Michael Hartmann 0:26

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of OpsCast brought to you by the Mo Pros powered by marketingops.com. If you're not a member already, you should do that. Go set up your profile. Joining me today is just one of my co-host Mike Rizzo. Mike what's the year again.

Mike Rizzo 0:41

It is the year of the Mopro. It

Michael Hartmann 0:42

I really, I need to come up with something else.

Mike Rizzo 0:45

I know right. To something else, but like it is also the year 2022. So you might hear us stop saying that at some point, if you're listening to this years later, cuz this is evergreen content folks.

Michael Hartmann 0:57

you know what the Roman numeral is for 2022? This is a how geek? X II 2022.

Mike Rizzo 1:03

that's the fact that pops into your head and you visualize that enough to be able to say it to me means you

Michael Hartmann 1:09

Oh, I've thought about this before.

Mike Rizzo 1:11

Oh, okay. Okay. Got it.

Michael Hartmann 1:12

Yeah, I actually, so I, for our listeners dunno, I'm in a workout group and I had to lead a workout and I tried to make themes out of 'em. I actually did one based on that. So you can ask me about that later.

Mike Rizzo 1:22

that makes sense.

Michael Hartmann 1:23

Yeah. Anyway, so sorry to take us off on a tangent, right from the get go, but joining us today is Max Spanier and Max, I probably should have asked, did I pronounce that.

Max Spanier 1:34

Yeah. Perfect. Perfect.

Michael Hartmann 1:35

Max Spanier to help us. Thank you. Answer the question. Why is it so hard to hire marketing apps professionals? So Max is the founder and president of Sloan staffing, a recruitment firm that specializes in marketing technology, digital marketing, SAS sales, and technology roles. Prior to starting Sloan staffing. Max was an enterprise account executive at Marketo. Before that he yelled other sales and business development roles at, in interactive, in Sovi digital. So Max, thank you for joining us today.

Max Spanier 2:03

Much appreciated Mike. And am I looking forward to it?

Michael Hartmann 2:07

All right. So it, no, we do that intentionally. This is like at my house, all like we're all M names and at my house, all my kids are B names and there's three of them. So just like this. So Max, what you don't know is we soon to be released episode that just happened was just the other side of this, which is how do you find your next. In marketing ops with another recruiter. So I think this is gonna be fun talking about, so we'll have back to back, we'll have episodes about the two sides of the job market for marketing ops. And that's the question we're trying to break down is why is it so hard to hire marketing ops pros? So just from a big picture, do you know, are there any like systemic. issues or challenges given what you see every day with your clients? Go from there.

Max Spanier 2:51

No it's a good starting point, Mike really appreciate it. From a systemic standpoint, that's a tough word to start with.

Michael Hartmann 2:58

I'm sorry. I almost hesitated using that word just because I feel like it's been overused in lots of different contexts lately.

Max Spanier 3:05

So I'll use just the Marketo piece to start. So I wrote a, I wrote an article a couple weeks ago, just about the total number of Marketo certified experts in the country. I think there was 5,800 Marketo CE around the United States. And if you look on LinkedIn, there are about 8,000 jobs that require Marketo experience. If you think about just the supply and demand piece, that's just one of the four main marketing operations, email marketing tools out there. So I think there's a big challenge right now with just the kind of entry point into this space and then the advancement to other roles within marketing operations. But they're, I don't know, of highway education. I don't know if you've heard about those folks. They're doing a really good job. Trying to train the entry level person to even get into this position right now.

Mike Rizzo 3:55

Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually glad you brought them up. I assumed we would end up talking about them at some point and then no better place than right at the start. When you think about trying to get some talent into the market starting off with an incredible program that they've been building alongside a lot of experts in the field actually just received an email from their founder and CEO this morning about some additional ways in which we want to try to work together to make sure more of those graduates find roles and all of those kinds of things. Yeah, it's like supply and demand is a massive

Max Spanier 4:26

Big issue right now.

Michael Hartmann 4:27

I never would've guessed that just on that Marketo one, there would've been that big of. Of a gap between the supply and the demand side. Is it, do you think it's, do you think that's an indicator? Is that consistent? If let's just talk about the major map marketing animation platforms, do you think it's consistent for the, all of them or

Max Spanier 4:45

without a doubt with, yeah, without a doubt. I personally, Mo majority of our clients are either on Marketo or hubs. So obviously they want folks that have that level experience and, ideally they're coming from a company that used that same marketing automation platform. So there's no learning curve right out of the gate because you guys know, more than I do. If I were to sit in front of Marketo, I wouldn't even know how to log in. Even though I worked there for two years being able to just come in and be able to create immediate impact is what a lot of these hiring managers are looking for at the end of the.

