And to me, you can't mistakes are important. Like there's no thing we could do so bad here. Like, we're not doing surgery. Someone's not gonna die on the table. Every mistake is something you can learn and make an improvement. And I always say, I've made a lot of mistakes in my recruiting career. And it's actually what makes you learn. I will say one of the most important things, and this is gonna come up even more as AI is really ingrained in businesses, is like you cannot remove the human out of this. You're talking to people, you are you're helping them, you're evaluating them, but they're really evaluating us too. And taking a new job is a big decision for someone. And if you can, it's not about firing questions at people. It's like get to know the person a little bit and talk to them and find out what they really want. Because it might turn out that you're having a conversation with them and based off what they want and what they're aligned with, this might not be the best place for them. I would rather have a candidate know, have all the information that they need to know to make the best educated decision whether or not to come to the company. Right? Once they get here, you're gonna be working with them, right? So they're people. I tell the my team and people are interviewing. Do you remember when you were a candidate? What it feels like? What if you're not getting feedback or even a touch point because the process is taking longer, and then you feel like they forgot about you, or you apply to a role, but you never hear. It's like their resume goes and an application goes in a black hole. There are people on the other end of that submission, and so that's candidated experience is vital. Because the other thing, too, think about it. You have a good experience, you might tell a couple people. You have a bad experience, you're gonna tell everyone. You know what we mean by that, right? So I think aside from tools and processes, remembering that there is a person on that side of the resume and creating a really great candidate experience.
SPEAKER_01:One thing that I constantly am reminding myself of is that you can't optimize relationships. No, you can't look at it as this almost mechanical process of just efficiency. That's not like human and it doesn't help people feel valued, appreciated, heard, understood, right? As leaders in such a people-oriented function. It's like we're constantly walking this tightrope between efficiency and systems that scale and putting people in relationships first.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. My former VP at CVS Health, his name is Jeff Lack. I remember it was like my first week. He came into my office and he gave me a book. I think the name of the book is the first 90 days. And he's like, Read this. But in your first 90 days, your only job is to make as many relationships as you possibly can here. Now there's gonna be things that come up that you have to make a decision, and I get that because it's a day-to-day thing. But anything major you want to change, you write it down. And then day 91, take a look back and look at everything you wrote down, and then you see which ones you're actually gonna tackle. What are some small wins? What is it gonna take a little bit longer, and then what's the bucket of you're gonna put that aside for right now because the timing's not right. Um and that that building relationship piece was so vital for me there. It was yeah, it was just the Fortune 4 company. I know I've said this before, it's just a different beast. The bar's really high, things move super quick. It's always good to have those relationships because when you're showing up to the table, you both have the same goal, right? You want to fill their headcount, whether it's initiative headcount or backfill, because when someone's not in the role, who else is doing the work? It took some really, I mean, we did some really peak niche hiring of like we need to hire 300 people for clinical trial services, right? Kind of an important thing during the COVID time frame. So the more you get to know those people, it makes it that much easier to knock out some really tough tasks. Hiring niche roles like that can be tough in its own, especially when yeah, everybody knew the company, but we weren't in that space. So there was a lot of learnings there, and you had to be really direct with some of the leaders. You want this, but this is what we're finding for this, right? If I didn't have those relationships, they would have just been like, just find it anyway. But instead, they would listen.
