How have job candidate expectations shifted through the pandemic? Founder & CEO of Built In shares how businesses can address their needs and what's likely to happen as we recover.
Job candidate attitudes have changed through the pandemic.
Maria Christopoulos Katris, founder & CEO of Built In, shares what’s shifted, how to address their needs and what’s likely to happen as we recover.
As Co-Founder & CEO of Built In, the most powerful network of online communities for people who live and work in technology, Maria is leading a phenomenal team helping to create a path to purpose for the most diverse, progressive and innovative generation. The network of Built In sites helps technology companies showcase exclusive, behind-the-scenes looks at their innovative people, products and cultures.
Watch the full session: https://bit.ly/3dmcL3E
Have feedback? Connect with Scott Case on LinkedIn
Visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions, watch past sessions, and see what topics are up next.
Scott Case 0:00
Welcome to Founders Focus, a podcast made for founders by founders. I'm Scott Case, CEO and co-founder of Upside, and I created Founders Focus to help share free resources and actionable advice. Together, we're building a community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and founders to come together to tackle today's challenges. This podcast is powered by my awesome team at Upside. Please visit foundersfocus.com to join the live video sessions or to catch up on past topics.
Scott Case 0:27
I'm excited to introduce our co-host for today, Maria Christopoulos Katris. She's the co-founder and CEO of Built In, and it's a home for people who live and work with technology as well as a recruitment platform. And we're gonna be talking about changing attitudes, especially around both candidates and employers, that have happened through the pandemic and then as we start to see what's going to stick as we go forward. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Maria to introduce herself. And then we'll dive into her journey. And our theme for today.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 1:05
Hi everyone. I'm Maria, co-founder and CEO of Built In, as Scott mentioned, it's great to be here. I had quite the unconventional path to entrepreneurship, even though it was somehow in my bloodstream, I think. Born by entrepreneurial parents. But I am headquartered in Chicago, I live in Chicago, I have three beautiful daughters and an awesome husband. That's me.
Scott Case 1:27
That's awesome. And like most spouses of entrepreneurs, I assume yours is fairly patient.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 1:35
Oh, extremely. We have this internal joke that for the first eight years of Built In, I sort of had set his expectations really low that there was a 95% chance of failure. So like, it was sort of in the last two years where he's like, Wait a second, like what's going on here? And I'm like, nope, nope, 95% chance of failure, that's all you need to know. Like I just set it so low. And so you know, it's my MO, Scott, right, like under promise over deliver. It's how I do it with the board, investors, employees. So it's the best approach.
Scott Case 2:15
Yeah, so you're at the stage though now where there's a bit of like nothing to see here going on. With that, why don't you tell us a little bit more about your journey? So it sounds like you certainly stepped into this. And again, you set expectations. But how did you end up being the co-founder and CEO of Built In?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 2:34
Yeah, absolutely. I'll try to minimize it. But basically, long story short, I did the very traditional path out of undergrad. I wanted to start my own business. My dad's like, go work for someone else, which was really good advice at the time, honestly. And so I did what everyone did, who was a finance major back in 2000, which is I went and worked for a big five consulting firm. Got a lot of my foundational skills there, spent four years there, realized that wasn't meant to be there. And I had an amazing mentor who told me to get out and get out fast, and told me to go pursue my MBA and just get out. And that's what you do when you have an awesome mentor who you really trust, you do what they tell you to do. And so that's what I did. I got an MBA from Kellogg.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 3:17
The time I was working for a hospital system, after consulting and about a week into that job, I was like there's no way I'm going to last here, and I simultaneously was invited to an entrepreneurs event in Chicago. And the light bulb just went off and I'm like, I'm starting my own business. And that's when my husband first got brought into the fold of Okay, my wife went from working in this corporate ladder to kind of not making a lot of money and now she wants to make no money, and was really supportive from the beginning.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 3:48
And so long story short, I started my first business, it's a long story why it was an anti-agency, but used my Kellogg classmates and teachers to help me formulate that business. Launched it right before I had my first daughter, who's now 13, and sold it just under two years later. Realized quickly that I liked it, it gave me the confidence that I could start a business. It told me this is exactly what I meant to be. But it just wasn't going to be a big business. It was a services business, there's a lot out of my control. And I really just wanted to do something big. And so stayed out for about a year and a half, and that's when I really lost my mind and that's where my husband is very supportive of me working because we both decided at that point that I was meant to be a working mom, not a stay at home mom. Everyone's happier that way.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 4:36
