Jordan Mangan’s Post

🎯 𝗗𝗼 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲, 𝗼𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹? 🎯 Hiring is like assembling a puzzle 🧩 where the pieces keep changing shape. As SaaS leaders, it’s one of the toughest (and most impactful) decisions we make. The big question? 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘃𝘀. 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹. Here’s how I see it: • 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆’𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 – but sometimes comes with a side of “this is how we’ve always done it.” • 𝗣𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄’𝘀 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀 – but it may come with a longer learning curve (and a few “oops” moments along the way). The Tricky Part: • 𝘎𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘭-𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦? You might miss out on fresh perspectives (and end up with a team that still thinks MySpace is cutting-edge). • 𝘉𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭? You could face costly delays while they ramp up. My Hiring Strategy: ✅ For critical, high-stakes roles: prioritize experience. ✅ For roles where ramp-up time is acceptable: look for hungry, high-potential individuals. And here’s the kicker: Hire for traits, not just skills. Ask yourself: • 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴? • 𝗗𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝘀𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀? • 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀? At the end of the day, the best teams are a mix of seasoned pros and future stars. It’s like a great playlist – you need the classics and the fresh hits. 💬 How do you approach hiring?  Are you team “experience,” team “potential,” or a blend of both? #Leadership #Hiring #SaaS #BuildingTeams #TechGrowth

Have you seen a position description more generic this one (see below) for a... CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER?!? Not one single part of this screenshot did I have to obscure to protect the identity of the hiring company. So many unsurprising words are used to describe what should be an exciting and critical executive leadership role. Almost like a statistical model of language was prompted to iteratively generate the most likely next word in a CPO position description. “We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” -- Jim Barksdale (via Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing About Hard Things") To be great, a company must excel at #recruiting and #hiring (along with onboarding, organizing, and retaining) employees. This requires leaders to articulate their organization's needs, abundances, constraints, opportunities, and culture in ways that compel candidates to want to serve. For the position descriptions that I release, I strive for candidates to know what is unique about each opportunity and important about the mission so they can best decide when to opt-in or opt-out from consideration. My elusive unicorn of a position description would be so perfect that only the single best-in-unexpected-ways unicorn of a candidate would respond. Yeah, that will (probably) never happen. But, I always pleased by the actual great-in-unexpected-way candidates who do decide to opt-in.

🚀 Hiring a CTO or Tech Leader? KRAs and KPIs to see 🚀 Every startup and business always needs key tech leadership roles like CTO, VP Tech or Tech Lead to build their products and transform their business through tech. My circle of friends and professional network often approaches me for introductions or collaboration. I happily float their JDs and give a gentle introduction to someone who may be a fit. In some cases, they hire a fractional CTO or office of CTO as well. I help these companies clearly articulate their their short term to long term goals, KRAs and measurable KPIs, and put them in a document. This way they are able to arrive at the same page with their new hire or partner to clearly define success metrics for the relationship. The six main KRAs of Tech Leadership Companies need to define measurable KPIs in the following six main areas. Some examples are mentioned here and the video has more details. 1. Technology Performance: System uptime, latency, time for issue detection and resolution. 2. Product Development: Time to market. Code quality. Bug introduction rate. 3. Team Development: Time to full productivity and average experience of productive hires. Retention rates of employees. Switching time, costs and risk. 4. Cost Efficiency: The costs of shipping a story point or release, cost per productive developer and cost per additional customer. 5. Security & Compliance: Protect customer data. Lower security incident rates. Ensure successful compliance audits. 6. Strategic Impact: Drive revenue growth and minimize risks with leanness, agility and scalability. These focus areas empower us to deliver cutting-edge solutions that align with business goals. 💡 p.s. In the video, I missed to mention System Uptime in the Technology Performance Metrics. Please share anything else I may have missed p.s.2 Are you hiring a CTO or a fractional CTO Office? Feel free to drop in a comment for greater visibility. Godspeed Systems #CTO #Kra #Kpi #BluePrint #Hiring #Tech #Efficiency #Strategy #Techleadership #Startups #Business