Mike Rizzo 5:17

Yeah, they are. We talked a little bit about that on the last one too. And I think the pallet for, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it, Max, but. when you are working. I think my question on this is when you're working with clients on trying to staff roles I would imagine, and maybe you could just talk us through some of what that engagement looks like as you're not scoping them for whether or not you can provide value to them, but more like there's a need. But are you doing anything to try to help them understand what that real need is or do they come in and you. All right. Yeah. Like you, you think you want this? And so we'll see if we can go find

Max Spanier 5:56

Yeah what's, it's so funny. You brought that up because Mike you introduced me perfectly and I really appreciate it. I can't believe you even pronounced my name correctly. Not a lot of people are able to do that, but

Michael Hartmann 6:06

It's better to be lucky than good. I say.

Max Spanier 6:08

so I used to work at Marketo enterprise rep. I left because I realized the biggest challenge with B2B organizations. Wasn't do I buy Marketo? Do I buy a HubSpot? Do I. Pardot, whatever the case may be. I left to start a Mar a recruiting company in this space because the biggest challenge was finding and building a team around those systems to be effective. So to answer your question around like the whole piece of scoping work and really digging into these roles, marketing operations is such a broad title. Some companies just they just consider marketing operations as an email marketing. Some companies think of marketing operations as an analytics person, somebody to oversee six end somebody to work very closely with the sales operations team, somebody to run, email somebody to be the integrations person. So it's really multiple positions in one. So we're really when we're having these kickoff calls with these organizations. It's okay. What do you have? What are you looking to accomplish and how can this person bridge that gap?

Michael Hartmann 7:13

So this, to me, this begs a couple of questions and I'll probably be guilty as anybody else who's been in a hiring role position. So one, I guess is, for those of us who are hiring, are we putting too much stock into that specific platform experience? for some roles. And then the second one is cuz you did the way you just described what I think we all would tell you is more common than not, or at least more common than we would like to see, which is a role that has so much scope to it. That it doesn't feel like it should be just one person.

Max Spanier 7:50

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann 7:50

Are we trying to get too much out of one, a person. And are they, are we, and are we being too, are we making it harder on ourselves as hiring managers? Because we're being so specific about skill sets that we're looking for?

Max Spanier 8:05

Yeah. In my opinion, it's so it's the biggest challenge that hiring managers are facing is they're not talking to enough candidates to be able to make a justified decision on who they wanna move forward with. So yeah, the challenge that we're seeing in these companies is that they're solely relying on inbound resumes to hire somebody or personal relationships or posting something in, in a, in their community, in LinkedIn or whatever the case may be. So there, the number of candidates that they're able to, to interview. Is very low. And then not only that, but the low amount of candidates, if they do find somebody, chances are that person's already interviewing at multiple places. So they have to act quick. And depending on the size of the company, chances are bigger companies move slow. Even some of the smaller companies that we work with move pretty slow as well. But I think there's, there's two points. There's the not talking to enough candidates. And then. such a big emphasis just on narrow focus. If I want a Marketo person that knows 6 cents, that also knows Tableau that has Salesforce experience. Maybe somebody that has HubSpot experience that really wants to get into Marketo or that knows this or that knows that can translate very nicely, could step into the job very quickly versus waiting another three months to have that person.

Michael Hartmann 10:36

So I think then if I'm. I'll try to put words in your mouth if I'm gonna play it back to you, is that you're? I think you're suggesting indirectly that we as hiring managers should be more open to candidates who maybe don't check all the boxes. And maybe I guess this is something that I struggle with how to find this, because I've believe I actually just recently hired somebody. Didn't have the experience in the marketing nomination platform we had. And I intentionally worked with our recruiters and stuff said, don't I don't know that we'll find that. Let's open it up and look for people who have potential right. And can learn. But that is such a harder thing to do is like, how do you look for people who have that ability to learn are curious wanna know how stuff works and are also interested in it from a marketing kind of domain level. I, when I talk to other people in marketing ops who are in the hiring levels, typically when you ask them, what do you look for? What do you think distinguishes the best performers from others? It's those kinds of things, not their technical skills.

Max Spanier 11:36

right. Totally.

Michael Hartmann 11:37

Do you have any suggestions how we find that or look for that or test

Max Spanier 11:41

yeah. At the end of the day, a tool's a tool, right? It's the person behind the tool. That's going to get you from point a to the desired state. I think it really depends on company and the, and what pieces of the puzzle that you currently have in place and be able to interview around that. I know. Sarah McNamara is famous for this. She posts a lot about, content around how not to do take home assignments or SP insure make, make the candidates jump through hoops to grow through interview processes. I completely agree with that. I also have a sense where you need to have some level of technical conversation with these folks to really dig in, to understand what do they know, what do they not know under, and then create kind of pros and cons lists of each individual. Do the pros outweigh the cons absolutely move forward with them. If there's hesitation around the technical capabilities, probably not gonna be the right fit for the role.

