What It's Like to Get Hired at a Start-Up

Another week. Another hiring class at Hatch.

New hire onboarding and enablement doesn’t get talked about enough in SaaS startups.

It’s often overlooked and sometimes forgotten, especially in very early-stage companies - you rarely see a sales-enablement manager or head of enablement until Series B and maybe - just maybe - at a rapidly growing Series A company.

More importantly - the idea of an onboarding program is overlooked by prospective candidates interested in joining a company.

It’s an afterthought, and understandably so, but this should be a top question for candidates interviewing:

"What type of onboarding do you offer new hires?"

If a company lacks a clear answer, it’s often a sign that leadership is disorganized. You should be thinking to yourself - if they plan to grow that fast, double in size - how are they going to accommodate 30 people without losing many along the way?

Let’s say you make it - are you actually prepared to succeed long term?

• Who’s going to train you?
• What are some examples of the sessions?
• Who are the trainers? If it is just one or two people - has the company really bought into you?
• How do you ensure proper knowledge transfer?
• What does success look like? How about after week one? After 30 days?
  
  

We’ve been working hard at Hatch to make onboarding successful for new hires.

Adult learning has always fascinated me. A learning program isn’t designed to be unmovable and set in stone. The program should adapt, based on how you learn and think.

If a Sales Development Rep exceeds our training goals around the discovery call and inbound queue training then we should adapt and give them access to the inbound queue earlier.

We’ve focused on foundational training in week one. This is getting new hires exposed to all of our departments, with a heavy emphasis on product. Weeks two and three are when we have new hires branch out more and more into their specialized role.

Here’s a quick snapshot of how we think about onboarding at Hatch (just a sneak peek 😁)

Week 1:

• Hang with our founders. Session on how we started as a company and the challenges we overcame to get to this point.
• Product 101 + integrations and partners
• Sales 101, goals and expectations, where we came from, and our 2020 goals
• Life with CS. A day dedicated to hanging with the team, shadowing calls, lunch with head of CS
• Product 201 + how to communicate with product teams
• Our tools - what we use and how we use them
• What happens after the close?
• Sales to AE pass-off
• AE to CS pass-off
  
  

Week 2:

• Master our inbound process
• Objection handling
• Competition landscape
• Pricing 101
• The art of the discovery call
• SDR: Setting the demo
• Call preparation
• Sales quiz
  
  

Week 3:

• Hubspot 101: Building sequences
• Salesforce forecasting
• Outbound role playing
• Voicemail scripting
• Pricing 201 - give and get
• Why Hatch? Pitching to leadership
  
  

We're invested in your growth. All of this is designed to make every person a smashing success - both financially, personally, and professionally.