And so one of the partners, and this goes to keeping your professional network alive, one of the partners I worked for in my first career in consulting was he was the board president of a nonprofit for tech entrepreneurs in Chicago. And he's like, Maria, I know you're trying to figure out what you want to do next, why don't you come on this nonprofit? It's all these tech CEOs in Chicago and venture capitalists and you'll figure out what you want to do next. And so that's what I did. So I'm like, sure, pay me $25 an hour, and I'll work 20 hours a week and figure out what I want to do next. And that's basically what I did. And so I got to know the whole Chicago tech ecosystem that way. But a year in I approached one of my board members, who was the first investor to say yes to Built In and sat on our board for four years and she was on the board of the nonprofit. And I said, Ellen, I'm done running a nonprofit, I can't sit in a room all day and not do much. I'm like, I need to be doing something. And two, I said, I'm sick of everyone complaining about what Chicago's tech community doesn't have. I said, we have capital, we have talent, we have resources, and we have a 20 year history of tech companies being built here. I'm like, the problem is, no one's talking about it. Everyone in the Midwest like heads down building their businesses, no one's promoting themselves. And so I mapped for her on a PowerPoint slide what I thought, almost it looked like a PR engine could look like, and she's like, Yes, let's go talk to and she named all these people in the community.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 5:59
Well, a month later, after we had that lunch, Matt Mogue, who's a serial entrepreneur in Chicago, was having pizza and beer in his office one night with a number of entrepreneurs in Chicago, they had met each other through networking, and realized, like we need a home for people in startups. And Made in NYC had just come up on the radar. Accelerant Labs, which is now TechStars, Chicago had just popped up. And so in like two hours one night, throw up this new platform that was a social networking out of the box platform and invited everyone in this contacts for distribution to join. Well, I got an invite to join. And the light bulb just went off. I'm like, I emailed Matt, I had met him once, because he joined the nonprofit that summer that I was running. And I said, Can I come over and learn how to use this, I was just talking to Ellen about the same thing, like this is it, this is what you need to do. And the long story short is I stalked him for the next five months. I sent him like an email every other night. Like, I probably need to dig them up at some point of like, what the strategy should be. I told him to buy every domain globally. I invited 5,000 people out of the nonprofits database to join the platform. I was just like a one woman machine that everyone in Chicago tech should be on this platform. And so that was that. So about like month four comes around and Matt Troy Henikoff, he's still on my board to this day, he has invested in four of our five financings, led two of them. Troy, Matt and I were having lunch one day, and Matt's like, Okay, I have 100,000 in founding sponsorship from entrepreneurs in this community who want us to do something with this, but I can't run it. I'm running a venture backed business myself, like I need someone to run it. And I sort of raised my hand and he's like, Yeah, that makes sense, you pretty much are running it now and you're not getting paid. And the rest is history. Tory looked at me, and he's like, you've never run a tech company. I'm like, I don't care, I'll figure it out. And that was it. And here we are 10 years later. And it's a passion project. It really is.
Scott Case 8:01
That's awesome. I think that two things I want to highlight, maybe ask a little bit about. One is that is the bridge from where you were trying to figure out your next thing, taking on this organization where you were going to get to interact with all of these tech leaders and VCs, and then it ended up spinning out an opportunity. How intentional did you see that bridge? Not so much that it would end up creating Built In, but it sounds like you were pretty intentional about wanting to connect with that particular community.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 8:39
I was really intentional. It's a great question. I was intentional about the fact that I wanted to get exposure to more entrepreneurs. Back then Chicago was not a hub for entrepreneurs. It was dominated by the fortune 500 and financial services. And it was a pretty small community of people in what we called at the time digital tech. Like we had to emphasize digital tech back then. Because it was like, No, really, this is like online. It wasn't a huge community. But what I did know is I wanted to be around entrepreneurs, and I just got the bug. It was like, I'd go to these events with a nonprofit. And I'm like, this is incredible. These are my people. Like this is what I want to be doing. And I was also just incredibly passionate about promoting Chicago tech at the time, right? We figured out that there was this model, so like, that piece was definitely intentional. People say it's a light bulb moment. And I'm sure, Scott, you've felt this way at times and others have. But it really was a lightbulb moment. I mean, I got that invite, and I still remember getting it and being like, this is it, this is it. This is what I want to do. And I just became obsessed and that obsession just hasn't diminished at all over 10 years now.