Mike Rizzo 12:33

Yeah. It's it's hard, right? Measuring for aptitude around like technical capabilities is one thing. But trying to figure out are you curious or are you willing to learn or what have you that's a piece that I think we. We as a community are working on alongside you Max, right? Where we're all pushing forward on educating leadership and hiring managers who maybe have never staffed for a role like this That those are the things that matter. I think you said it just a moment ago, right? A tool's a tool. If, and in our last episode that we recorded, it was. Or one of 'em most recently it was around this idea of what's your palette for that, that learning curve, right? That ramp up Unfortunately, people start thinking about the need for a marketing operations role. Almost way too late.

Michael Hartmann 13:23

Like when something's already broken.

Mike Rizzo 13:25

like it's either it's already broken or they're like, oh, we decided to buy whatever tool and now we need someone to manage that. And they're like, so I just need someone to come in and manage that and that like word of advice. That's the wrong way to build a stack. And we're advocating as a community. Sarah is one of those champion voices out there for, Hey, bring them in, bring these folks in

Max Spanier 13:53

into the conversation. Yeah.

Mike Rizzo 13:55

And let's talk about the go to market motion and the strategy. You're saying it yourself, Max, like how do you build a team that supports your go to market your revenue team? And then add technology to that.

Max Spanier 14:06

and it's be like out of the marketing ops landscape, but adjacent, like we're hiring a rev ops leader for a series C software company out of The Northeast and the person that was in the seat was pretty much an order taker. They'd, the SVP, the CRO would say, Hey, let's do this or let's do this, or let's do this. But you, the two of, SVPs of sales, aren't Salesforce experts, they're sales process experts. They're they know how to get deals done. So now they're, they have this system that's completely broken. And they're looking for somebody to come in and restructure everything pave the way moving forward on how do we need to set up territory plans? How do we need to do this X, Y, Z. But if they were to already have that done in the first place, there would've been a lot of time saved on all sides.

Mike Rizzo 14:53

Yeah. And it evolves over time, like a series C to have to come in and try to rearchitect probably isn't outside of the norm, frankly. Like it happens a lot. At least in my experience, we definitely raised a lot of money at the companies I was at in different rounds. And unfortunately we had, some people come in and just tinker with tools before they ever got fixed. But yeah, you. To solve for that problem. Ideally, you wanna hire somebody in earlier, rather than later, but it still it still comes down to a fundamental problem of supply and demand and that investment remember like a keyword there, investment in the talent is

Max Spanier 15:33

Yeah.

Mike Rizzo 15:33

Sorry, we've been around for over a decade. Now, a lot of us, and we know a lot about this idea of what technology can enable an organization at different stages. But that those salary ranges, like they're not entry level. But there's a reason for that. And hiring teams, growing organizations, you need to account for this idea that role is a key, I would argue key component

Max Spanier 15:56

to revenue generation.

Mike Rizzo 15:58

to that revenue generation.

Max Spanier 15:59

totally.

Michael Hartmann 16:01

Yeah. My thought there is they, if those, the CRO VP were are honest, right. They probably made a, not a mistake, but they probably thought all we all, we need air quotes. All we need is a Salesforce admin. And yeah, this probably would be my guess of how they happen. Okay. So Mike alluded to. These job titles and compensation. So this is one of my hot button topic issues here is that I, one of the things I see is comes with a couple different flavors. One is, one that we already talked about, right? Job descriptions that have so much in them that it's like hard to imagine. One person could really be successful in doing that. The other is inconsistency. Or mismatch misalignment of the job title, the scope of the role and then the compensation. And and the best example I've seen is, I think there are more and more director level roles and titles out there that I'm seeing, but when you really break 'em down, especially I think at earlier stage companies or smart companies, they actually look. It's a team of one,

Max Spanier 17:00

Senior man. Yeah,

Michael Hartmann 17:01

And it's a ti the title's there to get to the comp

Max Spanier 17:05

Right.

Michael Hartmann 17:05

More so than anything else. And maybe to attract somebody who's a unicorn, but really it's I suspect it's really about the compensation because the, it feels to me like the data that's available to hiring managers and HR people doesn't actually reflect the real market.

Max Spanier 17:21

Yeah,

Michael Hartmann 17:21

think that's accurate or

Max Spanier 17:23

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann 17:23

I full of it?

