In this blog, we post our adventures, our workdays, Friday nights and sometimes our cases.
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One of the successful cases of the HireForYou.Pro team was hiring a Sales Manager in the EU for a CRM and ERP systems development company. We're happy to share this case in details with you. It is really interesting to read :)
Diagnostics.
The company has deep domain expertise in building CRM and ERP systems for small and medium businesses. The company's management has outlined an additional direction for business scaling - outstaffing and sale of expertise for the implementation of long-term and large projects. At the time of diagnosis, only the owner of the business was engaged in sales and development of the client network, account managers were involved in the upsell. The owner intended to eventually fully delegate tasks to the experienced Sales Manager they were looking for.
The company had a negative experience of hiring a Sales Manager using its HR. The hired candidate was not able to bring the result in the form of the set KPI and did not pass the trial period. Plus, the vacancy was closed for about 2 months, and the business owner conducted about 15 interviews with candidates.
During the briefing, we found out that the requirements for the candidate do not correlate with the strategic focus of the company and with the current reality. We suggested adjusting the requirements, validating them, and starting the search.
Hiring strategy.
Candidate profile:
Solid experience in selling short- and long-distance projects in the domain of CRM and ERP systems in the markets of the CIS region, Europe and the USA. The hired specialist had to be in the EU and speak Russian and English (a relocant in the EU from Belarus or Ukraine).
Soft skills: exceptional communication skills and successful negotiation experience, collaboration, commitment, perseverance, result and client orientation, flexibility, multitasking, problem solving, broad outlook, high level of energy, empathy and a great sense of humor :).
Locations: Poland (Lithuania as plan B). Working contract: B2B. Work format: remote.
The vacancy closed in three stages:
1. Prescreen interview with an agency recruiter. To check skills for a prescreen interview, we developed a questionnaire and agreed it with the customer;
2. Interview with the owner of the company (customer);
3. Collection of references from past colleagues of the candidate (with his permission and the list of contacts provided by him).
Search map.
Platforms for posting vacancies: LinkedIn, Telegram and Fb groups of Sales communities and relocators. The main locations are Poland and Lithuania (plan B). We expected a large response from warm candidates among relocators, but did not rule out a cold attraction. For cold recruitment, we identified donor companies (the customer did not provide a list of them) and contacted applicants from there.
Analytics and results.
Closing time for a vacancy is 3 weeks: from drafting a vacancy brief to a specialist entering a job.
Sourcing took 3 days.
We considered 92 applicants:
- We attracted 40 applicants by cold search.
- 52 warm search applicants:
- 34 via a job posting on LinkedIn;
- 6 applicants came through FB-communities;
- 12 applicants came through posting in Telegram communities.
We contacted all candidates and selected 7 profiles relevant to the requirements of the vacancy, location and salary request.
After prescreen interviews (which we conducted for 4 days), 5 candidates fell off the requirements for English and soft-skills.
The two final candidates were invited for an interview with the customer.
To one of them (our favorite and we kept our fingers crossed for him) he made a JobOffer. By the way, the hired specialist came to us through a cold search.
As a result, our customer spent 6 hours: 1 hour to prepare a brief and agree on a vacancy and 2 hours to conduct an interview, and about 30 minutes to: discussion of candidates after the interview, for approval of the job offer; for consideration of relevant profiles; for consideration of references and conclusion of a contract. The specialist started work in 1.5 weeks. Cost of closing a vacancy: 2222 USD.
The time spent by HireForYou.Pro specialists is 41 hours and this time includes: preparation of contract, customer briefing, preparation and coordination of vacancies, attraction of applicants, selection of candidates, accompaniment to interviews, collection of references, feedback, compilation of a job offer and communication on it.
Conclusion.
Now the market trend is that we receive a large response to vacancies, so we need to focus on careful selection according to requirements in order to wisely spend our own time and the time of the customer. A large number of responses (the dream of every recruiter who is used to working in the candidate market) does not optimize the work of recruitment, but rather the opposite - it is a workload that requires high hiring expertise to produce quality results.
Before we take a vacancy and start hiring, it is very important for us to conduct high-quality diagnostics. Such diagnostics reveals "bottlenecks" or inconsistencies in the formation of business needs and a request for an employee who should close these needs. Quite often, such inconsistencies are quite predictable, so when starting analytics, we also use best practice. It is worth discussing openly with the customer his successes and failures, because recruiting is a service for his business.
It is very important to conduct job analytics. Conversion and specific numbers show us the quality of work. And the Data Driven approach and process automation help us a lot in this :).
In the last few months, I started to study men's health. I realized that you must learn it from a young age, or you will have problems. Since then, I have reopened running for me and started doing other things. I will go into that a little bit later.
Worldwide, about 800 million men suffer from various types of sexual dysfunction and urinary problems. The Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors shows that only 2 out of 10 seek help. The other 8 may live with these problems for years and dare not go to a doctor. Men will be men.
