A short talk by Jason M. Lemkin about the pitfalls when a top individual-contributor (IC) rep is promoted to a manager without hiring experience. Using an example (Nalayne → Bill), Lemkin explains how a new manager’s lack of hiring network and skills can lead to poor recruiting choices, reliance on recruiters, and hiring mediocre ‘C’ reps, harming the team.
She's the best rep, right? She wants the ring. Not all reps want to be managers because there's downside. But she wants it. She wants it. And she put in the years and she put in three years at Drata and crushed it. But you know what Nalayne never did at Drata? She never hired anybody. She was an IC and she hit her number. What happens? And I'm making up a lane. Let's call him Bill instead. Bill comes over from Drata, the number one rep. And Bill doesn't know who to hire. And Bill tries to hire the other folks at Drata but they would want to leave Drata and Bill doesn't know how to hire. Bill's never hired a quota carrying rep and Bill can't find anybody. And 30 days go by and it's bad. And so Bill hires a random recruiter and Bill starts bringing in random people because he doesn't. Because he doesn't have a network to pull from and he doesn't have people to bring in and he doesn't know. And the random recruiter gives them the really mediocre candidates and they don't really want to work for Bill because he's never done this before and he's not that polished. And you start hiring C reps into it.