Max Spanier 17:24

no, abso absolutely. I think this is why we started this business three years ago is. Internal recruiting teams typically don't have the level of experience because usually there's only a one marketing operations person, two marketing. So this isn't like a, account executive role where you need to hire 20 right or 10. So it's not like a repetitive thing. We're seeing marketing operations manager as a title. We're seeing marketing technology specialists. It's just so many, there's no uniform, uniformity. Is that a word there's no uniform approach around

Michael Hartmann 17:58

If it's, if it wasn't, it is now.

Mike Rizzo 18:00

Yeah.

Max Spanier 18:02

there's there's no, this is the title. This is the compensation. Because I think the people that, the organizations. Are willing to invest into it. They are they know the importance of it versus, somebody might hire a marketing operations person at a, and want to pay 50 K 60 K. But really, they just want somebody just to babysit HubSpot and use like a MailChimp. So there's a lot of digging that needs to happen in these interview processes, not only from a candidate standpoint, but from the hiring manager standpoint.

Mike Rizzo 18:36

Yeah. And it's it's a chicken and egg problem, right? Like when you don't know what you don't know. Sometimes, depending on who's asking for the hire, right? Sometimes they don't realize that there's going to be a need very rapidly. You can hire a junior marketing ops person. Maybe they are curious enough to come in and figure some stuff out and build something of value. But you don't know that. What's gonna rapidly come up is some sort of standardization of the, like the way the data needs to move through your system. And this person has no concept of like how to do that yet. And that's perfectly all right. If you've got somebody that can figure it out, but if you don't know that's coming down the pike really quickly, you're gonna not know that you wanna look for that skill or that talent or hire that level. At the start. So now you've made a hire who isn't quite equipped with the skills or the background or the experience to go solve the next challenges that are coming down, down the line. And you're a little bit frustrated cause you're like, darn it. This is gonna go slower. What are we gonna do? Guess what? You end up hiring a consultant.

Max Spanier 19:42

I

Mike Rizzo 19:42

all the consultants out there are like, you hire me.

Max Spanier 19:44

Yeah. Yeah. I always push for the higher level person because you're gonna get, a lot more, but again, hiring managers have a budget, they have a CMO, that's saying, Hey, this is what we can spend. This is what we can invest because we have X amount of other hires that need to happen. But we have a lot of organizations that're working with that they're flexible and they just wanna see the best talent on the market, the rate that they're looking for and allows them to make that decision.

Michael Hartmann 20:13

Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting point. I was just, from an overall marketing team, there's a, probably a. Head count that goes across all the different disciplines. So can you think this is totally off script here? Not that we have a script, but just I'm going into a little different direction, but if you, are you seeing anything in terms of organizations on how let's say they have multiple roles to fill in marketing and they don't necessarily know the priority order or where they should, know, where they're gonna need to put more money into it versus somewhere else? think of it, like when we remodeled our house, we decided we're gonna spend extra on, the tile and the bathroom and the kitchen, because that's where it's gonna pay off. But it, in the somewhere else, we're not right. We're, we'll just do basic stuff. It's are you seeing organizations think about all of that across the marketing function from a way they budget for head count, especially when they're adding in a way like that, where they say, okay, we've got X amount of money and we're. We're gonna allocate it as best we can to get the best people in the most important positions first.

Max Spanier 21:16

This brings up a, I have a client of ours in the Boston area security software. They just have a handful of roles they need to hire. And for them, a lot of the approval's already done, quarter by quarter. So every, couple quarters they say, we're gonna hire this amount. And this is the budget that we have. And because hiring is so challenging right now, they're not necessarily thinking let's prioritize this over this. They're trying to prioritize the best hire. For that given position. And if it's the marketing operations person first, great, let's bring 'em on. If it's the communications person, if it's the demand gem person, whatever the case may be, they want the right person for the job because they're all, all the clients that were working with are very fast growing organizations and they know that, there, there was an investment event and that money is to fund growth and growth is fund, fueled by people. So if they find that perfect person, the demand gem person, even though they need to hire a marketing operations person as well, they need to bring that person on. Otherwise they might not have that person for another three to six months,

Michael Hartmann 22:20

I get it. Yeah. So they're prioritizing,

Max Spanier 22:23

the right hire

Michael Hartmann 22:24

Like They're thinking like I, I'd rather hire, spend more and hire the best person I can right now, cuz they're probably gonna be able to do more than what we're asking for them to do really the role. And then we'll move on to the next one and try to do the same thing and kinda keep that ball rolling as they're. Okay. That's an interesting one. My head is wrapping my head. I'm going around to circles here a little bit. Okay. So now it's an area that I hadn't thought about as I think I, I do think be just to another total side, I think. One of the things I think at least some marketing apps pro people are good at is being creative with the budgets they've got, including it might be if they're like a hiring manager being how they allocate that towards roles that they might get to fill or not, or that versus consultants. Mixing that and trying to adjust as the budget might get shifted. But I'm curious, are you seeing, this is a total aside, are you seeing many of of your clients where they're looking at marketing ops as doing some additional things that I think of as it could easily become a more of a chief of staff for the marketing org role kind of roles where it's got, maybe they're helping with budgeting overall for marketing, they're helping with the quarterly planning, annual

Mike Rizzo 23:33

that's super interesting.