Scott Case 9:58
Awesome. I'll point out something else that you said. And then we'll talk a little bit about what you've observed at Built In and sort of what you've changed. But one of my companies, my co-founder's wife used to say, I married a lawyer. And because he turned into being a founder, and just like, I married this lawyer guy, stable job, income, and now I've got this blob. She kind of semi blamed me, but that's another story.
Scott Case 10:27
So, talk a little bit about Built In. You started out with this, really, like you said, PR, get people to know that Chicago companies were doing amazing things. It's expanded to lots of other cities. And one of the things that I think you identified and we see this a lot in entrepreneurial communities is they often talk a lot about capital, but when you actually get to the entrepreneurs, talent and recruiting become such an integral part of how you build companies. And I think Built In has sort of expanded into that space. Can you just talk a little bit about, like, how you got there, and where you are now in there? And then we'll talk a little bit how things have shifted over the last year.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 11:11
Yeah, for sure. So what happened with Built In was, and I say, like I'm sure Matt's intentions were that this could be a nonprofit, he was doing it as a side thing and it was good for the community. He's very big on promoting Chicago's tech community. But I just immediately saw it as something way bigger.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 11:26
And so when I started, it'll be 10 years in May, we would just write about local tech companies. And then I would get these inbound emails saying, hey, when you wrote about us like TechCrunch did and VentureBeat did, etc, and yet, we got so much interesting inbound applicants to our jobs when you guys wrote about us. And so, and this kept happening. And so I knew we were on to something in keeping it local, and being very definitive about this is for tech. And so it was this protectiveness of the audience that became so important to cultivating this community and like a high concentration of quality people in it.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 12:08
And then five months after I started, I hired Adam, my co-founder to this day, who leads the growth side of our business, who's the brains behind all of our user acquisition, and frankly, all of our customer acquisition PQLs that we built the business with. And the two of us for like three years, it was the two of us in three markets. And we were really figuring it out. But what happened very early on was, we had this thread on a Ning site where people could post open roles. And it became the most frequented part of the site. So within a year, we knew we had to get off the Ning platform and onto a platform that could allow us to service like jobs and job slots, because it wasn't conducive to get a response 1000 times to this jobs thread. And so that started what I call like the job board.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 12:55
And then in late 2012, we were launching in Colorado, simultaneously, two months later, we launched in LA. And around that time, I very early on, given my experience with a nonprofit world and being a sponsorship revenue business, I had no intention of running a sponsorship revenue business anymore. And so really wanted to think about what was a long term revenue stream for the business. And at the time, we hosted really high quality events for these entrepreneurs that they would not pay for, because we would get someone to sponsor them. We had these job slots now. And then at the time, I'd struck a deal with NBC five digital where they were interviewing tech CEOs. So I'm like, Okay, I'll put it all into a package, and they'll pay us for the year. And that was the beginning of our annual recurring revenue model that we have to this day that our inside sales team sells, basically, with iterations obviously along the way, and I sold the first like 25 friends and family, I like to call them, very early supporters. And then we hired our first sales person. And we went on from there. And it evolved into what we did.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 13:57
But we were really ahead of the curve for recruitment, like our model of utilized content to drive in eyeballs and then figure out how to monetize them. It's not a new model. It just had never been applied to recruitment. And we were the first people to apply it to recruitment when we were way before our time. So it took about five, six years in before the market completely turned in our direction where candidates actually began looking for jobs the way they search for airline tickets, search for hotels, restaurant reservations, etc. So like, they say, luck, timing, execution. It all kind of came to a head a couple years ago, I'd say about three years ago, where it's like, oh my gosh, this actually works, and we're driving eyeballs that no one else can drive. But for years, it wasn't a known thing. And so people couldn't figure out what we were doing. They were like, wait, you have this content, but you're charging people for jobs, like how does it work? And that's what's really crystallized over the last three years. That is kind of the secret sauce to our model.
Scott Case 15:01
That's awesome. I think it often looks like these things are overnight successes as you're going to create a national brand now etc. And yet, 10 years in the making, and it took you seven to get to a place where the penny finally dropped for everybody. And I think for those people who are just starting off on their journey, that's a pretty common story, right? Very few businesses come together quickly and magically appear at scale.
