Pivot to First Episode 4: Ton Dobbe on Creating and Growing a Successful SaaS Company

Pivot to First Episode 4: Ton Dobbe on Creating and Growing a Successful SaaS Company

by | Apr 15, 2022 | Blog, Podcast

Pivot to First Episode 4: Ton Dobbe on Creating and Growing a Successful SaaS Company from PivotCX on Vimeo.

In addition to podcast hosting, Ton Dobbe is the author of The Remarkable Effect and a SaaS Strategy consultant. Mike appeared on Ton’s podcast Tech Entrepreneur on a Mission Season 4, Ep. 163 published 4/26/2021. This time around, Mike hosts Ton.

For Ton, starting his podcast goes hand in hand with establishing his own consultancy. He wanted to learn how to build a remarkable software business from successful entrepreneurs. His desire to learn from the best soon became a flow and after 60 -70 episodes someone encouraged him to write a book discussing and distilling all the wisdom enshrined in the podcast.

In this episode, Mike and Ton talk about:

– What do entrepreneurs need to do to be one of those companies everyone keeps talking about? It’s all about assessing where you stand today and having a vision to guide your and your team’s actions.

– How important is talent to grow a successful SaaS company? People and cultural fit a are part of the process. Different people are needed at different stages.

– SaaS entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate and sometimes they don’t have a full picture, what are they getting wrong? Everybody makes bad hires, but how you deal with those issues makes all the difference. Also, not getting stuck in ideas and other types of silos can give companies a leg up.

– When a company isn’t in an upshot, how do companies assess where they stand and figure out how to get on a growth path? According to some statistics, 9 out of 10 startups fail and 75% of scaleups fail. These figures make it imperative for companies to find the right market fit and positioning to sustain growth.

Finding the right talent for the right role at the right time, having a clear vision with buy-in from everyone involved, as well as adding value for your customers – solving their needs and problems – can lead a struggling or plateaued company to sustained success.

Pivot to First Podcast: Jo Dodds on Employee Engagement

Pivot to First Podcast: Jo Dodds on Employee Engagement

by | Apr 12, 2022 | Blog, Podcast

In this podcast episode, Mike chats with Jo Dodds, host of the podcast Engage for Success and a leader of the employee engagement movement.

Ever since the Engaging for Success was published in 2009, Jo has been at the forefront of advocating for best practices in employee engagement. Employee engagement and success have grown into an important cornerstone of a successful company. While hard to define, employee success can be considered as people need to have something meaningful about their work to do the best job they can. Employee experience is the next step forward.

With the Great Resignation, people are shuffling across companies but not everyone is finding that they’re getting what they signed up for. Companies lose good people because they are not talking to everyone. Start out with the supposition that ALL CANDIDATES are good people to talk with and you’ll do a much better job with recruiting.

Important to a successful employee engagement strategy is to focus on the 4 enablers:

1. Strategic Narrative – Visible, empowering leadership providing a strong strategic narrative about the organization, where it’s come from, and where it’s going

2. Engaging Managers – who focus on their people and give them scope, treat their people as individuals, and coach and stretch their people.

3. Employee Voice – Employees are seen not as the problem, but rather as central to the solution, to be involved, listened to, and invited to contribute their experience, expertise, and ideas.

4. Organizational Integrity – the values on the wall are reflected in day-to-day behaviors. There is no ‘say–do’ gap. Promises made and promises kept, or an explanation given as to why not.

Learn more about Jo Dodds and the Engage for Success movement here: https://engageforsuccess.org/ 

 

Workforce: Rethinking Talent Models

Workforce: Rethinking Talent Models

by | Mar 22, 2022 | Blog, Hiring, recruiting

Originally published by

Deloitte Insights 

Not only have workforce demographics changed over the last 30 years—collectively making the workforce older and more diverse—but the very social contract between employers and employees has altered dramatically as well. Organizations now have a broad continuum of options for finding workers, from hiring traditional full-time employees to availing themselves of managed services and outsourcing, independent contractors, gig workers, and crowdsourcing. These newer workforce types are available to solve problems, get work done, and help leaders build more flexible and nimble organizations (figure 2). Alternative workers are growing in number; currently, 35 percent of the US workforce is in supplemental, temporary, project, or contract-based work. This percentage is growing as well—for example, the freelance workforce is growing faster than the total workforce, up 8.1 percent compared to 2.6 percent of all employees.