For those who want to pay attention to their health developers are happy to provide a promo code for 3 months of free use. Use "SEQ3M2024". Valid through January 1, 2025. *Valid for new users only. The code will not work for those who have previously installed the application.
How does the Sequoia App work?
Sequoia focuses on erectile dysfunction (ED) for 2 reasons. First, because ED is the most common male sexual problem. Second, an erection is 1 of the top 2 health issues that men are statistically most concerned about.
So, a user downloads the app and takes the erection test. The medical algorithm implemented inside sends the user a health report and a set of recommendations on how to improve it.
Recommendations form in the 21-day course. Every day, 3 exercises and a health tracker must be done.
Sequoia doctors explain that in 21 days of regular performance, users can see the first positive changes in health. The tracker is also an important part of the course. It allows users to log more than 80 aspects of men's health. Once symptoms are logged, the medical algorithm I've already mentioned matches symptoms with articles in the health library and suggests content that aligns with current health conditions. If the user wants more personalization, he can anonymously submit a question to a physician. Our physicians review it and provide an answer.
There is another very useful feature in the Sequoia app - Regular Checkup.
There is a list of tests that a man of his age needs to do to prevent some problems or to make sure that he is healthy. Once each test is done, the user can mark it as passed, choose the date and place, leave notes, and attach the results. The app remembers the date and reminds the user when it is time to retake the test.
Therefore, Sequoia is also a place where all of a person's health data can be stored and he can have easy access to it.
The app is not a substitute for a doctor. The idea is to help men change the way they think about their intimate and general health and to shorten the distance between men and healthcare providers.
Curious fact. According to the research, the team studied and their experience communicating with people globally, the unspoken silencing of such men's issues is present around the world. Denis Galka said:
"I thought people in the US or European countries would be more open to discussion. However, communicating with doctors around the world at sexual health conferences revealed that stigma around men's health exists in every country and can depend on a large number of different factors: social, cultural, religious and others."
Currently, there are 6 languages: Arabic, English, Belarusian, Russian, Italian and Chinese. In addition, there are already active users in the Asian market. Soon, the guys plan to add Spanish localization (the #2 language in the world) to cover Latin America.
This is not something the guys can be proud of. There are things I'd like to show you about them to get you interested:
- Partner of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
- Impact Startup title received at Web Summit 2022
- 2 Product Days and Weeks at Product Hunt
- Member of the International and European Associations for Sexual Medicine (ISSM/ESSM)
- Partner of the INVITRO independent laboratory network
- Sequoia's research has twice been selected for presentation at the World Conference on Sexual Medicine (WMSM)
- In the last 6 months they have attended 6 conferences in Dubai, Bari, Rotterdam, Rome, Munich, and Madrid.
Let me take a step back and tell you a few words about their team. They divide their team into 2 departments: tech dep. and med. dep. The tech team includes backend and iOS developers, UI/UX designers, and QA specialists. These guys are led by the CEO, Denis. Olga, the Chief Medical Officer, is in charge of the medical team. She leads a team of doctors, medical specialists, and ambassadors. 11 in total. The team is responsible for developing and improving the medical algorithm within Sequoia and writing unique educational content covering various aspects of male sexuality.
The Chief Medical Officer of the project is a psychiatrist and sexologist with over 10 years of experience and has counseled over 1000 men in his practice.
The CTO - Software Engineer with more than 9 years of experience and a Master's degree in Computer Science and Informatics.
I'd like to share their application statistics to prove that they are growing and have already found their active users. Sequoia.health application in numbers:
- 22k downloads
- 1.5k MAU
- ±1k MRR
- Complete iOS app that even supports Vision Pro
- In the last 3 months, the Sequoia.health website has received 21k clicks and 774k impressions
- To prove that the app helps improve men's health, they conducted an in-app survey. As a result, 79% of Sequoia users experience positive changes in their sexual health.
By the way, the team is looking for an experienced CMO to join the team and help Sequoia.health scale its marketing and PR activities. They are not only looking for a new team member, but also for a marketing partner. They are open to sharing their current marketing status, discussing their ideas and plans, and open to your ideas.
It would be nice if you have experience working with mobile marketing and growth techniques but without significant marketing budgets. Let's be honest, this is a startup and you can't expect too much spending, at least at the beginning. But the team is working hard on it, they plan to change their headquarters location to be closer to the startup and venture ecosystem. My colleague Alexey Charakhovich recently wrote about this.
If you'd like to join the Sequoia.health team as a marketing partner, drop them a line.
It's great that you made it to the end of my article. I hope you are healthy and in good shape. If not, it's up to you. I want as many people as possible to take care of their health. I also want men to take care of their health. So I'm asking you to support this post by liking, reposting or commenting.
For those who want to pay attention to their health developers are happy to provide a promo code for 3 months of free use. Use "SEQ3M2024". Valid through January 1, 2025. *Valid for new users only. The code will not work for those who have previously installed the application.
I am working on the next article about the great project you will like.
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Mikita Herasimchyk , partner at hireforyou.pro
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