Scott Case 15:29
So you've been operating this way. Three years ago, the penny dropped, you had a couple of years of things operating. Pandemic hits, and now everybody's moving everywhere. And being in Chicago is like, maybe I'll be in Chicago, maybe I'll be in Telluride. What has shifted for both candidates and employers, both your observations at Built In, and then sort of where do you think it goes from here?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 15:55
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So let's talk about the candidates on one hand. So candidates pre-COVID were very much like local for a long time. Everyone was focused on local, everyone took a lot of pride in their location and their city that they lived in. That's why our model really appealed to people because it's, you know, if I want jobs in tech in Boston, I'm just using Built iIn Boston, it's the best site to use, right? Same in New York, Austin, Chicago, Colorado, LA, Austin, etc. However, the pandemic hits and now overnight, remote roles are getting more applies than local job roles. And we were fortunate, remote had always been on our product roadmap, but we basically accelerated it once COVID hit. And about a month after COVID hit, I want to say, we released our remote feature, which was huge for the business, and for our customers, as well as candidates looking at the platforms. But now 50% of the traffic that comes to each local site is actually coming from outside that geography. And in a market like San Francisco, 65% of the traffic comes from outside the market. So people aren't looking in there geo – they want to work the way they want to work, and they want to work for who they want to work for. And so the boundaries are just disappearing. So that was one huge shift.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 17:18
The other huge shift that we're starting to see now is, you know, I thought national is going to be the big move for us this year. And like we were going to cover the entire US by Q4, going from 8 geos to full U.S. coverage. Now it's how quick can you be international? And that's what all of our customers are asking, because unemployment for tech is 3% in the US, it's no different than before COVID, and it's going to keep going down. Because what COVID did from a customer standpoint is it accelerated all these digital transformations that were happening anyways. But you know, when you sign up Whole Foods, and Kraft, Heinz in Q4 and ascension health, right? You have these companies who are not tech companies, but they have to undergo massive digital transformations to survive. So guess what, they're now competing with tech companies for the same talent. So competition is just getting worse. Everyone's being forced to go international. And truly, for the first time in 10 years, in the last six months, we're increasingly getting requests to be international by our customer base, because they're having to move hiring abroad. And so there's been a lot of changes from that standpoint.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 18:25
The other biggest changes are just what candidates look for today. Two years ago right before COVID, it was we want work life balance, and any perk that went under that umbrella was top of mind for candidates. In 2020, as you can imagine, it was remote work. And that's a big change.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 18:43
The other thing – A recent DEI survey we did showed that 78% of candidates want to know what your DEI initiatives are before accepting a job offer. I had for the first time in 10 years, I've had two candidates in the last three months tell me they're leaving their current employer because they don't have an emphasis on DEI and they don't agree with their DEI practices or numbers. So I think what candidates want from a location and perk standpoint is one thing, what they want from a values and mission and purpose based standpoint is a whole other thing. And so, companies are just being forced in a very good way to focus on things that really matter to candidates today. And it's going to be quick for some companies and it's going to take a longer time for others to adapt.
Scott Case 18:54
I think that that acceleration piece is likely to be the theme that we look back on in three or four years to define what's really changed. More people were planning to work remotely. Now it's a common option. Commuting was becoming painful for people, so the idea of working from home was already a thing that people were engaged with.
Scott Case 19:56
I'm curious about how, with that shift, the team management leadership of all that is changing. And are you seeing things either with your clients or even with your own team about how you lead a team in an environment where you've got this distributed nature and the acceleration of technology all playing out together?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 20:22
Yeah, for sure. Honestly, I think the biggest fundamental difference in leading a team in the last year has just been the people element. Leading a team through such insane uncertainty, social unrest, a global pandemic, people losing family members, right, like being isolated for extended periods of time. I don't think anyone anticipated like how much strain that would have on leaders. I consider myself like a pretty high EQ leader who spends 90% of every week focused on the people side of things. And it tested me. Like it took everything out of me, and it still does. What I saw this year was like, some leaders really struggled because of that, and so we were troubleshooting a lot of scenarios where we're like, oh my gosh, we have to uplevel our managers like, they need to know how to manage humans, how to speak to them, how to be there for them emotionally, not just workwise. And that is something that we've put a lot of emphasis on internally. And I honestly, I question how leaders are surviving this year, if they don't have high EQ, because there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not either doing a double skip level meeting with someone, talking someone off the ledge, unraveling someone else, coaching one of my directs on a situation they have on their people teams, right? Like, it's constant, and it is more than I've ever seen before. But it's important, because these are your people, right? And I always told my board, like without people, there's no business. So we start there, and that's where it always has to start. And I think that's just been really hard for a lot of people.