SPEAKER_01:What's interesting is like what you say, what you're talking about being important, everything is very tightly correlated, right? The very first thing you said is rolling up your sleeves. Then we talked about building systems that work, and then you talked about relationships and the importance of putting people first. Um what's interesting is I think rolling up your sleeves and the relationships piece, they're almost like one and the same because if a leader's too heavily focused on systems, they might not be necessarily one of the sleeves with the team on the trenches, talking to people, talking to the leaders, talking to the recruiters, investing in those relationships. So there's in a sense like one and the same. So it's interesting because you brought up your first internal corporate recruiting job, really rolling up your sleeves and managing a recload, and you also talk about now as an established leader, and it may be a different point of impact, but still rolling up your sleeves, right? I I think they go hand in hand, like the relationship piece, you're in there with your team figuring things out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm all about the data. Data driven decisions are so important, but showing up with the data and the insights is so important. I mean, it's in in order to make strong business decisions, you need to have the data to back it. And sometimes you just have to take a leap on certain things. But in our space, there's a lot of data. There's market data. I used to leverage a tool called Talent Neuron, which, gosh, I used that tool all the way when back in the day when it was wanted analytics, and everybody's like, What's this thing? It was awesome because we would show up to hiring strategy discussions very differently, right? Because you're you're mapping the role in the labor market and where you can find and diversify your funnel and for what geos should we be searching in, what's the degree of difficulty? You show up like that, people they listen.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You can't argue with the data, right? At that point. Now it's all it's not that talent neuron isn't important. I mean, we have the data, so it's really listening and having those relationships with the folks in India, but really listening to them because they know, regardless of sometimes what the data is saying, what's really going on in the market, because it's live. We were talking last week, and 27 GCCs this quarter have been opened in Hyderabad. Brand new ones. That's not even the existing ones. So that will tell you how competitive the market is right now. So you have to listen. You have to listen to what you're hearing on comps. I we have salary bands, we leverage most of the data, which is great, but you have to listen to what's going on in the market because a salary band is a salary band, right? Sometimes you have to be a little bit more creative on what quartile you're going to hire somebody on. Yeah. You have to be agile, especially with the way the market's been changing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I agree. So I'd love to focus on like the underlying kind of behavioral aspects of what you're discussing. So we're talking about essentially being agile, adaptable, scrappy, essentially like hands-on, relationship-driven. I'd love to learn more about you and just where do you think this comes from, the mindset that you've developed around prioritizing these behavioral aspects? Like, where did you learn this from?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's kind of funny because I feel like, yes, I've grown as a person, but I've always been that kid. I was that kid that wanted to play all the sports, be in all the activities. I wanted to learn everything. I loved going to school. Because to me, I felt like knowledge was power. And the more you learn and the more you do, and the more you get out there, the more successful you're gonna be. I'm thinking back, like when I was growing up, my mom worked two jobs. And my dad was a union pipe fitter. They did a little bit of college. Um, I knew I definitely wanted to go to college and I needed to figure out how I was gonna get there. My dad was very big on I want you to be able to sit on your own two feet and not have to depend on anybody. Get good grades in school, work really hard, and it's all gonna pay off. My father's um former Navy, so he's a Vietnam vet and came home from Vietnam and became a union pipe fitter. My mom worked in banking for 17 years, and then she's like, I want to work in healthcare, work at the school too, and and you know, be a special ed teacher and have like school hours for us and stuff like that. So I think seeing both of them grind, it was very interesting to watch. I just kept watching and being like, okay, I don't want to work two jobs. That's one thing. And two, uh I knew I wanted to go to college and I knew I wanted to do something. And then I went to school for biology, I graduated with psychology, and I went right into business. Not your traditional. If CSI was cool when I went to college, I probably would have stayed with biology. But I was like, I don't want to be a doctor, I don't want to be a nurse, I don't think I should have anybody's life in my hands responsible. I feel like getting into business a little bit safer. My mom wanted me to be a state trooper. I was like, I absolutely should not be driving around with a gun.
SPEAKER_01:Not for you.
SPEAKER_00:Not for me. Nope, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was a good choice. She's like, Yeah, you know, you could just be no, mom. I don't want to pull people over on the highway, I don't want to arrest people. I don't want to shoot a gun.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Like it's just not my thing. But I will say my psychology degree really helped me understand business in a very different way. Cause you you had to pay attention to people. People come from all walks of life, and there is a psychology behind business. And I I do think that is a good piece of it. So I guess if I had to say from my childhood to college, my education did help with it because it made me see people differently.