As labor-sourcing options increase, it opens up the possibility for more efficiency and creativity in composing an organization’s workforce. But with more options often comes more complexity. Employers should not only consider how roles are crafted when pairing humans with machines, but also the arrangement of their human workforce and what type(s) of employment are best suited to obtain the creativity, passion, and skill sets needed for the work at hand. Orchestrating this complex use of different workforce segments might require new models. It could fundamentally change our view of the employee life cycle from the traditional “attract, develop, and retain” model to one where the key questions are how organizations should access, curate, and engage workforces of all types (see the sidebar, “Beyond the employee life cycle”).

Organizations have an opportunity to optimize the organizational benefits of each type of talent relationship while also providing meaningful and engaging options for a wide variety of worker needs and motivations. However, making the most of the opportunity could require a complete rethinking of talent models in a way that allows organizations to carefully match people’s motivations and skills with the organization’s work needs.

Access. How do you tap into capabilities and skills across your enterprise and the broader ecosystem? This includes sourcing from internal and external talent marketplaces and leveraging and mobilizing on- and off-balance sheet talent.

Curate. How do you provide employees—ecosystem talent—and teams with the broadest and most meaningful range of development? This includes work experiences that are integrated into the flow of their work, careers, and personal lives.

Engage. How do you interact with and support your workforces, business teams, and partners to build compelling relationships? This includes multidirectional careers in, across, and outside of the enterprise; and for business leaders and teams, providing insights to improve productivity and impact while taking advantage of new ways of teaming and working.

Deloitte Consulting LLP – © 2021

Imagine being able to engage your applicants within five minutes of application, then engaged in human-to-human interaction starting in seconds. PivotCX can make this process happen. See our 90-second video explaining how PivotCX can help you get to the right talent fast so you can Pick First.

Webinar Recording: Candidate Engagement Benchmarks Report

Webinar Recording: Candidate Engagement Benchmarks Report

by | Mar 18, 2022 | Blog, Podcast, recruiting

Download the Full Candidate Engagement Report here.

In 2021 67.24% of job applicants used mobile devices to apply for jobs. That asks two questions: first, is your application mobile-friendly? and secondly, are you engaging with them quickly enough? 

JobSync and PivotCX have banded together to reveal our new joint Benchmark Report on best-in-class candidate engagement rates. We’re covering top industries like healthcare, education, manufacturing, trucking, and more. 

If you feel like you’re getting ghosted too many times or losing good talent to competitors then this is the webinar for you.

What we will uncover:

  • Engagement rates and stats for top industries [including specified job titles]
  • What top companies are doing to get double and triple and candidate volume
  • How leveraging SMS within your existing automations can fill your funnel faster

Imagine receiving an application from a qualified candidate, contacting said candidate via SMS, and having a response within 9 seconds. You read that correctly – 9 seconds.  And then imagine that at scale.

Download the full report here

Hosts

Mike Seidle is a serial entrepreneur and software developer with deep experience in HR Tech. Mike heads up product operations and product development for PivotCX. He brings over 30 years of experience in marketing, software development, product and user experience design, and a proven track record of leading technology-driven teams.

Leah Daniels has held a number of roles in the recruiting technology industry, including SVP of Strategy and the GM of SaaS Products at Appcast, Director of Product Strategy at Monster and Director of Global Alliances and Business Development at Bullhorn. Earlier in her career, Leah spent 10 years at ZoomInfo leading sales operations, product management, national account, business development, and data services. She currently resides in MA with her son, dogs, and husband.