Scott Case 22:09
You talked about the people side, and for those that are working remotely or distributed, this kind of working through a camera and engaging in that way, it's even more difficult because you don't get the same body language or cues that are there. And one of the things that when you talk about DEI, diversity is sort of the mix of people that you have, equity is are you treating everybody fairly and consistently, and then the inclusion part, I know you've done some surveys and things, but when we look at that part, certainly in our company, it's one thing to bring in a person of color to a team that might be dominated by a group of white engineers, let's say, and how do you help them feel included and on boarded and connect with the team in the best possible way, all doing it through a camera and a piece of glass? I'm curious if any of the surveying or work that you've done has kind of revealed patterns or opportunities to embrace best practices to help the team be cohesive, because building diverse and inclusive teams is just much more effective?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 23:26
Yeah, for sure. It's interesting, I've never thought about it as what's the difference via Zoom or in person to be honest. We've looked at it very holistically and have invested a lot internally. So right when COVID hit, we rolled out five new ERG's to focus on the inclusion element, because we recognize like, how exactly to what you just said.
Scott Case 23:50
What's an ERG?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 23:51
Employee resource group. And so basically, the focus there is to focus on radical inclusion. It's creating homes for people where they can be vulnerable and talk to people amongst their peers. It's also for allies to get to know them better and understand what's driving it. So we have one for women, we have one for LGBTQ+, we have one for people of color, we have one for people of Jewish descent, and they're all employee led. Employees are raising their hand saying we want to lead this, this is important to us. And they are drivers of change for us. There are eyes and ears, we run things by them that we want to roll out to the entire company. And they hold us accountable to making sure we are consistently focused on inclusion at the company.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 24:35
Other things we did is our Director of HR is a Latinx woman who is now leading our inclusion efforts and we have a full DEI roadmap like this isn't a one and done thing. This isn't a let's talk about it one month, go through some trainings and be done with it. This needs to be on the roadmap just like every strategic roadmap item we talk about throughout the business. So she just presented the DEI roadmap for Q2 to the company last week in our own hands. So it's very quickly become a part of our culture and a commitment from us. Like we have a ways to go, we're really good with the female male ratios, but we're not good with people of color, like, we're I think 10 11% like that's not good. And we have a long ways to go. And so the point being is, we're not perfect, but we're going to talk about it, we're going to air it out, and we're going to be transparent about it, because that's going to help us do better. And so those are our commitments.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 25:32
And like I said, I mean, candidates, the most beautiful part of all this is candidates are demanding it. But candidates are also taking themselves out of the running because of it. We actually had a candidate fairly recently, who asked a question to our Director of Talent, and said, I noticed this picture, I just want to be clear my beliefs are very different, and I want to know if I would belong at a company like this. And it was pretty eye opening for me, that was the first time because our team is extremely inclusive. And when that came up, I was a little taken aback. But it allowed us to have a very frank conversation to say, this is our culture, and if this is uncomfortable to you, then it's probably not the right place for you. But I think the more transparent you are, the more you're going to get people self selecting in or out.
Scott Case 26:25
Yeah, I think that's a big part.
Scott Case 26:27
We got a few questions that have come up on this topic. So we'll tackle them in order here. So one is, and we certainly hear this across a lot of employee led ERG's, is that it's kind of a lot of unpaid work with a lot of emotional attachment to it. How are you tackling that? Or how do you advise sort of tackling that kind of tension from a resourcing standpoint?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 26:58
Yeah, I mean, listen, our Director of HR inclusion probably has a better handle on it. I have not heard, and I'm sure it would have gotten to me, if anything, we've seen tremendous benefit, because each of our ERG's is helping us lead something. And if anything, it gives people something to rally around. And so for us, I have not heard from anyone in any ERG, a leader of an ERG or people team that it's either a distraction or it's consuming too much time or it's causing unrest. Maybe call it our size, call it our culture, I don't know, I'm sure at larger companies, they have certain issues. But for us, they've honestly been incredibly helpful because you know we're not missing anything that is not inclusionary. For instance, if someone wants to celebrate a Jewish holiday, like the ERG will actually host like a cookie making or they'll elevate and make everyone aware that this holiday exists, right? When we wanted to roll out our DEI manifesto, right, we have an ERG to look at it for us from a different lens. Like we got feedback for the woman's ERG, for instance, they had an X in woman, and what we found out from our one trans employee we have is that that's actually not inclusive to someone who's trans, and so they changed it back to woman. And so everything I've heard from my team is how helpful it's been in driving change internally versus being a detriment.