SPEAKER_01:Well, so I mean, when we we go to school and we pick find something we're passionate about, like for instance, for you, psychology. And then you're in your prime in your career, right? I'm curious looking back, what has stuck with you, right? I'm sure there's things that you learned and then forgot about that don't really stick with you. They're just more so stuff you're studying for the exam. What takeaways did you get from your degree that you feel like impact how you lead today?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I feel like my bachelor's degree opened my mind to leadership development in a very different way. It wasn't, and sometimes people are like, oh, leadership development, that's like the soft stuff of business, right? But it's it's so vital. I wanted going through uh Sendelane training at CVS. And that was the most important leadership training I've ever been through. For about a year, my boss would say things to me, and I didn't realize, and this isn't a real word, but I I made it up. She was Sendelaneying me. Like she was an instructor, and she always because I'd be like, ah, I know what's going on, and she goes, No, Sarah, Sarah. Come from curious, take a step back, assume positive. And it was all the psychology training that was coming from Cendelane training. It was phenomenal. And I still use it because I talk about the mood elevator, right? And where are you on the mood elevator? And sometimes, depending on where you're in the mood elevator, one, you may not be in a position where you should be giving feedback, or you may be in a position where you're not ready to receive feedback. That allowed me to really say, I know we need to move really fast, but sometimes you need to slow down to speed up because there's something going on. And sometimes how someone's interacting with you actually has nothing to do with you. And it it did help me equip, like with some really good phrases. I use some terms like I feel like you're putting a lot of pressure on me and I'm not right now and I'm not sure why. And that actually backs people up a little bit and they're like, Oh no, no, sorry, I just got this and this and then the mass comes down. Or like, this is one of my biggest pet peeves, is like when you're in a meeting with people and they're like right. And so I used to say, Hey, I know we set 30 minutes today. Is now still a good time? If not, we can look at calendars and we could totally reschedule. I know your time, you're really busy and your time's important. And then sometimes people would say, No, you're absolutely right. I do need to reschedule it because something was going on with them and they just didn't feel comfortable at that time canceling a meeting so quickly, right? Like five minutes before. Or it would actually wake somebody up to be present now, right? And then like they're like, No, I'm so sorry, just had to finish that last email. I'm all yours now, right?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um and so it's like the degree got built upon with some specific leadership development. And it all ties back to the right relationship piece. The other thing too, and we talked about grit and resilience and stuff. And I think one thing that's really important to have is a growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you're gonna be stuck. And that's okay. Some people it's okay, because there's some roles that are a little bit more fixed mindset. But if you want to be a transformative leader, you want to be a value-based leader, you have to have a growth mindset. It's just it's the only way it and it's how businesses grow and become successful. Because otherwise, I don't know. I couldn't imagine being in a tech company not being having a growth mindset because that would be a real problem for the company. But that piece of it too, I mean, I think I don't know if that's talked about enough about a growth mindset and how important it is. That's another, to me, like another psychology thing. It's how you think about things and are you able to shift your paradigm to be in that growth mindset that even though things are hard right now, you just go through and you keep working through and it's gonna get better and it's gonna happen. So when you're surrounded by smart growth mindset people, the relationships and the psychology behind business tend to be a little bit easier when you're around folks that are really stuck in the way we used to do things or we do it like this, that becomes a challenge because then there's not growth there.
SPEAKER_01:I also know you were a college athlete, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I played field hockey. It's great, great workout. Bad for the back, but great workout.
SPEAKER_01:But you know, my daughter is six, and I think team sports are really important. She has a tendency to gravitate toward, I guess it's not individual sports, like she does dance, which I guess is a different type of team sport, actually. It is team oriented, she does like ice skating. I guess ice skating would be individual. Dance is like they're on stage together, so I guess it is there's a team dynamic. Um but I it was really important for me for her to play uh a team sport, so I let her pick, but she ended up picking soccer. At first, she actually didn't like it. Um, but she got there. I think she had like a little crush actually on a little boy on the team, which really helped. Um, so I was like, oh, I have mixed feelings about that.
SPEAKER_00:Books not boys, books not boys.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, but she ended up really enjoying it. I think there's from a work ethic perspective, some of the grit determination, rolling up your sleeves, communication, all those things are really important. And I think too, it's like at a college level, those are formative years. So it's like you're doing psychology, you're also competing like in a competitive environment and team environment. I'm sure that has had a big impact too on how you operate as a leader in a highly competitive industry.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the discipline aspect of it, it's the showing up. And I definitely got that from sports too. That discipline of I made a commitment, I'm gonna do it. That's why I always wanted my daughter to play sports, but I wanted her to come to the conclusion that she wanted to play sports.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It's the hard part as a parent, right? Like there's something important and you don't want to force it, but you're trying to guide your child a thousand percent. And also let like let them lean into their strengths and interests. It's another tightrope we keep talking about with balancing acts. I'm constantly striving to be better at.
