Flexport's ex-CRO explains how to recruit top talent: tell candidates exactly how the role will change their life in four years. If you can't articulate that, it's a bad fit. He uses the example of an SDR enduring 18 months of hell to become a full seller, the kind of concrete path that persuades people to leave stable jobs.
We wanted to find people at an arc in their career where whatever the job was made sense, where, like someone had to be able to tell us a story about why the job specifically that we were talking to them about, or maybe I should reverse it. We had to be able to tell them a story about why the job we're talking to them about was going to change their life on a four year time horizon. And if you couldn't have that conversation with someone, honestly, it either meant that they were a mismatch for the role or it meant that you hadn't thought enough about how to give them what they needed to actually take the job. Because if you're asking someone to give up the certainty of a Google, an Apple, a Facebook, or even at this point, a Brex, a rippling, a Flexport, if you're asking people to give up that certainty, you've got to offer them the opportunity to change their life and you've got to have that conversation with them very directly. I think that's one of the things we got super good at in our sales org was Ashley and I were talking about this backstage of where do you want to be? Where do you see your career developing? Are you willing to put in the 18 months of hell that is being an SDR because becoming a full seller is that meaningful to you?
