Unlocking Success: The Power of Hiring Above and Growing Together with ZoomInfo's CEO

Name: Unlocking Success: The Power of Hiring Above and Growing Together with ZoomInfo's CEO
Uploaded: 2023-10-17T14:15:03+00:00
Duration: 51 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this segment, the ZoomInfo CEO explains a hiring philosophy that emphasizes bringing in leaders who are a step above the current team members. The…

17 Oct 2023 · 1 min

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In this segment, the ZoomInfo CEO explains a hiring philosophy that emphasizes bringing in leaders who are a step above the current team members. The core idea is to recruit senior talent who have already experienced the next stage of growth, allowing existing employees to learn directly from them. The speaker illustrates the approach with the hiring of the company's first Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), describing how he convinced the existing head of HR to trust the new, more experienced hire as a mentor. He also warns that a poor senior hire can create significant problems, underscoring the importance of careful selection.

Chapters

You bring in— so we often bring in somebody above that person, somebody who's seen that next stage. The key about this is, and we've done it all across our business, the key about this is you have to get somebody who's actually better than that person to go above them. Because if you mess up that hire, then it's a real mess. So if you go like, when we hired our first CHRO, I went to our existing head of HR who had grown up at the company, and I said, I said, "Look, if you trust me, I'm gonna get someone that you're gonna learn a lot from over the next few years, who's seen it before, that you're gonna be able to grow with, and I'm not gonna get bamboozled into the next hire. I'm gonna do a good job of getting the next person, and you'll be able to grow and learn from them." And, you know, that usually works.