SPEAKER_00:I was laughing because Joe, uh, my daughter Josephine, she started out with soccer and she didn't want to score, she only wanted to play defense. And when you're that little, they don't have goalies, and she would always just go in the goal. And then one day she's like, Yeah, I don't really want to do this anymore. And I was like, You think you want to try field hockey? And she's like, Yeah. And I was like, Yes. Because I really was like, How can we not having her play field hockey? Why don't you coach? And I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. My kid knows me as her mother. She does not know me as the athlete, and those are two very different people.
SPEAKER_01:It's like knowing your roles in life, your roles and responsibilities to different people, and it's like you have different aspects of your identity. There's you as a leader, there's you as like a competitor, right? As a mother, and yeah, that that is very true too. So I'm very competitive. My background, I used to box and do Muay Thai, like for a living, actually, it was my job for about four years. There's time spans where I actually lived in a boxing gym that was competing. Um, and that was my life. And so there's that part of me, like as a I started coaching boxing when I was in high school too. So I was already competing and leading by the time I graduated high school. So there's that part of me that wants to instill those values with her, but I've noticed that when I try too hard, she pulls back.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. When she gets older, that's gonna shift for you a little bit. So I'm like the LSU basketball coach on the sideline. I'm like flaring my arms, I know all the girls' names on the team. I'm telling, and and it's funny because her town coach is like, I love that you're on the other side because they can hear both of it. But it's funny because I started to notice my kiddos picking up some of the things because, like, sometimes her team is really good. They've been playing together since like second, third grade together, and they all play club. So sometimes being a goalie, which is a really tough position for anybody to play, it's a big mental thing. I can see her every so often being like, you know, looking at the sky or whatever, and I could see the ball coming, and I start yelling at him like, Joe, look alive, look alive. And I didn't realize how much that was gonna stick because there was one game and it was freezing. It was our Friday Night Lights game, and I was like, I'm definitely not running up and down the sidelines today. I got the hand warmers, I'm gonna sit here, drink a coffee, whatever. And then all of a sudden, I could hear her yelling to the defensemen in the midfielders to start looking alive because the ball was starting to transition and people were flat footed. So now, mind you, she's 12 and it took some time. She would not always listen to me, she would cry at games. So I had to work with the coach to get her to shift. And then once it started to shift from the mental strength standpoint, then it got a little bit easier. But a lot of times kids don't want to listen to their parents. I mean, think about we when you were growing up. I mean, I my father was a strict, I listened to everything he said. My mom, I got away with bloody murder. She won't be watching this podcast, so I'm okay. But I used to be able to get away with everything. Yeah. Just I think for your daughter, I think that the both types of sports are important because individual sports, it's all about you and you being better each day. Team sports is you could be the best person on the on the field, but that's not gonna matter you're if you can't work with your team.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I have a subscription through a masterclass. I highly recommend it to anybody. I just watched the Coach K one on value-based leadership. Uh Coach K, the former head coach for Duke. I love him, just in general, like as a person, as a leader. And he brings a really unique perspective to sports. But what he does to sports could actually be used in any organization. Because if you have a team that's value-based and you're a value-based leader, you are working together to move things forward and you stick with your values. He had like some of his old players come on and some that went to the NBA, some that went to the NBA and started their own business, businesses, and they talk about, you know, living in the core values, in your values. And I think sometimes backing it like lost in a lot of different things. But every organization or every sport that I ever played that lived within those values was successful. I think sometimes those things could be like uh words on a poster.
