McKay Lasko is the Director of Sales at SaltyCloud, a cybersecurity company that helps organizations automate the governance, risk, and compliance assessment lifecycle to achieve continuous risk visibility at scale. They had found product market fit in the higher education space and wanted to quickly onboard an SDR so they had time to train them up before the next buying window opened up. They needed to move quickly but didn’t have an internal recruiting team or a strong process developed (yet) for hiring new SDRs.
McKay knew from previous experience at another company that the hiring process could take up to 10-15 hours per candidate even when supported by a recruiting team. In a previous role, he had typically interviewed 15+ people to fill each role, spending 2-3 hours on the hiring process per week, sometimes more.
Hiring the wrong SDR would lead to lost time and resources, especially if that rep needed to be replaced. The cost to replace an AE at McKay’s previous organization was equal to one year’s salary + commission and that was not a mistake that SaltyCloud wanted to make.
Additionally, this was their first SDR hire so it was especially important because they wanted this person to be a trendsetter and leader for future SDRs.
How We Helped
Our SDR Hiring Service took the bulk of the blocking and tackling off of McKay’s plate, allowing him to focus on building the early infrastructure (tech, tools, and messaging) that the SDR would need once they were onboarded. McKay shared his goals and what he was looking for in a candidate with our team. We ran a large pool of candidates through our SDR hiring process, and McKay hired one from the first 3 people we introduced him to.
“A resume and LinkedIn can only tell you so much,” McKay says. “The PR process helped me get a much deeper understanding of what each candidate was looking for.”
The Result
Of those three interviews, one candidate stood out above the rest. “He was so well qualified in so many areas,” McKay says. “In terms of his experience and mentality, he’s as good as we could have hoped to get.”
Not only did the candidate’s professionalism stand out, but he also had previous SDR experience in the security field, which was an added bonus they hadn’t expected to find. This experience means McKay won’t have to invest as much time in training the new hire.
“In two weeks, I’ll be spending an hour a week with him. For other candidates, I’d have to spend four hours a day to be confident.” As a result, McKay can invest more time with the next hire because the new sales rep will already be performing outreach independently.
Best of all, the search for an SDR went quickly. “Having to only look at 10 resumes and interview three people, the hiring time was very good. If we were still searching for an SDR, all our pipeline plans would be behind schedule because I would have had to do it myself.”
As for finding the right candidate, McKay says that although he may have found someone for the role without Predictable Revenue’s help, that person wouldn’t have been as uniquely qualified. “I never would have found him because I wouldn’t have posted in those places.”
Conclusion
Our SDR Hiring Service was able to help McKay find an ideal fit candidate for SaltyCloud in just three interviews. Already, McKay is making plans for the new SDR to mentor future reps as the team continues to grow. “I don’t know what you’d call a perfect hire, but he’s very close.”