I'm looking for an "Innovation Lead" (possibly Director / VP equivalent role). This is someone that has a background in Product Management, Design, and Leadership that is obsessed with producing tangible outcomes that users/customers need and want. This is a massive opportunity where you will be leading a "mini startup" within a larger company. In typical startup fashion, there will be instances where you will have to periodically jump into the Product Trenches to help steer teams and initiatives in a tactical way. Keeping your product skills sharp will be critical. If you're looking for a new role - please direct message me or comment ASAP. I'd love to tell you more about it. Also - please share with your network if you wouldn't mind! PS: Don't be intimidated by the leadership aspect of this role. The hiring manager has a bias for passion over experience. They want to ensure that people are extremely excited about this opportunity - the hiring process will be non-traditional and equitable. The hiring manager is focused on "selling" this role to you - they are really excited to discuss the opportunity. 😃 💡 Important Attributes for this Role: - Should appreciate AI - Should appreciate software delivery efficiency - Should appreciate research and design - Should appreciate consulting, leading, and mentoring - Should be eager to learn about the Public Sector's Product Acquisition processes - specifically for the Department of Defense - Playful attitude will make the position a lot more fun #innovation #hiring #defense

Look at this Head of Operations looking for a new job!!! 💠 FlanStaff Candidate- Head of Operations - Austin, TX 💠 💠 Proven Product Visionary 💠 Successfully directed the product vision and roadmap for a product line generating over $9.5M in ARR, demonstrating a strategic approach to driving competitive advantage and revenue growth. 💠 Operational Excellence Leader 💠 Spearheaded the unification of three product lines into a streamlined workflow, improving delivery times by 30%, reducing customer bugs by 66%, and saving $633K in recurring vendor costs, showcasing a strong ability to enhance operational efficiency. 💠 Strategic Program Management 💠 Led a critical post-acquisition customer migration project, preserving $16M in ARR, and managed the sunset of four additional features and products, highlighting expertise in handling complex, high-stakes initiatives. 💠 Innovative Product Development 💠 Identified and capitalized on product gaps, adding $1M in ARR with a projected $2.5M ARR by 2025 through enhancements in payment offerings, underscoring a knack for market-driven product innovation. 💠 Transformational Leadership 💠 Directed a digital transformation project, migrating to a new support platform, and restructured the product education department to create scalable training programs for 700+ clients, demonstrating exceptional leadership in driving organizational change and capability building. #OpenToWork #HeadOfOperations #ProductLeadership #OperationalExcellence #StrategicManagement #TechExecutive #ProductInnovation #RevenueDriven #DigitalTransformation #ProgramManagement #AustinJobs #TechTalent #LeadershipOpportunity #BusinessStrategy #HiringNow

I know it may be hard to hear but just because someone held the title of manager for 2-3 years, that does not mean they forgot how to design, architecture, or code. It just means they had to grow, hire, and coach a team of people while doing some of their "old" job, too. The hiring market has made a tremendous shift from wanting senior people to "manage and grow a team" to "design and build a platform." Ex-managers often have a keen understanding of what might be happening behind closed doors. They have been in those high stakes conversations regarding technical strategy of a platform. They know how to navigate the people side and use that to accelerate the technical side. Don't look at this group and think "oh, they haven't ridden a bike in a few years, they've totally forgotten it." If you look at someone with 10+ years experience as an individual contributor and think they can't do it again, that's pretty short sighted of you. If you're a hiring manager who is still looking at or doing code reviews, do you really think they weren't either? This is a rant and I'm sorry. I just spoke to someone who wants to go back to an IC role, has spent 50% of their time coding, and is hitting a brick wall. It's mind boggling. #hiring #tech #recruitment