SPEAKER_01:It's the same with companies, though, right? It's like some companies actually live and breathe values and others don't. Sometimes the values are stated that they live and breathe. Other times it's like that's just how the culture operates and they don't necessarily talk about it. But I recently reread uh Stephen, is it Covey or Covey's uh Seven Habits Highly Affected People? I don't know if you ever read that one.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, yeah. It was it's been a long time since uh read it, but I the four agreements. It's funny because every so often, like I'll have to go and read them based off of a scenario. And if you stick with them, and I'll send them to you afterwards because I have a whole little picture. That's another good one, too. But the seven habits, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Seven habits of highly effective people, I think is what it's called. It talks about like being a value-centered person, yep, right? Like in and really understanding your values and principles. I guess he segments the two concepts. Principles are like factual, they're just truths of life. So he has different principles about communication to yourself, communication to other people, principles in terms of what you prioritize in life. And then he said values are what principles you place value on, or maybe you place value on things that aren't sound principles. It was interesting because it it started to get me thinking again about like, okay, what are my values? And sometimes, too, it's like when life is moving really fast, you think you know your values, but then you think about where your headspace is and is it actually aligned? How have they evolved? Do I have weeds growing? Well, maybe it's time to recenter uh as well, right? So I think like that principle value-based living is really key to the organizational success. So I'm building a go-to-market team at my company Secure Vision to essentially achieve the next level of scale. I've been thinking a lot about principles and values, and for instance, like one value or one principle that I'm trying to focus on is like just down the pipe collaboration and a principle of now. I don't know for certain if this is 100% true, but I think it's true based on my experience as a leader. Internal competition is bad for salespeople. Um, I didn't want an environment where my reps are competing against each other to be number one. Not that it's unhealthy to want to be the best at your job. Like, frankly, I'm competitive, I want to be the best rep. You know what I mean? But like not to the detriment of not collaborating, I guess is what I'm saying. It's okay to want to be the best, but understanding being the best in a team sport is leading your team and empowering your team, and that is part of what makes you a leader and the best player. Like, it's okay to want to be the best version of yourself, and I suppose the best player, right? But what how do we define what the best player means? And what so when I was thinking about our compensation plan and building out the team, a lot of it is a lot more centric on achieving team goals, even for my sales reps and trying to build a culture where I have competitive, like you know, people, right? So it's like, okay, how do we build a culture where it's collaborative first? Because my thought process is look, we have several reps on the team, and as we scale, hopefully we'll have more, right? It's somebody figures out how to book two more meetings a month, but they are hyper focused on being the top performing rep, then maybe they don't share with the other several reps how to book two more meetings. So as a result, we're booking two more meetings versus eight more meetings. Wow. You know what I mean? And so it's been really cool and getting back to like principles and values. What's really interesting is that we're actually I'm so proud of my team, uh, my two SDRs, because they actually came to me last week and they were like, hey, look, opposed to working independently on our own leads, we found a way to work together and it's gonna help us be more efficient because we don't have to spend double the amount of time researching. Would it be all right if we just split our commissions in half and worked on the same lead flow? And the way we're set up like that, I was like, Well, is it gonna work? And they're like, Yeah, like here's why. And they showed me the logic and the data around how it could be effective by them doing slightly different things versus all both doing the same thing. And I was like, Yes, it was so cool because it was like they're basically decided to look, we're gonna hit our goal and our quota and our commissions together. But again, I think it's just getting back to the values and the principles that you're speaking about in terms of understanding human psychology and competitive sports, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's actually that's an awesome story, and you should share that more because sales is competitive. When we were looking at redoing our core, I don't want to say redoing, enhancing our core values, because our core values here definitely resonated four years ago. I mean, we've evolved. And one of the ones that we added was uh a strong recommendation from our CEO, our new CEO, was uh being customer obsessed. And actually, every company that I worked at that that has customers, that was always a baseline. And it's funny because people are like, Oh, I'm not in sales, I don't know what that means. And I'm like, You're in recruiting, right? Our customers are candidates and our stakeholders and our hiring leaders, and how can we be customer obsessed? Like, how can we make a white glove process or whatever? That's something that like I'm super excited that we now have and we just rolled out because for us, it's not only our salespeople, but they have to work with customer success, right? And so, you know, because once you have a customer, how do you do expansions? How do you do renewals? It ultimately is a team sport, even though individuals are responsible, quote unquote, for their numbers. There's always opportunity to to make those things more efficient. But I loved how in your story where they, I mean, they're the ones that came up with it, right?
