Hiring for your Proptech- 8 Steps of Articulation
“Where do I start?”
“How do I find the right people?”
“Who has a road-map?”
“How do I articulate what I need?”
“How do I attract who I want?”
“What does a Product Manager actually do?”
Hit a chord?
When a new industry category is born, just like from what we learnt when Fintech shook the cage, we need to treat hiring even more carefully. Often because;
- A) The Skills you require are hard to articulate, could be difficult to find or may not even exist yet
- B) Candidates from the industry you are disrupting (initially Senior execs which eventually filters down to more junior professionals) are quickly drawn to this bright, shiny disruptive wave with grand promise, grander salary expectations and scant ‘startup ability’
- C) Road-maps or similar growth stories to learn from don’t exist
- D) Very few candidates are even aware of your new industry category, not to mention your company!
AND this is all compounded by the widely-known importance of getting your early hires right.
If you haven’t guessed it yet I’m referring to the exciting rise of Proptech.
What I’ve loved most about being immersed in this new industry is helping Proptech founders to overcome these inherit obstacles.
Through many conversations the most common obstacle facing growing Proptechs, the biggest hurdle by far is the Process of Articulation.
Great founders always have one eye on what’s around the corner.
Great hirers can articulate what they need to get there.
I’d love to share with you the proven 8-Step process that has helped our Proptech partners articulate what they need to hire right the first time, every time:
Step 1: Business Plan
“Holy smokes we got the funding, we need 3–5 cheap and hungry sales ‘guns’ to ‘hit the ground running’ and get this out there.”
Whooaa, Nelly.
Before any hire is made, please dissect the following — in order
- What are your business objectives right now?
- What is the company’s direction moving forward? Does it match the above priorities?
- Exactly how will this hire support the above?
Step 2: Job Design
What is the exact purpose and quantifiable outcomes of this role?
The #1 most misunderstood step in hiring.
Do you need someone from the Property industry to bring their Rolodex of contacts to open the required doors for your product or can someone who has experience selling a similar disruption-software be more effective?
You must CHALLENGE each Purpose and Outcome you write down, otherwise you’ll be overcome with candidate paralysis or make decisions which don’t match Step 1 or 2.
Once defined, list the Characteristics that this person needs to have in order to achieve these outcomes. “High collaboration, strong commercial mindset, leadership quality” for example.
Step 3: Organisational OR Team OR Project Structure
Where will this person fit in order to best fulfill the above purpose?
- Is the purpose of this role to create and up-skill a team to enter a new market?
- Will this hire need support leading this specific project?
- Is the outcome to establish a partnership with X?
- Can we hire this person on a short-term basis to achieve a defined project or milestone?*
*A commonly underutilised option for Scaleups: it may create flexibility to easily & safely scale your team up or down, give you the ‘try before you buy’ advantage over Permanent hires, allows the employ of specialists who can speed up production + reduce costs and it’s great for the old CapEx vs. OpEx conversations with investors.
Step 4: Business Plan 2.0
Test the above against your business plan again.
If misaligned go back to step 2, do not pass Go nor collect your $200, yet.
Step 5: Remuneration
- What can I afford to pay this hire?
- What can’t I afford to lose without this hire?
- Does this match industry standard?
(usually specialised Recruiters in the exact field you’re looking for have more relevant insight than industry reports (outdated by what seems 1.5–2 years on average) and other hiring managers who only accept/realise industry standard after the fact). - How can I get creative?
In my personal opinion I believe greater weighting to flexibility, commissions and equity secure better candidates because it solidifies their reasons to join a startup/scaleup. Either way, an open and transparent conversation wastes less time. We’ve already seen some very creative packages in Proptech — happy to share some cool ideas here).
Step 6: Design your Position Description
You’ve already completed this step! Well, nearly… Your Position Description is simply just bringing your Job Design to life:
Outline the purpose, outcomes and required characteristics of your role. Be open and clear.
Luckily, the rise of Proptech is easy to understand. Every candidate has had some experience with the bricks-and-mortar Property/Real Estate industry, often with a poor CX.
More importantly… you need to create YOUR grab!
Candidates have the power. They have more choice than ever. On average, our candidates have 2.5 other offers in their hand before they agree to one.
Your Position Description needs to scream “why us, why you, why now?”
Most Proptechs struggle with this part of the Position Description. I think this is because it’s so hard to define a young culture in a young industry. I’m super proud of Real Time Australia’s after we invested some long, tear-jerking introspection sessions, guided by HBR’s: Culture Factor. Try it out with your team and the “why us, why you, why now?” should come soon after.
HOT TIPS:
- Never copy ads you see on other Job Boards or use the same PD twice.
- You don’t have to advertise your remuneration package though know that fewer people will directly apply if you don’t.
- Every single time you hire, even for a replacement, you need to go through ALL of the above steps again to ensure you’re attracting + retaining the perfect candidate.
Step 7: Designing your Interview process
This needs to be air-tight before you advertise anywhere or speak to any candidate!
Based on your Job Design, how exactly are you assessing:
A) The candidates ability to achieve the outcomes of this role
B) The necessary characteristics of the candidate to achieve the outcomes of this role
Are you going to achieve this by:
- asking consistent, congruent and specific questions?
- deeply focusing on the candidates exact experience?
- by creating assessments for them and scoring appropriately?
The most effective tool for this step is found in Geoff Smart and Randy Street’s Who. It’s brilliant, and it especially nails this part of your hiring process.
If you don’t have time to read it — basically you need to create a scorecard to accurately assess your candidates performance so you can score them against your Job Design plus compare candidates against each other.
I don’t recommend following it to the letter, I recommend creating your own scorecard to fit your style — though the premise of it is spot on.
This format needs to be communicated with whoever is a part of the hiring process. And again, challenge your assumptions here; “why does Greg need to meet every candidate?”… “what are we actually revealing from our code test?”… “why do we have 4 interview rounds?”… “exactly why are we asking this question?”
Step 8: Go to Market Resourcing Strategy
It doesn’t matter where this person comes from — they just need to be the absolute best fit for your Job + Org/Team/Project Design.
If they’re your best friends neighbour — awesome!
If they’ve come with a recruitment fee — awesome! You’ve found your best fit (and you’d hope their value should outweigh this cost.)
What is essential here is that every channel you use strictly follows your Resourcing plan so that your candidates receive a clear, fair and consistent experience AND you confirm you’re correctly assessing each candidate. If you don’t respond to any of your overwhelming Seek applicants, if your Recruiter is telling your candidates porkies — well I’m afraid in hiring ‘what goes around comes around’, and in a smaller pond like Proptech, things tend to come around much quicker.
When I was selecting recruiters to help me build my Fintech teams I found that a specialist in your field reaps the best rewards. Recruitment generalists come and go in an industry where annual turnover is 57%! Find one you can trust, that will suit your needs and who delivers value beyond the candidate placement.
After this is complete you’re at the offering, hiring, on-boarding and engaging stages of your candidates which I won’t go into right now as it is not going to happen unless you have the above down pat. You will hire without this method, though you won’t always hire the best for the job, within a suitable time frame thus cost nor protect your young, vulnerable brand image.
Now you know the 8-steps of Articulation. You’ve got the road-map and a structure to help you challenge + articulate your assumptions — now go forth & scale!
Would love to hear what your experience has been hiring for your Proptech too!