 

The 5 Problems that Keep CEOs Up at Night

The 5 Problems that Keep CEOs Up at Night

by | Mar 3, 2022 | Blog, Podcast, recruiting

Originally published by Industry Week 

 Ten years ago, we surveyed manufacturing CEOs to determine what kept them up at night. Coming on the heels of the Great Recession, concerns about another economic downturn were naturally top of mind. Worries about supply chain challenges—in the aftermath of the first significant global supply chain disruption and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March 2011—were second. 

We informally surveyed CEOs again this October to gauge their current pain points. Following is a snapshot of top-ranked concerns facing U.S. manufacturing leaders toward the end of 2021.

  1. Talent recruitment and retention. No surprise here—unless you were expecting No. 1 to be supply chain disruptions. What was once a concern is now a crisis. Not only were there almost 900,000 job openings in manufacturing in the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, or about 9% of all private openings, but more than 300,000 manufacturing employees quit their jobs each month this summer. The Great Resignation is altering the global work landscape. On top of the struggle to attract younger workers—those with STEM skills and a general interest in mechanical and technical careers—manufacturers now have to deal with changing generational perceptions of work overall. Millennials and Gen Z are predicted to make up 30% of total employment by 2030.   

     

  2. Global supply chain disruptions. Hiccups in the production and distribution of materials, components and products have become the norm with the rise of global value chains. But today’s crisis, of course, is no hiccup: Jammed ports and supply bottlenecks have been the rule rather than the exception for a year. IHS Markit says that suppliers’ delivery times in the United States and the EU have hit record lengths due to surging demand. Consumer spending on durable goods is up more than 20% in the past year, and widespread supply constraints, including component and labor shortages, exacerbate the issue. In fact, shipping prices from China are up 400% since last year, and wait times for ocean freight up 45%. While some analysts believe that as COVID recedes, capacity constraints and labor shortages will also diminish, IHS Markit says the crunch could last for another 12 months—if not longer.
  3. Commodity and raw material prices. At the heart of much of today’s supply challenge is the shortage of commodities and raw materials, which have driven producer prices up dramatically. It’s hard for manufacturers to plan for growth in the face of unrelenting price spikes. The Federal Reserve’s Global Price Index for All Commodities stands at 167, the highest level in seven years. Moreover, Bloomberg’s index on raw-material spot prices is at a 10-year high. Oil prices are at their highest level since 2014, while according to the Fed, iron and steel prices are at their highest levels ever on the producer price index. Like so many other challenges, this one is not expected to resolve itself any time soon.
  4. Cyber threats. There is one dramatic difference between our CEO survey of 2011 and 2021: rapidly rising concern over cyber-attacks, especially regarding ransomware and malware, that can lead to equipment sabotage and system shutdowns. The Internet of Things has proven to be a dual-edged sword: Networking with the outside world means exposing yourself to the outside world. According to Statista Research and Analysis, there are 10 billion interconnected devices in the world today, which will climb to more than 25 billion by 2030. At least 4 billion are in use across all industries as well as government. This means unless manufacturers turn the clock back to 1990—restricting their employees’ access to email and cell phones and canceling plans to create smart factories and supply chains—their systems are at risk.
  5. General economic and global volatility. Economies across the globe are slowing considerably as the impact of the continuing pandemic (which wave is it now?) continues to plague businesses and consumers worldwide. On top of supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, there’s the specter of inflation. The federal government’s Consumer Price Index for All Urban consumers (CPI-U) is up 5.4% year over year, and according to the United Nations, global food prices are up 33% in the last 12 months. Adjusted for inflation and annualized, food prices around the world are at their highest level since 1960.

And yet … according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, after declining 5% in 2020, corporate profits were up 5% in the first quarter and more than 10% in the second quarter of 2021. Not too shabby considering the growing list of business concerns.   

Stephen Gold is president and CEO, Manufacturers Alliance