SPEAKER_01:I know I was so I was so I want to say like surprised because I don't want to like you know, I I believe in both of them, right? And it's but it wasn't expected to still like exceeded my expectations, right? It was still like, oh wow, okay, this is working, and it was great. It was like the first moment, so we're really focused on building a cohesive revenue unit. So we have two new business sales reps, one like customer sales rep, and then two marketers, right? And we're standing up this go-to-market team. We started two and a half months ago, and it's like trying to figure out how to make everybody work together in this cohesive unit where we're getting exponential or additional gains by working together, and we're figuring it out, right? Um, but yeah, this was like the first, it felt like the first breakthrough in terms of the team taking the lead versus me as a leader. This was something that was brought to me as a solution, not only that, but with the reasons why it would work and be more effective.
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes will bring great rewards. I think sometimes people are like, Oh, this is my job and this is what I need to do. I'm big in try it. As long as you're not breaking the law.
SPEAKER_01:I mean that one.
SPEAKER_00:Try it. Like if you don't do anything illegal and it works, then come back and share the story. I mean, it is about storytelling too, right? I have a woman on my team, Heidi, who I go to her for any AI question. I mean, she's like probably one of the best go-to-market recruiters. Don't try to steal her. I know where you live. Um she's like one of the best go-to-market recruiters, and she's always forward thinking. Like, oh, how do I make my job run my desk and the people around me easier? And she, I mean, she built us a an AI machine. I can't even begin to even really explain what she did, but we were all like, this is amazing. And I mean, it takes us five minutes to redo a job description, create behavioral interview, pull out the the core, um, skills of the role, what KPIs you should be measuring. It's phenomenal. And so she's now she's helping different parts within our HR group create, you know, in Gemini create gems to make it easier. Like, why are you trying to dig through a policy to find out something when you literally can just ask the bot, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:She'd be built the TA machine all on her own. She's gonna be helping the legal team, you know, with some of the stuff and the AI stuff. So as you're building out your team and as you build out teams, you have to think about some competency behavioral questions that would be good to evaluate somebody on things like your core values and principles. I think that's the important piece, especially when it comes to growth mindset. Because you are gonna want more of your SDRs and other folks to come to you and say, Hey, I know we're doing it this way, but we were looking at it in this, and we think if we do X, Y, and Z, it could yield this, and they may ask you to try it, or they may just do it and say, Hey, here's the result. So I truly believe in hiring people around you that are smarter than you. Surround yourself with smart, talented people. Never be afraid of it, because I've learned from From my team through the years. It doesn't matter what company. I will never claim to be the smartest guy or girl in the room. But when you surround yourself with people, you surround yourself around high performers, your productivity and your ability to learn skyrockets. You put yourself around fixed-minded folks and low performers, your productivity, it's just gonna take a step back. It's true. And you've probably seen this even with sports.
SPEAKER_01:And I suppose this is probably the truth for any athlete that's at like in the zone or peak state, yeah, where all you can think about is what's directly in front of you. And it's uh it is sort of counterintuitive. And the older I get, the more in a way it's becomes more counterintuitive to me. Almost like this peace that you get from being in a fight, it's like everything else fades away. And so there's like, of course, the nerves leading up to the fight, and sometimes it'd be worse than others. A lot of times I learned how to flip it into just intensity where I was just in the zone ready to go in and just go. But when I was in the ring, and the first time you start trading punches, it's like any kind of fear that things like dissipates, and you're just in it, right? Uh, and then it's like muscle memory, and you got the adrenaline going. It was this incredible experience. It was almost like weird how it became this kind of therapeutic, peaceful, in a sense, experience despite being in the ring, right?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. Now that I'm saying this out loud, I'm actually starting to realize how much this helped me in business. Before games, I would visualize the plays, I'd have the game in my head before we stepped on the field. I do that with difficult conversations, presentations, things like that. It's actually, I think about this even more. So I took my daughter to a clinic northeast, and they were teaching them how to dive. And she was like, When am I ever gonna do this? I was like, listen, you keep practicing it when the time's right, it will happen. And it was a Friday night lights game, and we're playing a team that every year wins state championship, and we were losing, which is totally fine because they're a great team. And then this girl went to go shoot a ball, and then she dove. Oh, I just got goosebumps saying it. She dove and saved it, and the entire place erupted. Like the referees, the other and she knows some of the girls on the other team because they go to camp and play club together and stuff like that. And that one was a turning point for her. It clicked in for her that, like, all right, you're right. If I practice, when it comes to actually stepping on the field, it's gonna come, right? It's gonna be like muscle mainly. Two, I think that was the first time I had ever seen her lose and be happy. Because I was like, it's not always about winning, although the competitor in me always wants to win. It's actually about applying what you've been practicing and moving the needle forward with each time you play. Those things that you learn in individual sports and team sports, those are legit life lessons, whether it's work or just life that will help you push through. I mean, having the discipline, showing up, applying yourself, getting the muscle memory, when the big stuff happens, you get through it, right? It's one of those things. And earlier on when I was talking about like you just go through it, I feel that my training has taught me you only take it practice to practice. Practice to practice leads to the games, games lead to the season, and even in tough things in business, too. I think of through the years, I mean, I've we've lost colleagues, and you get through it if you're you know together.