Michael Hartmann 23:34

yeah,

Max Spanier 23:35

you, we talk, I think you and I side bared this a couple months ago and I haven't seen, I think I haven't seen the chief of staff in the marketing function yet. I do think it's coming. The, I think a lot of that responsibility is notoriously with the VP and the CMO and, They need, they know they need this, but wouldn't it be great if there was somebody that knew about all the tools and the value that it can bring and they'd come to the executive team and say, we need the, we need this because of this. And this is the budget. And here we go. So I think, I think we talked about it two months ago before I went on my trip, but I think it's coming, it's not here yet,

Michael Hartmann 24:12

Yeah. I'm not seeing it consistently either, but I see it here and there. It was mostly at larger organizations, which makes sense. But I see, it feels like I'm seeing it a little more often and it may not be college chief of staff, but those that sort of helping with the budget and the planning across the marketing organization is something I'm seeing and maybe project management, things like that.

Mike Rizzo 24:33

I,

Max Spanier 24:33

The U the utility player. What do you call that in baseball? The

Michael Hartmann 24:36

That's it. I think utility

Mike Rizzo 24:38

I think it's a utility player. Yeah, actually

Michael Hartmann 24:40

Says the guy with the big football Jersey behind him.

Max Spanier 24:43

I, we have a guy here who's a D one baseball player. I've never watched a full nine innings of baseball in my whole entire life. So I can't believe I got that reference,

Mike Rizzo 24:50

that's awesome. I've seen this conversation come up before though. Or maybe I've just had it anecdotally or something,

Max Spanier 24:57

Probably with Michael probably,

Mike Rizzo 24:59

It could have been with Michael, but

Michael Hartmann 25:01

sure what that says about me, that I keep bringing up the same, five things

Mike Rizzo 25:04

no, I actually, I think it was with one of my, one of my mentors, which CEO of stack Moxie, she and I have spoken a number of times over the years and we talked about her org structure and the way that she thinks about things. And we were just riffing on this idea of like where marketing operations sits in general. And and one of the, I think it was with her. If I recall correctly, but we were talking about how marketing operations could fundamentally own like the budgets. And I said what is, you mean like demand gen budgets too, like ad spend and stuff. It's yeah, absolutely. And it makes sense. Like when, if you, they might not say how much money needs to be spent, but they could at least have oversight on where is it going right now? How is that going? And how does that get reported back to the teams that are running those budgets? Really interesting.

Max Spanier 25:52

What's interesting about that too. How many clients? I know Mike, you've done a lot of work and HubSpot for different organizations in your career. How many companies have you walked into? And there's so much tech and nobody knows what it's doing or where it's integrated to, or how you're using it, or how many processes around it. So how much money do you think is wasted on a yearly basis? You started the conversation. I used to work at ion interactive. The, one of the C the CTO was Scott Brinker who created the super graphic. So when I first started at ion it, there was 200 MarTech platforms back in 20 14, 20 15. Now there's 3000, 2000 who knows the updated version. Whenever it

Mike Rizzo 26:35

I think it's

Michael Hartmann 26:36

it was like

Mike Rizzo 26:37

I think they're edging eight. Yeah. I think they're edging eight or 9,000

Max Spanier 26:41

how much, think of, if you had to just give a rough estimate in your head, I couldn't even tell you, but how much MarTech is bought in marketing at high growth companies. And is it really being used or is it to the most effect? Probably. Probably not.

Michael Hartmann 26:56

And I had met a big company. I we're in the process and I'm actually just in a business unit of a big company and it, and just within ours, we're starting to consolidate small sort of small chunks of marketing tech into my budget just to make sure it's all in one place, cuz it was scary to I. This is gonna be a slap in the face to all my friends who are like I'll call them, like marketers, demand gen and stuff like that. But my experience has been, they're actually not that great at managing budgets. They're good about thinking about right. Okay. How much do I need to spend? Where should I spend it? But then the actual keeping track of it, where are we? What do we have left in, to spend. Yeah, what are we gonna do if we get, get asked to cut or add, or do you know, shift priorities, right? That is that's something I think doesn't most of the marketers I know have not, that's not a natural thing that they seem to be really good at. But

Mike Rizzo 27:45

like holistically,

Michael Hartmann 27:46

yeah,

Mike Rizzo 27:47

right? Like in the platform itself it's as a demand gen and I hate using that term

Michael Hartmann 27:52

I

Mike Rizzo 27:53

demand gen is so much more than paid but for those paid, marketers out there that are managing those things, like in those platforms, You're doing a tremendous job of like constantly updating, I wanna focus on the CPL, the, all of those conversion rates, but like holistically thinking about it, across the board, you end up getting into a place where you need an operations person to pull back all that data so that you can analyze, where the spend should go next. Or if, to your point, like if something was to be cut back. How do you know where to cut back? All those kinds of things.