Scott Case 28:29
Do you make it clear that spending time on that work is a priority relative to the other things in their day job? Like do you give them the space to say, look, if that's something you're invested in, invest the time and energy in it and leaders and managers are okay with whether that's an extra meeting or taking a half a day to go learn something? Is that sort of baked into your culture?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 28:54
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, everyone knows that these ERGs exist, and that everyone can participate in them. And we actually applaud it and encourage it. We implemented half day Fridays on Fridays. And so what I'll see sometimes is they recently did a movie for Black History Month. They started at 12:30 on a Friday, because we have half day Fridays. And now it's awesome, right? And so it was such a great use of everyone's time. It promotes it. So they also have a budget now and we've given them small budgets to do things they want to do. So it's really employee led but I truly feel like it creates a belonging for them. I think I saw in the chat that someone said what's the goal of these and what's the goal of being inclusive and really our goal is that everyone can show up and be who they are at work and it's not a different persona and identity than who they are at home. So whether you're a parent, whether you're a single mom, whether you're a person of color, whether you're LGBTQ+, you're showing up to work just as you are and you're included and you don't feel uncomfortable and you don't feel like you have to be someone else at the office and that is really important to us. And that is something we were really striving for internally.
Scott Case 30:06
Oh, how do you measure that? Like, what are you doing to capture data that tells you where your team really is? And how often are you measuring? And so what are the measures and then how often are you capturing it?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 30:21
So we actually use a tool called Office Vibe. It's very inexpensive. It's very inexpensive for young early startups, I think there's actually like a freemium model to it. It's an employee pulse survey, every employee has at least a question a week that they get, and we embed questions in there to get a pulse on inclusivity, management, perks and benefits, safety at work, etc. And I get all the results in real time. So I see the results from every single employee anytime someone comments, it's all anonymous. But then we also can see it by teams. So we can quickly identify for leaders, whether their team scores are lower in certain areas than others and where they need to work on things. It also allows our leaders to issue custom surveys when specific things are going down. Like if one org is having a massive reorg and you want to pulse people anonymously to see how do you feel about it, like, any uncertainty, we can do that through this mechanism. So we do that.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 31:27
We also have a lot of questions in our exit surveys, you know, exit interviews, when employees leave the company, there's questions embedded there as well. We actually just invested in Culture Amp, so we're going to be switching a little bit to Culture Amp, which is just a more robust tool for pulsing your employee base. But we do it quite often. And we've probably had three return to work surveys go out to our team to pulse them. So it's just this constant, whatever tool you use, it's just this notion of constant feedback, and really understanding the pulse of your employees, and understanding how it differs across your teams. Because your tech team might think of things very differently than your marketing team or your sales team. And so hopefully that's helpful.
Scott Case 32:12
That's great. Thank you.
Scott Case 32:19
Stepping back again, to kind of a broader question. As you look at the changes you've observed and the next, let's say 6, 12, 24 months, what do you see as some of the big changes that leaders, founders have to incorporate into their thinking and even their operating mode as leaders?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 32:45
Yeah, honestly, I think the first I've already talked a lot about, but it's very top of mind. For me, it's just people need to invest in their EQ. Like if it's not natural, you need to invest in it. And focus in training and manager trainings and making sure your team really understands people management and how to help people. That is going to become ever more important as we continue to navigate these times.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 33:15
The second thing, and I think this hit everyone, COVID for many was the hardest thing they've ever gone through in their lives, right? I semi joke that I was in training for it, I had a daughter who went through bone marrow failure and had to go through a transplant while I was fundraising one year. So to me, it was sort of like, option B is the norm in my world, so like, just bring it on, like it was just one more thing to navigate. But what I realized in going through COVID is the majority of people at our company had never been through anything difficult in their entire lives and it rocked their world. And so emphasizing to your teams, and I flat out say this to them, it's like, option A is no longer an option, so just focus on option B like and let's kick, excuse my language, kick the shit out of it, like stop worrying about what happened with option A, it's gone, it's not an option. So like, let's focus on B. And so I think that is going to continue to test everyone like agility, resilience, etc. Like that is going to be a huge theme.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 34:22
Because at the end of the day, like there is still so much uncertainty, right? Some companies are like we're going 100% remote, some are half, some are this. Two years from now, I don't know if I believe everyone's gonna still be remote. We've been through this before. And humans need human interaction. And that's been proven time and again. Who knows though, I could be wrong.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 34:45
And so it's this idea that don't get married to any big concept or idea. Just be ready to iterate and adjust. Because I just don't think any of us have those answers right now. And so, when we look at our return on work plans, we're like, okay, we'll roll it out and commit this is till end of year, and then we'll reevaluate based on the data we have at hand. And so I think we just all need to focus on that and just be ready to adjust our plans, adjust our mindset, adjust our thinking, and be open to the fact that our plan may not work. And so those would be my highlights.