SPEAKER_01:The psychology of the person really, it's I think hiring too. It's about since you can understand the congruency or the consistency of a person, we'll tell you a lot about how effective they can be in terms of like if they're principle-centered, value-centered, because that's how they approach everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm definitely a family-based person. I treat for those who allow me to, I treat my team like my family. I care for them. I think that's important too, because sometimes people go into a company and they it's a team. And I have Heidi who lives in London. Every time she comes, she brings me little trinkets, you know, for Josie from London. She's got a teddy bear and a keychain. I think it that's important because again, they're people, they're gonna go through tough stuff. I'm gonna go through tough stuff. I was working out of hospital rooms almost twice a week during the summer, and they're like, shut down, I got you. You always get me, I got you. And knowing that I had that support made a really tough time. Plus, my boss is phenomenal. He was like, What are you doing? Get offline. Bye. I know you work all different hours, just go. I trust you. Having that relationship and having that trust is that's not always easy to find. So you have to create psychological safety. It's important. Everybody, you know, you're gonna spend 40 plus hours with people. Yeah, you might as well get to know them and have a little fun in the meantime. I never have to worry about folks on my team, ever. I know they're gonna do what they do. I'm not gonna micromanage them. They know if they need help, I'm there. I'm always there to support them. And the recruiting side of my house is they're great. I mean, they're seasoned, they work well together. Anytime there's a new employee, they buddy up. They want that person to be, you know, be just as successful. And it's really cool to see that. So it's like a our own little sonotype family, which is great.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. And it makes work a lot more fulfilling when you actually feel like you can give and contribute to folks, and you feel like that you can also go to a place where people care about you. It's like it's bigger than the product, it's bigger than what you're building. I think it's really important.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, in the relationships that I have here, similar to like when I worked at CVS, and so I there is some relationships that I will have probably for the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I have some folks that I worked with at Kronos. One of the guys on my team dressed up as Elmo for my kids' birthday. So yeah, I think that's the other thing too. And my concern sometimes with AI is it's gonna start to remove the human out of things. There's just so much human in this. I mean, don't get me wrong, AI is fantastic, but it shouldn't completely wipe people out. Where applied appropriately can be very efficient, but in recruiting, you need to have I don't know how you wouldn't want to have that personal touch, you know.
SPEAKER_01:I agree. So we have one more time for one more question, I think, for today's episode. I would love to ask you what is the best piece of career or leadership advice you've ever received.
SPEAKER_00:Come from curious in every every situation. Don't assume, or if you're gonna assume it's assume positive intent, but come from curious, ask questions, right? Because I think it's important and it also allows you to connect with the person and why did they just say what they did or why did they do what they did? There's reasons, and sometimes it's not what you think. So come from curious. I like that one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I like that one too. Well, Sarah, thank you. This has been a lot of fun, uh, great conversation, great episode. I do really appreciate you spending the time to be here with us today and contributing to our community and sharing your experiences.
