In this informal, conversational video Ryan Shank of PhoneWagon explains why and how to build detailed personas to improve hiring (specifically for a VP of Engineering) and customer targeting. He recounts a recent search for a lead developer, noting that generic job postings rarely attract the ideal candidate. To address this, his team created a highly granular persona—named generically as Chris/Christine—detailing location, education, work history, hobbies, favorite food, SAT score, financial status, character traits, and even the online communities and Twitch channels they might frequent. Shank cites the book The Compound Effect, which uses a similarly detailed approach for identifying an ideal spouse, as inspiration for the level of specificity. He argues that constructing such a persona forces the recruiter to think concretely about where the target person lives, what they enjoy, and where they congregate online, enabling more focused outreach and increasing the likelihood of finding a match. The video concludes that personas help clarify exactly what you’re looking for, making the search process more efficient and seemingly allowing the “universe” to present the right candidates.
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Whoa! Hey there, what's up guys? So this is Ryan from PhoneWagon. I wanna talk to you guys today actually about personas and how, you know, using personas can help you identify, you know, either customers or potential employees and things like that. So what I've done recently, so we're actually searching, by the way, this is a huge plug, there's gonna be a link in the description, we're searching for a VP of engineering. Which is basically gonna be like our lead developer onshore, in-house. I want them to sit right next to me, right there. So, you know, and we've been searching for this person, we actually got close, I had an offer, I was in negotiations with someone, and then they ended up, you know, they didn't wanna come on board with the startup. I still want him to join the company somehow, so if you're watching this, join us. Anyway, so what I've done recently though, and you know, we just had a board meeting the other day and we were like, you know, We gotta find this person, okay? And you can't just put job descriptions up and expect, you know, the person of your dreams to just, you know, walk into the job and apply and then just, you know, by chance. I feel, I don't know what the number is, but I feel like it's super low that that actually happens, okay? So what we've done recently is actually create this right here. We basically created a persona, right? It could be Chris, it could be Christine, it doesn't matter, okay? But it's like, you know, This is the person. They live in Brooklyn, went to Carnegie Mellon. They maybe work at Zocdoc. They're a software engineer. You know, they play piano. Their favorite food is Roberto's, Roberta's Pizza. They're from Newport Beach. They got a 2250 on their SAT. So I was also reading this book called The Compound Effect, and what the author did is he actually did this with his potential. He did this for who he wants to date. He wrote down the characteristics of an ideal spouse, right? Down to the smell of their hair, texture of the hair and everything. And he said he went super, super granular. That's, you know, what we did there. We said, you know, how much cash do they currently have in their bank account, character traits, things like that. And what I think happens when you do this exercise is you start to think about like, okay, this person, you know, because in my head I was like, all right, this is, you know, we need to find a developer. All right, you know, where do these people do? I don't know, right? But then you start to like, all right, they eat this food, this is how— this is what they do for their workout, they have a spouse here, this is what their spouse does, this is like, you know, the online communities that they hang out in, are and like Twitch streaming channels, things like that, right? So you start to like think about it and then you can, you know, kind of go to where they potentially might be, you know, so we personified, if that's a word, who this person is, and again, like this is just a persona, okay? But I actually think the person that we're going to find is going to be incredibly similar to this persona that we created up here, okay? So that's what we did and I think there's just like a ton of value in doing that just because, you know, you start to understand exactly what you're looking for and then you're able to then go and, you know, and find it. Or that person, you know, you start to understand who that person is, and then the universe just sort of like puts them, puts them out there in front of you. So that's the importance of personas, but really starting to just understand and know what you want, um, and then you can understand like how to go and get it. Okay, so that's the video for today. Personas. See ya.