Scott Case 35:21
That's awesome. Well, I want to go back to the EQ part, because I completely agree on the resiliency, and I think the bumpy ride that we're going to head through over the next nine months is going to continue to be bumpy, who knows what the twists and turns will be. Some we can probably anticipate and others we're just going to deal with.
Scott Case 35:39
But on the emotional intelligence piece, the emotional quotient piece, you talked about managers and leaders having the support that they need, are you actively doing things with leaders to kind of train them, support them, coach them through developing that EQ? And then my second question is, are you doing anything with the leadership level that you're recruiting in your business to figure out how to measure a candidate's EQ, as part of the hiring process as you bring people leaders into the mix?
Maria Christopoulos Katris 36:15
Yeah, for sure. So twofold. We've just begun focusing a little bit more on it versus right now it's a little bit of combat, like we don't have a leadership coach for exec team yet and it's top of mind for me, personally, and I'd love to get someone, but in the meantime, our VP of people is actually certified as a coach and she's incredible. And so she's been stepping in and actually doing one on one sessions with a lot of people, as we just went through 360 reviews, it was a great opportunity to do that, went so far as to actually like help managers and early managers like draft their 360s and roleplay how they're going to communicate them. Because that was always one of my biggest fears. It's like, depending on who your manager is, you get read a certain review. And other people get a lot of emotional support and career pathing. And some people don't get any. And so trying to create a little bit of consistency around the 360 process was a focus we had this year.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 37:10
We also started a manager's meeting, and we are focused on some level manager training. So we did a feedback session like how do you give good feedback to your employees? How do you deliver it? And it was honestly one of the most popular sessions we did this year. And so we're going to invest in doing those once a quarter for managers and up.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 37:27
In terms of your second question from hiring and recruiting. So we actually use a tool, called Culture Index, which I'm a huge fan of people joke that I get paid to promote them but I don't. And anyone who interviews at the business will have to take the culture index test. And what it does identify very quickly as we're interviewing candidates is people who may have EQ challenges. If they're low social profiles and they're a 10 in logic, we know off the bat, and so we know to ask questions around that, like, have you ever been criticized or received feedback that you're very direct? Have you ever offended someone? And like a lot of times when I ask candidates, like, what's critical feedback they've received, a lot of times that they'll say it, they're self aware enough, and they've heard this feedback before. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what do you do about it? And then you can understand and decide, okay, is this person experienced enough, they've worked on it enough, they've shown progress, they're cognizant of it, etc. and go from there.
Maria Christopoulos Katris 38:29
Another thing I personally do, I actually did it yesterday, is I work with any of my direct sales managers when they're delivering critical feedback. And so sometimes they'll just draft their talk points. And I'll go through knowing the person, knowing their culture index profile, how they're gonna respond to certain things, and we like roleplay it and we practice it. And so with one of my VPS, who definitely struggled a little bit with it, we would just prep things in advance. And once they can go through it a couple of times, then it becomes second nature, but they have to want to do it. And so, it's that willingness to want to change that matters more than anything. But, I keep telling my team, like, if you guys want to lead big teams, this is a huge part of it. This is a huge part of it. It's the most important part. In my mind, it's number one. And intelligence and execution is number two. Because you won't have a team if you can't lead them. And so it's something that we will be investing in more and more.
Scott Case 39:36
That's awesome. Yeah, all the leverage is in how will you lead the people because that's where the power comes from. So this was awesome.
Scott Case 39:46
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Founders Focus. What did you think? You got any feedback for us? Got a topic that you'd like us to discuss, or maybe a future co host? We'd love to hear from you. Just hit me up on LinkedIn at T Scott Case and join us at foundersfocus.com to stay up to date with the latest episodes and join us live every week at our Founders Focus sessions. Hope to see you there.