Michael Hartmann 28:29

All right. So sorry. I took us down that rabbit hole. We F you know, we followed Alice and let's, I'll bring it back. Max, one of the things you, and I think we also talked about when it came to, why is it so hard to hire people? Is there's I, maybe it's just a perception, but it may perception or real realistically, is it there? Is there a difference in The, the expectations or the opportunities, depending on which side you're on for candidates that are either from large organizations versus smaller ones. And the, the perception that they maybe they're exposed to more. Yeah. Smaller companies they're exposed to more of a broad set of technologies Versus large ones, or, more or less hands on things like that.

Max Spanier 29:07

Yeah, totally. I, we tend to lean towards working with smaller organizations under. 2000 employees under a thousand employees. And they tend to like folks from smaller organizations because they think they're scrappier or they, can do more with less. But I think, my personal opinion, bigger organizations just want the right person, cuz they know how hard it is to hire. So if somebody shows interest, they wanna work at a larger firm, they wanna snatch them up all day. because typically smaller organ, folks from smaller organizations wear a lot of hats. We've been talking a lot about this doing multiple functions under MOS. Whereas like a bigger organization, a mops person, we've built out a Mar marketing operations function out of publicly traded company. And there was somebody for analytics. There was somebody for email. There was somebody to manage integrations. There was somebody to bridge the gap between Salesforce, the sales ops person, the marketing operations person. So we're talking, six, seven people in marketing operations, and there's some organizations that we work with. There's one marketing operations person. And it's a, and it's the director like you were talking about,

Michael Hartmann 30:16

Right. Do so I guess from your experience, do you see, I guess there's a difference, right? If there's a candidate who's more, more interested in smaller versus larger or anything, they're self-selecting a little bit, but

Max Spanier 30:28

absolutely.

Michael Hartmann 30:28

you outside of that, do you think that there really is a difference in, in that those two experiences that. If all other things be equal, which may not ever happen, that they wouldn't be as good a candidate.

Max Spanier 30:42

I think smaller org, smaller software companies 10 or smaller B2B organizations, whatever the, however you wanna say it, however you wanna skin, it tend to lean towards the smaller scrappy person because they there's this misconception that somebody from a bigger org is gonna be slower or they're just gonna be a cog in the wheel. I don't personally agree with. I think it's all about the person and, we've hired folks for our clients where it's a smaller company, but they're coming from a 10,000 person company. When we peel back the onion, they're in a startup group within the larger company that is implementing tech for the first time and they're handling that soup to nuts. So I think it really like you, you were alluding to, it really depends on the person.

Michael Hartmann 31:29

Yeah mean, and then it gets back to difficulty of evaluating some of those other. The characteristics or traits that are not as easy to go, I've either worked with Marketo or I haven't, or I've worked with HubSpot or I haven't. That kind of stuff. I just, for the record, I would argue that some of those companies also put more stock than they should into particular industry experience,

Max Spanier 31:50

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann 31:51

but that's just my own sort of bugga

Mike Rizzo 31:54

That's a weird one for me. When it co and it falls in line with the, you don't need to be in the office, to be able to do this role. Just you don't need to like, have industry experience necessarily to do

Max Spanier 32:06

I, I think it's less industry. I. I get on calls with hiring managers and they want, we start the conversation and we want hub, Marketo Salesforce, 6 cents this, and it's here's this wishlist, but that, somebody with that wishlist is gonna just come in and say, this is what I want. And it's not gonna be the same comp that they have in mind. So there's gotta be some concessions on both sides. And that's the, what people don't tend to realize. It's yeah, you have a budget. it's probably gonna be either at market under market. And a lot of these people are so sought after right now. It's a candidate driven market, even with everything going on in the world, a lot of layoffs are happening, but you still see people are hiring. You still see the number of never Marketo jobs is through the roof. The number of account based marketing jobs is through the roof MOS. The same thing, even the marketing ops job board. Probably some of the highest job postings that you, that we, have ever had in the community. So I think, as long as this the expectations are set you just gotta hire the right person at the end of the day.

