Zach Selch walks job candidates through the full picture: the company's founding story, finances, and market position, then the exact sales targets and territories they'd own. He's honest about limited internal advancement but notes his former hires have become CEOs and VPs elsewhere. He tells candidates the real risks of joining a startup so they can decide with their eyes open.
Chapters
I talk a lot about what I want to say, what I want to ask people when I interview them, but I haven't talked a lot about what I say to people when I interview them. So if I'm interviewing somebody for a job, first of all, I really, really want them to want the job. I want everybody I interview to think that this is the perfect job for them. So I do want to make it attractive. On the other hand, I want to be very honest with them. I want them to know what the side— the downside and the upside are of the job. So first of all, I'm going to tell them about why our customers buy our product, what the benefits are, what the sales, the unique selling points are, what our advantages are over our competition, what the markets we play in are, and what the importance is of those markets. Are they growing? What the numbers are. I want to give them a good solid feel for what they can do. Momentico, okay? I want to give them a good solid feel for what we can do for them and what they can do for us. Okay, I'm gonna go through the history of the company, and by that I mean I want to go through the founders, why the company exists, who started it, what the hierarchy is, how we have financed it over the years, when we became profitable, why we became profitable, if we had any big slumps or anything like that. All that stuff I want to discuss. I also want to talk about what the nature of the job is. What exactly do I expect from this guy? Am I looking to him to sign up new distributors? Am I looking to him— am I going to give him a group of existing distributors that I chose, or somebody else chose, and now he has to live with? Is it direct selling? Who's the customer that he's going to be interfacing with? Is it multiple levels of customers? What the different markets are, all that. I want to make that very, very clear. Okay, and then I'm going to talk about the career path. And very often in my particular situation, I'm not going to offer somebody a career path within my company. Very often the people I'm hiring, I know that they aren't going to advance in my company. In an American corporation, some guy who's a fantastic sales manager for the Middle East or for Latin America, very often American corporations just aren't going to make room for them in upper management. Okay, but People who work for me very often do very, very well in other companies. Okay, I've had 6 people who worked for me go on to become CEOs. I've had people go on to be— I've had dozens of people go on to become VPs and directors of sales in other companies. And I tell people that. I say, I'm going to mentor you. Part of my contract with you is I'm going to help you succeed later on in life. And I'll talk to them about that. There may not be something for you here, but in 2 to 5 years you'll move on. And you'll move on having been mentored by me and have some experience. I also might say, you know, if I want to warn them, I could say, look, this is a startup, there are risks involved, I want you to be clear. I don't want anybody leaving their job and coming to work for me if I'm not giving them the information they need to know about where this could go in the future. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
