Hiring a Subject Matter Expert (SME) when you’re early into your business can be a great idea – especially if they have influencing power and/or have the ability to establish themselves – but what should you hire them as?
You meet someone great and know they would be an asset to your business – except they don’t necessarily have the traditional skills you need for your team or you already have others handling those responsibilities – so what do you do?
A founder in my network recently asked me for my thoughts on hiring an SME in his category and training them to be a B2B marketer. While my first instinct was to assume that would be a poor fit (expert or not, B2B marketing has its own learning curve), I had to stop myself from making assumptions and get the full picture.
Here are the things I would want to know before making this decision:
What does your business need?
Ask yourself a few questions:
- What does your business need to accomplish right now?
- Does the value add this person bring fulfill and surpass those needs?
- Is this need for right now and will it extend into the future?
Hiring someone in a role for short term value may be great for your business, but not great to the person you hire. Make sure there’s room for them to grow or evolve within your roadmap.
Does this person need to be a full time hire?
Before figuring out the role they could fit in, determine if they need to be a full time hire. Can they help you solve problems as a consultant rather than as a hire?
What roles do you have open?
After determining what your needs are and that you and/or that person needs to be full time, you will have to assess where that person may fit into the business. It should be a given that you need to have a conversation with them about their interests but look across the spectrum of roles you have in the business and identify what you believe could be a fit. This may not necessarily be the role that the person may want, but you’ll want to know what the options are.
What are this person’s skills and interests beyond what they do today?
If the person is interested in a role they don’t have a background in or you have to figure out how to fit them into an existing open headcount, you may have to start thinking creatively.
If you’ve been in the start-up world awhile, you’ve probably taken on many responsibilities that were outside the scope of your role. These bonus skills aren’t obvious based on job title, so it will be pertinent to ask any candidates what they’ve worked on outside of their scope.
For example, I was once the master RFP creator and negotiator for all tech contracts on the business side (non R&D) – not a typical role for a demand gen marketer (my role at the time). I was also the go-to for budget building. With those 2 skillsets, I could go into ops or possibly even finance, for example.
Additionally, beyond bonus skills, determine their capacity to learn. What would they do to get up to speed and gain new skillsets. It’s difficult to find people who encompass every skill you need, so everyone needs to learn, but what’s the learning curve and ability you’d be willing to take on?
Do you have the time time or resources to teach?
I have hired extraordinary people who at first glance didn’t have the base skillsets on their resume, but demonstrated a great capacity to learn. From there, I had either work closely with them to grow or identify the best resources, but it took a lot of effort on my part. So keep this in mind if you want to bring someone on but you need to teach them.
Overall, it depends on your business and your appetite for risk. Hiring the right people is already a difficult task and trying to fit a square peg, or even slightly oval peg, into a round hole makes it all the harder – so these decisions cannot be taken lightly without commitment from both side to making it work.
Header Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash