?? How You Hire Can Make or Break Your Career

When you're entrusted with building a team, it's important that you hire carefully.

Here is something I've noticed.

• The worst leaders hire breezily. They change out team members nonchalantly, as if they’re swapping out cheap lawn furniture. These are not people who build things to last. They take hiring lightly. Almost as if they don’t care if the role just blows away with the wind.
• Mediocre leaders follow templates. This leader at least takes measurements for the furniture they're putting in to make sure it will generally fit the space — often cloning a job spec someone else wrote. This person hires according to what they think will fit in a more standard and typical way. Average leaders will use average job specs. And they'll probably build average teams as a result.
• The best leaders take extreme care. They behave like an antique appraiser - and an interior designer. They want to know the history and the value of the individual, how the person was crafted, how they came to be. They notice the details, patina, and minute details most wouldn't notice — but they know the signs of authenticity when they see them. They also consider the piece on its own, but how it will tone in with the rest of the details of the room, add something special, and complement what's already there.

The best hiring managers know each and every hire is a vital opportunity to up-level a team and reconfigure from within.

Choosing people for a team wisely, thoughtfully and carefully is a skill you need to master if you want to grow in your career.

The best leaders don’t just “fill a role.” They look for a highly specific profile. They don't harvest from a field of candidates. They hunt for the exact type of person they have in mind.

Constraints Can Help Us Make Better Hiring Decisions

When you're resource-constrained, you tend to think more carefully about each and every hire. That can come at a cost of your growth slowing down, but there are times and stages when this is important in business.

I spent most of my tech career so far experiencing a “deep VC pockets” tech hiring boom across multiple companies. Those were in many ways, the glory days — where hiring lots of people quickly in the name of growth (not profit) was the norm.

That gave rise to a lot of managers who learned a lot of bad habits.

Times are very different today.

Margins matter more today, and earlier in a company’s growth trajectory, than they used to, at least in the world I'm most familiar with (B2B software).

This is both good and bad.

Many hiring managers in tech learned bad habits of "hurry up and fill the role" during hyper-growth times. Now, many are learning to hire more carefully and intentionally than ever before.

There are some people who already know how to hire carefully, AND at scale…

But those folks are rare.

Most people don’t actually know how to hire well.

Either because they have not been trained to do so with as much care as is warranted, or they haven't gone through enough tough times to forced by constraints to make every hiring decision count, because for them it carries high levels of risk.

Set yourself apart from the fray by hiring more carefully than you probably think you need to.

How you hire determines who you hire.

And who you hire determines, to a great degree, the success you'll see in your career.

Take extreme care when hiring.

Be specific.

Notice details.

That is how you build truly great teams, which build great companies, and can lead to great careers.

One very careful choice at a time.

Grace Notes

We had such a fun week this past week on my team here at Zappi .

One of the highlights was a fun little competition we held within our Marketing Kick Off sessions.

The great thing about being in marketing is that you not only get to help drive business results.

You get to be creative while you do it!

So, instead of a BLAH group exercise, we played Top Chef: Marketing Edition.

On top of the many other sessions we did on things like process, metrics, and operating as a high-performing, world-class marketing team... we cooked up some fun "recipes" (campaign ideas) with high "nutritional content" (growth metrics) on our marketing team and had a blast.

Because we serve the world's best B2C brands, I often tell my team that we have both the honor and the challenge of marketing to the world's best marketers. It's a pretty special challenge to rise to for a B2B tech brand, and one that I love.

Also, Melissa Coito and our (growing) product marketing team did their own offsite at our Boston office, and also got to spend lots of time in person with Zappi CEO Aaron Kechley .

We're expanding the product marketing team this year, and I am so excited about the impact we'll drive.

I also got to take some time off with my husband and daughters for the holidays, and managed to sneak in a trip to the Caribbean.

I certainly soaked up what I hope will be enough sunshine to last me through another New England snowy winter here in New England!

Rest in Peace

What a legacy of service and humanitarian work President Jimmy Carter left behind over the many long years he lived.

While we all knew it was coming, I felt sad to learn of his passing.

The photo below was taken from a talk I gave 12 years ago, about his work for linguistic minorities in the United States, over the course of his career.

It was an important stop on my book tour for FOUND IN TRANSLATION, at the Jimmy Carter presidential library and museum in Atlanta.

He and his wife were not in the room that day, but he saw a recording of the talk, and sent me a thank-you letter and signed it personally.

Class act.

May he rest in the peace knowing how much good he did for others.

Connect with Me

Thank you for reading this newsletter! I hope you found it helpful.

Here are 3 other ways we can connect:

1. Get my next book

My new book, Brand Global, Adapt Local, with Katherine Melchior Ray, comes out in June.

We met in person over the holiday break.

How fun to finally get to meet in person after collaborating on the book remotely all this time!

And as marketers do, we of course had to get a quick little photo with our book cover!

This book is for CMOs, brand managers, and marketers.

And for everyone else involved in building global brands too.

I cannot wait for it to reach our globally minded colleagues and friends everywhere!

2. Get my recent book

If your company is expanding internationally, you can also get your copy of my third book, Take Your Company Global, endorsed by executives from Microsoft, Harvard Business School, Calendly, and HubSpot.

3. Schedule an appearance

I often do blog interviews, author talks, webinars, and podcast guest appearances.

Message me here on LinkedIn, or email me: nataly (at) borntobeglobal.com.

You can also reach out directly on my website, Born to Be Global.

Thank you for reading!

Nataly