Bonus Episode 3 – Qualities Of A CRO Specialist

My name is Khalil Slade, and I love to talk about conversion rate optimization.

I'm Simba, and I love asking questions about conversion optimization.

This is CRO Live Hour, a show all about a B testing, experimentation, and conversion rate optimization.

Each episode, Khaled amazes me, answering some of the difficult CRO questions, dropping insights like, it's no big deal, while pretty.

Much every episode will take on a new set of conversion rate optimization questions that are not easy. We will talk strategies, we will talk process, and we will talk tactics. Simba will be bringing all the questions.

Oh, man. I bring tough questions like, do a B testing results fade over time? How do you go from low to high testing velocity? How do you measure the success of a conversion funnel? And how do you align your CRO program with a growth strategy? Yeah, Khalid, these are very, very tough questions.

Yes, they are, but we always answer them here. And if you love conversion optimization like we do, and certainly like Simba does, subscribe to the CRO Live, our podcast today, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome to yet another episode of the CRO Live Hour podcast. I'm your host, Simba Dube. So in today's episode, we'll be focusing on qualities of a CRO specialist. What are the skills that make up a great CRO specialist? So I had a chat with Khalid Saleh about this, and then this is what he had to say.

Senior person has lots of experience, so that's a huge plus. They've already done a B testing. I don't have to train them a lot, so that's a plus for somebody who is senior. A disadvantage with somebody who is senior is sometimes they might not be used to how we run things. I've hired senior CROs who are absolutely brilliant in their analysis, but they probably are not used to how deep we dig and how fast we move. Doing both kind of digging really deep and moving really fast. It's a very unique skill. Not everybody's able to do that. Somebody can dig really deep, do a lot of analysis, but at the same time, they might produce two, three experiments a month. Now, digging really deep and doing eight, 12, 20 experiments a month, that's a whole other level. So that's some something that I always keep in mind with senior CROs. With somebody who is junior, it's a different ball game. I'm going to train them in the next two years and I'm going to help them grow. The very first thing that we look at, how well they articulate different points, what kind of Background they have, what kind of projects that they worked with, let's say they're senior, why are they thinking about leaving their current job? Those are some of the kind of like, you know, the basics. Number two, whether it's senior or junior, by the way, I look for how much attention they pay to details. A successful CRO is very detail oriented. The type of analysis that you have to do, the type of work that you have to do, requires somebody who pays close attention to details. You're spending a lot of time talking to customers of the different websites that you're optimizing. You're spending a lot of time looking at analytics. You have to have an eye for detail. You have to have an ear for detail. You can sit through a customer interview, it's 45 minutes to 60 minutes, and you can come out and say, well, there was nothing interesting. I can sit through it. Or somebody with experience can sit through it and come out and say, oh my God, the insights that I got, you would think we were sitting in two different meetings, two different interviews, same thing. With analytics, are you able to drill really deep beyond, oh, here's the bounce rate, here's the exit rate, here's the funnel and how it breaks. Okay, let's drill a lot deeper. A third thing that I look at is the type of analysis that person does. This is perhaps something that pertains to somebody who's more senior. There are different ways that we use to measure the analysis. This could be as simple as, hey, let's talk about a recent a B test that you've done. Talk to me about the analysis. How did you come up with the idea? What was the data that guided you to come up with the idea? What was the post test analysis? This is a bit different from hiring a junior. Usually with juniors, we will give them an actual small project and we'll see. We want to see their analysis, we want to see the effort. With juniors, I want to see the effort more than the actual analysis. I might be impressed by your analysis, but if you didn't even put any effort, that's just a no, no for me. And then I look at your ability to present and sell your ideas to others. People find it very strange when I say sell your ideas, you're always selling your ideas. Correct. You're either convincing stakeholders, you're convincing designers, you're convincing somebody on the other side that we should be able to test this. If you're not able to present your ideas in persuasive manner, if you're not able to defend your ideas in persuasive man. If you're not able to do post this analysis in a persuasive manner, you're not going to succeed as a CRO. I recall maybe like about five, six months ago, somebody applied and I told them your presentation skills are very important. So from the get go, record a short video for me. Tell me about your experience. It's a one minute video and I want to see them on camera and how they present themselves. Replied to me and said, why is that? I told him, well, you know, you're going to be talking to clients, you're going to be selling ideas. He's like, I don't want to work with clients, I just want to work on internal projects. And I thought it was funny because even on internal projects you're always selling, whether you recognize it or not. You're always persuading people and convincing them that here is the right path, here's how we move forward and you have to have the confidence to do that. So for me, that candidate was not a good match. And I'm like, oh, thank God we've gotten to that point prior to even going through the interview process.