Michael Hartmann 33:10

Yeah, totally

Mike Rizzo 33:11

I, out of curiosity, because this is a timestamped kind of thing. I don't really need to know probably what the salary ranges are at this point in time. We've got

Max Spanier 33:20

Whew. How much time do you have on that?

Mike Rizzo 33:22

Yeah. But I am curious more holistically, you get to recruit across the country for different organizations. Have you seen the shift in the, at the line of thinking there, because look, we need the right talent and we realize that we're gonna pay them market. Regardless of where our headquarters is. Have you seen that change?

Max Spanier 33:42

We don't typically work, 98%, 99% of the jobs that we work on are a hundred percent remote. So there are areas of the country based on salary requirements that the, our clients have that we just decide not to recruit from. But besides that, it's it makes our job a lot easier if we're able to go outbound on LinkedIn, to specific people that have that expertise, because you're gonna get a choice. 3 4, 5, 6 people to potentially hire versus, one or two people from Florida that have the HubSpot or Marketo experience that they're looking for because they can sit on site in a, in an office. So we shy away from even partnering with companies that have the, the remote, no remote aspect of the.

Mike Rizzo 34:33

Yeah. That's nice to hear in general that you're championing that, but also the key thing that I want to pull on there is that like you, your organization, your strategic decision is. And this is really a message to the hiring managers and hiring teams out there who I hope will listen to. This is that your budget is determining where talent can even be sourced from. If you're too low, like you cannot go after certain segments of the country because where they live, their cost of living is gonna be out of there. So

Max Spanier 35:02

Totally.

Mike Rizzo 35:03

Please go look at our state of the Mo pro research and look at the average salary ranges for different roles in different company sizes so that you can set a baseline that allows you to recruit from the whole country

Michael Hartmann 35:13

I'll be do, I'll be doing that soon.

Mike Rizzo 35:14

That's coming out.

Max Spanier 35:15

Just to add on that too, that I mentioned the 5,800 Marketo certified experts around the country. I think half of them, no maybe a third of them are in the bay area. You know what like bay area and Washington a company in Georgia or Tennessee or Florida, not only we're talking, not only are we talking about time zone differences, like a lot of our clients that are in Florida typically or New York or Chicago, or they Boston, they, even though that, they're open to the remote piece, they kinda the have them on the same time zone so that we can work same hours. Because obviously if it's a Northeast based company and most of their cl most of their employees are in the Northeast, it's gonna be hard to hire somebody to run. That's three hours behind and they're one of the only people on that team.

Mike Rizzo 36:02

So here's where Michael and I are both gonna push back on this one.

Michael Hartmann 36:06

Like I.

Mike Rizzo 36:08

so if I was a marketing ops person, who's been doing this for a little while and I guess I have now I will say there is a distinct advantage to the company, not to the employee. To the company to have somebody on a slightly different offset time zone. And the reason for that is that marketing ops people need quiet time to go do the.

Max Spanier 36:32

That's the,

Mike Rizzo 36:33

constantly with requests. It'll never end. The backlog is always getting filled up and something is always a high priority. But if there's a chance that you could be working at three o'clock and it's six, o'clock where your headquarters is, that's a huge win cuz you got about three hours of downtime where hopefully there are, at least 80% less

Michael Hartmann 36:53

I assume you met three, I assume you met 3:00 PM, but it could be 3:00 AM too. If that's how you.

Mike Rizzo 36:59

Sure. Yeah. I meant three P

Max Spanier 37:01

That's a good snippet for cuz you guys know I'm not a, I'm not a Mar marketing ops person. I just interface a lot with hiring managers at hire mops and mops, people that are looking for jobs. So that's a good talking point for me when I'm talking to customers

Mike Rizzo 37:14

I think it's a selling point. Like you should consider this candidate because here's.

Max Spanier 37:18

yeah,

Mike Rizzo 37:19

this is potentially what they could be getting of providing value back to your organization because they've got the time to go focus.

Michael Hartmann 37:25

Yeah. If to me, if that was the only thing was that they're off by two or three hours and they were absolutely to your point, right? They were the right person. There's two options. Like one, you just let them flex their, like them flex their hours to what works for them. And, if there's meetings that need to happen that are off out of their normal hours. So be it right. They also have to live with it. Or you ask them to work the same hours as the majority of the other people. Which means there means they start late or they get done early, or I think a lot of people would be willing to do that. I will add even that. So both of my last, my current role and my last role, I've had pretty much teams either direct or through consultants kind of people all over. So I'm in the middle of the country in Dallas. Right now I've got people in the east coast. I've got people on the west coast. Hire another person up east. And then I've got consultants in Europe and that actually, that, that has been super beneficial when we've got late, kinda late coming stuff coming in that needs to be reviewed in QA or something for marketing teams. So that person can kind, they'll be up the overnight. It gets reviewed. We're ready to go. So I think there's some it doesn't work for every team or every organization. I get it, especially if there's a sort of a cultural component to it. That's gonna eject people who don't, match that. But I think it can be, it can work to your advantage if you're hiring manager. All right. So I brought up consultants and Mike, you alluded to it, I think in tongue in cheek a little bit, but seriously. So given the challenges of the market as hiring managers or the high expectations of individual people with span of scope of their roles. Max, what do you think is, do you think it's a good option to look at consultants or contractors or freelancers to help fill in the gaps

