2023 Pacific Lake Conference: Scaling The Team For Growth
Scaling The Team For Growth at Banyan Software
David Berkal, CEO
Banyan Software acquires, builds, and grows enterprise software businesses. In a conversation with Pacific Lake’s Coley Andrews, Banyan CEO David Berkal shared his experience building a team to support growth at Banyan over the past seven years and lessons learned in recruiting senior-level talent. David emphasized the importance of focusing your time and energy as a CEO, and that for him, getting the right team in place and protecting culture during growth is among the most important things he’s spending time on.
Prepare for long hiring cycles: It typically takes longer than expected to find the right candidate for a role, and being prepared for that will help you not settle on a suboptimal candidate. In some cases, the CEO should be prepared to step into roles temporarily while searching for candidates.
Work your network: While external recruiters can be very valuable, highest quality candidates will almost always come from the leadership team’s network.
Have a well-defined recruitment process: There is a lot of value in having a well-defined process for hiring senior roles. David’s process includes creating a scorecard based on desired outcomes and conducting deep dive interviews with multiple layers of questioning to gather historical data.
Invest in learning how to do effective candidate assessments: Conducting effective candidate assessments is a skill that can be learned and improved over time. There are lots of resources available to help you get up the learning curve. In addition, recording and reviewing interviews done by skilled interviewers can be a great way to train others on effective interviewing techniques.
Have a plan for post-hire support: It is vital to have clear plans for 30 and 90 days out for a new hire, and sharing those plans during the late stage of the interview process can be an effective way to sell the role. In addition, providing new hires with informal buddies or mentors who aren't direct managers can help smooth the onboarding process.
Want more 2023 Pacific Lake Conference highlights? Find additional CEO lessons here from our four part series: Getting Value From Customer Partnerships at HigherMe and Eleven Software, Building Enterprise Value at Datacor, and Navigating the Seas of Talent Strategy and Optimization at Predictive Index.
