Next Venture takes an outbound approach to target and screen interested candidates who are exactly what you are looking for.
You make great hires… without holding your calendar hostage
✅ If you are selling B2B software
✅ Have at least $500,000 in ARR
✅ Are selling a product with an ACV of more than $10,000
✅ Are looking to hire people in the United States of America
If you aren't able to answer "yes" to these four questions, we won't be able to help you
.png)
An effective hiring process is a competitive advantage
You don't start a SaaS company to play small
And you don't raise venture capital unless you're looking for an outsized return
BUT when you raise venture capital, you're taking on rocket fuel
You need to get results, and you need them quick
You also want to keep your hiring bar high
And you're being pulled in a thousand directions every day
Maybe you don't want to work with a recruiter
After all, this is not a cheap exercise
So instead of gatekeeping, let talk about the tools we use, how much they cost and how we approach search.
Salespeople are pretty easy to find - they tend to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn finding their initial customers.
These are the three main tools we use to identify top talent
We build a custom list of companies to search through. Usually we are looking to find companies that sell to similar personas, similar deal sizes and similar industries to your current company.
Real talk: if you're a Series A startup, 99/100 times you are not going to recruit someone amazing over from Databricks or Stripe, anymore than you will find someone amazing from Facebook or Google.
They are big companies now - and you're competing with every single other startup that thinks that the salespeople at these companies are going to make all of the difference (spoiler alert: they won't).
There is a cheaper alternative - Sales Navigator is 1/10th of the price, and hooks in nicely with all of your sales automation tools. BUT the workflow is significantly worse, you don't get to see who's discreetly looking for new opportunities. If you don't value your time, I would recommend trying to use Sales Navigator to recruit salespeople. You also can't use Gem.
It's a lot more subtle than the green "Open to work" banner - and you'll only see it with a Recruiter account.
LinkedIn doesn't play nicely
And why would they?
They have the perfect business - after all, what is LinkedIn if not an enormous self updating database
If they had opened this up to anyone and everyone, Microsoft wouldn't have spent $26 billion back in 2016 buying the platform (which was an incredible deal when you think about it)
If sales is living in 2023, recruiting tech lives in 2005. The ONLY variables you can add to an InMail is First Name, Last Name and Full Name. You can't schedule InMails. You can't run a sequence of InMails. The entire process is MANUAL
Which is why we also use Gem to outreach to the right candidates
I'm sure you're thinking - I've already got Salesloft, Outreach or Smartlead… why can't I just use that?
The core problem is your data
Gem gives you personal email addresses as the first option
And while no VP of Sales wants your pitch in their personal Gmail, they're more than happy to hear about a job opportunity
This is a job ad from August 2023. It was up for about 4 days.
There are a few reasons this is a massive problem
The best people often aren't looking
Those ones who you want are usually looking through their network, rather than applying
If we take 30 seconds per applicant, we're spending almost 7 HOURS looking at resumes
Sourcing candidates is an art and a science - I've found on average, with some experience, and a good target list of companies to go after, it takes about five minutes to find a good candidate. If you sit down and spend an hour, you should be able to find 12 or so high quality, relevant candidates.
What do you think has a higher ROI?
Looking through 800 people who clicked "Easy Apply", and reaching out to the top 5%
OR finding 84 high quality candidates, knowing even a poor performing message should have a 10% positive outcome.
Here's an interesting data point from the CEO of Mercury (my business bank of choice)
So the question, if job ads don't work, were we running them last month?
The one role that recruiting for sales from a job ad works well is at the SDR level.
It is the only role I have ever come across in the Go-To-Market space where you want people to apply.
Every search is custom - because every client is unique, and the candidates that they're looking for are also unique.
That said, we're usually looking for a few core building blocks
You may have prior experience with recruiting firms.
Odds are, this wasn't a positive thing.
Industry benchmarks for contingent search firms (those are the searches that are "no win, no fee") have a success rate of about 20%.
For every 5 searches, only one is complete.
Why is this?
It's a combination of things:
1) There is no commitment from the company that is hiring, so often recruiters work on roles that are often not important (and often get killed at the last minute)
2) Recruiters only have a finite amount of time and energy, and so they prioritize the 20-30% of searches that are easiest to fill.
3) Every search that is deemed "too hard" simply gets ignored.
4) Your search probably fell into the too hard basket.
Your search is likely "too hard" for a contingent approach if you are
1: Looking for a niche skillset
2: Looking in a smaller geography
3: Paying below market
4: At a company that no-one has ever heard of
if you are looking at this list and think "nope, none of these are true for me"
You can close the page. There are plenty of contingent agencies that can do a great job for you.
But if any of those ring true.
Next Venture might be able to help you.
It's why we're a lot more research driven.
We work harder, for fewer clients.
And we close more searches because of it.
We have a 90 day candidate replacement guarantee. If you hire someone and they quit or are fired for cause in the first 90 days of employment, we will run a replacement search at no cost to you.
Next Venture is ONLY focused on hiring for Go-To-Market SaaS professionals in the United States of America. We're not splitting our time with other industries, other roles or other geographies.
We charge a percentage of the first year base salary. As part of our intro call, you will get an estimated cost for your search.
Every candidate that we send to you, has been interviewed either in person or via Zoom. We like to be able to put a face to a name!
The best defense against counter offers is understanding how the candidate is approaching their job search from the very first conversation.
Because we are not a contingent agency, and because our searches are relatively specialized, it is rare that we would send a candidate to multiple companies.
By running an efficient process, we're able to minimize the number of competing offers that we come up against.
Our fee structure has an upfront financial commitment, with the remainder due when a candidate signs with you. We have that upfront commitment so that we can invest significantly more time into your search than a contingent agency would.
However, if after 12 weeks, no hire has been made, we offer a refund of the upfront fee.
Book a call - we can discuss what your situation looks like, and if we're able to help.