Max Spanier 39:09

Yeah. Or even, yeah, consultants, freelancers, even consulting agencies as well. I know there's a lot out there. Just to be able to give you the voice of reason, especially if the marketing leaders aren't leaning more towards the MarTech stock, maybe they're more demand gen focused or corporate marketing focused, or, I think it makes a lot of sense, especially if you're looking at implementing new tools. six senses is a big one. I know a lot of people I saw something that six senses was one of the Mo the top 10 most bought software all of this year. So how many people, you guys know how quick they're growing. Being able to partner with a consultant, that's done it, done 10 implementations or 20 implementations, and can help you figure that out. It's gonna, it's gonna save you a lot of time and money and energy in the long.

Michael Hartmann 39:57

Got it. Yeah. I've had good luck with that too. Mike, you say something.

Mike Rizzo 40:01

I was just gonna say, yeah, I have to advocate for that a bit these types of go-to market motions. I think something as specific as like an ABM, for example Really is like there's tools. And then there's the people that need to project manage and see every last little detail of that all the way through leveraging the technology and all the little touch points that go into that. There, there's no way to replace that. If there isn't someone that is like wholly owning that function and their whole purpose is to make that thing successful. You will. Quickly see a lack of return on the investment in an ABM effort. So like just, those are really good moments to like tap into someone who's already done something and hopefully has a track record of success.

Michael Hartmann 40:47

Yeah. And I've not only done that for like specific expertise and say a tool. That kinda stuff. I've also just and I've been lucky that I've happened to have engaged with several, good firms where they provide an extension of the team. They're doing ongoing work and it's, it can either be project based or it could be just, Hey know we've got a high volume of, operational stuff this coming month. Can you help us out? So big fan of that as. Max any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

Max Spanier 41:21

Oh I think I really appreciate the open-endedness of that one. We can go down a lot of rabbit holes. I

Michael Hartmann 41:28

the you're on the clock, Max? No, I'm kidding.

Max Spanier 41:30

no, no shameless, no plugs here. Obviously the biggest challenge I think that hiring managers are facing is not talking to enough candidates. So whether you're gonna work with a recruiter, you have your internal team, you're working with external recruiters. It's all about being on the same page for what you're looking for and similar titles or similar people that can do the job. The average time right now to fill these roles is three to six months, which is a ridiculous amount of time to have that seat open.

Michael Hartmann 41:59

I know just it's that's the reality, right?

Max Spanier 42:03

right. So if that is a reality, there's a couple really good marketing technology, recruiting companies, not just, not just ours in the market that can help bridge that gap. Most recruiting agencies are able to, fill pipeline in 72 hours. If you have the budget partner with folks like us, there's, I can name five off the top of my head that specialize in this, seek them out and ask for assistance.

Mike Rizzo 42:28

Yep. Amen to that.

Michael Hartmann 42:29

Yeah. Alright, I know you, you were trying to avoid the shameless plug. I'm gonna give you the opportunity now to do that. So if folks wanna connect with you and pick your brain or engage with you guys, what's the best way for them to

Max Spanier 42:40

Yeah, I LinkedIn I'm on LinkedIn all day long in my life. Give me a shout on LinkedIn, Max span your Would love to have conversations with anybody about recruiting, marketing operations, or craft beer and big craft beer guy. And it's four, four o'clock on a Friday. So I need to need to go for my first right now.

Michael Hartmann 42:57

There you

Mike Rizzo 42:58

you go. I love it.

Michael Hartmann 42:59

Oh, where're the thing keeping you from that? I don't know if that's a good thing.

Mike Rizzo 43:03

Yeah. Speaking of time zone differences, it's one o'clock here and I'm like, man, I still have a whole day ahead of me.

Michael Hartmann 43:09

there you go.

Max Spanier 43:10

Thanks so much guys, for having me.

Michael Hartmann 43:12

I appreciate Max Mike as always. Thank you. And I know we'll see Naomi again here soon, but, and then to all of our listeners out there, thank you for continuing to support us. And as always we're looking for your feedback, ideas for topics and guests. So send 'em our way. With that. It's a wrap. See you next time.