Jeff Spalding's guest appearances

Jeff Spalding

Middle Market Thought Leader | Priorities for Growth

Lawrence Levy

Dan Macklin

Eric Johnson

Dave Kellogg

Mary Miller

Ed O'Brien

Rob Reid

Jim Stewart

Tom Stewart

John Gardner

Ron Holt

Chris Reed

Melissa Brown

Kevin Parker

Larry Jordan

OwlTail

How do you make a great hire? Spalding:  The first thing we do is we look at our best people in each of our areas, right. So, our best technologists, what are the characteristics that make them really good? Who are our best sales people? What are the characteristics that make them really good? Right. And there might be some obvious things like, hey, they're very responsive to the customer, they present well, right, there's an experience there, there's a knowledge, they think strategically long-term. But, we try to capture those in a profile, and then we benchmark that against any candidate coming in.  And we do that through a few ways, we do that through some testing that we do around different profiles, and so forth to match it up, kind of customize testing against our profiles. We also do that during the interview process. So, we tend to have, we get accused of hiring slow sometimes because we really believe that we want to have a variety of different people interview the candidate. And then, frankly, we want the candidate to get a really good sense of what is Peak 10 all about. What is our DNA? What makes us tick? Because no one wants to have that meeting six months down the road and say, "Hey, you're really not a good fit here." or, "Gee, this isn't the right company to be at."  So, we try to minimize all of that by sharing as much as we can right up front. How we operate, how we think about our customers, how we do things internally, what we expect, etc. It's a little bit of a longer process than perhaps most, but at the end of the day we have to bring in the highest quality talent we possibly can to, you know, to match what we're doing for our customers, and that's being an extension of their business.  So, those are some of the things we do. And tactically where we serve in markets, we're very community-oriented, we build relationships with the local technology schools. So, we're able to do some internships, and we're able to get some early views on potential, strong candidates, and they get a little more experience in the technology and service provider world and see if there's a match. So, we're doing some of that as we continue to get larger and be more innovative around that.

<p>How do you make a great hire?</p> <p>Spalding:  The first thing we do is we look at our best people in each of our areas, right. So, our best technologists, what are the characteristics that make them really good? Who are our best sales people? What are the characteristics that make them really good? Right. And there might be some obvious things like, hey, they're very responsive to the customer, they present well, right, there's an experience there, there's a knowledge, they think strategically long-term. But, we try to capture those in a profile, and then we benchmark that against any candidate coming in.  And we do that through a few ways, we do that through some testing that we do around different profiles, and so forth to match it up, kind of customize testing against our profiles. We also do that during the interview process. So, we tend to have, we get accused of hiring slow sometimes because we really believe that we want to have a variety of different people interview the candidate. And then, frankly, we want the candidate to get a really good sense of what is Peak 10 all about. What is our DNA? What makes us tick? Because no one wants to have that meeting six months down the road and say, "Hey, you're really not a good fit here." or, "Gee, this isn't the right company to be at."  So, we try to minimize all of that by sharing as much as we can right up front. How we operate, how we think about our customers, how we do things internally, what we expect, etc. It's a little bit of a longer process than perhaps most, but at the end of the day we have to bring in the highest quality talent we possibly can to, you know, to match what we're doing for our customers, and that's being an extension of their business.  So, those are some of the things we do. And tactically where we serve in markets, we're very community-oriented, we build relationships with the local technology schools. So, we're able to do some internships, and we're able to get some early views on potential, strong candidates, and they get a little more experience in the technology and service provider world and see if there's a match. So, we're doing some of that as we continue to get larger and be more innovative around that.</p>

171.5 The Afterpod | Jeff Spalding, COO, Peak 10

152: An Appetite for Infrastructure | Jeff Spalding, COO, Peak 10, Inc.