#hiring Vice President, Group Chapter Leader - Full Stack and Mobile Software Engineering, Salt Lake City, United States, fulltime #opentowork #jobs #jobseekers #careers #SaltLakeCityjobs #Utahjobs #ITCommunications Apply: https://lnkd.in/ggGC2bce Job Description: VP of Software Engineering / Group Chapter Leader - Level 8 Are you interested in serving the needs of millions of customers by building the outstanding digital experience that helps them in financial planning, investing, and retirement solutions?We are looking for a driven yet empathetic engineering Leader of Leaders who brings exceptional technology and leadership expertise to help us on our mission to deliver the best omni-channel capabilities to our customers across core business capabilities around Money Movement, Brokerage, Account Management, Customer Management, and Service Automation.A great cultural fit would be someone who embodies drive, confidence, genuinely cares about people-both customers and our associates, is obsessed with technology, decisive, and strategic in the larger scheme of things.The Value You DeliverEngineering Leadership & Product Delivery: You provide engineering expertise and thought leadership across product management, engineering & human-centric design teams to ensure we are building the best products, platforms, and experiences functionally and technically. You establish key goals and performance metrics for the product area and are directly accountable for implementation, tracking and reporting on them. You work collaboratively across multiple teams to prioritize technical efforts and product features and capabilities. You are a key integrator bringing together teams by partnering across UX Design, architecture and product teams on setting technical direction and ensure alignment with our technology strategy while staying abreast of engineering trends in the industry. Establish a future vision to identify areas of need for large systems, initiatives and turn this into roadmaps with concrete landmarks. You establish structures and processes to drive scale & reuse by promoting a platform mentality to drive pace and efficiency. Drive and facilitate decision making around standards, resources, and overall direction of work through proactive partnership with senior leadership.Organizational Vision & Culture Champion: You lead by example and establish organizational core values, culture to inspire our community! Create and promote the vision, roadmap, and expectations for your technology organization. Harnessing the power of your network, you are adept at building teams, recruiting for culture and skills while coaching them to reach their peak potential. Collaborate with organizational leaders to plan for and provide the skilled talent needed to ensure teams have the right expertise, at the right time, to get work done You focus on lea

Hiring engineers today feels a lot like football management. Everyone's racing to find the “perfect” hire—someone who can deliver quick results (like launching a new platform or slashing cloud costs). But when results don’t materialise fast enough, leaders can find themselves on the chopping block. This pressure leads to a skewed hiring process. Instead of focusing on long-term team players—those who fit well, have a high aptitude for learning, and bring valuable skills that complement the team—companies often chase the ready-made "superstar." Sure, that superstar might hit the ground running, but what happens when they get bored? These top-tier talents always have other opportunities knocking. It’s time for a shift. As hiring managers, businesses, and talent partners, we need to recognise that perfect doesn’t exist. Not every company can win the "Premier League" of business. Some will fight to avoid "relegation," others will aim for the top 4, but most are striving for stability, growth, and profitability. Focus on building strong, sustainable teams—not just chasing the next big win. #Hiring #TeamBuilding #SustainableGrowth #Leadership #Recruitment

How do you avoid hiring the wrong CTO? After years of hiring for this position I have a few tips. First, keep in mind that hiring the right CTO isn't about finding the "best" one—it's about finding the right fit for your company’s stage of growth. Different phases of a company's lifecycle demand distinct leadership qualities. 1. Startups Look for a highly technical, hands-on leader. They should have experience laying the technical foundations and scaling an engineering organization from 0 to 1. But they should still be able to engage in broader business discussions. 2. Medium-Sized Businesses Look for a leader who blends big-company structure with entrepreneurial agility. They should be good at finding the sweet spot between the two. Avoid big-company bureaucrats or overly-technical leaders who can’t talk business. 3. Lower Middle-Market These companies need a leader experienced in scaled-up people management and strategic business alignment. The right candidate will be adept at organizational governance. Usually at this stage the leader doesn’t need to technically innovate. Additional Pitfalls to Avoid - Overly technical CTOs who can’t communicate well. - Consultative CTOs who can identify problems but can’t drive implementation of solutions. - CTOs who can only build and don’t know how to also buy or partner to build products. Context Matters Remember, the success of a CTO can vary greatly depending on the environment. A leader who did well at a large organization may not work for a small business or startup. Your goal should be to find a technology leader whose strengths align with your businesses current stage of growth and the unique challenges & opportunities that you’re going to face in the next 2 to 5 years. There is rarely (< 10% of the time) a one-size-fits-all CTO. #CTOHiring #TechLeadership #BusinessGrowth

#hiring Vice President, Group Chapter Leader - Full Stack and Mobile Software Engineering, Salt Lake City, United States, fulltime #opentowork #jobs #jobseekers #careers #SaltLakeCityjobs #Utahjobs #ITCommunications Apply: https://lnkd.in/ggGC2bce Job Description: VP of Software Engineering / Group Chapter Leader - Level 8 Are you interested in serving the needs of millions of customers by building the outstanding digital experience that helps them in financial planning, investing, and retirement solutions?We are looking for a driven yet empathetic engineering Leader of Leaders who brings exceptional technology and leadership expertise to help us on our mission to deliver the best omni-channel capabilities to our customers across core business capabilities around Money Movement, Brokerage, Account Management, Customer Management, and Service Automation.A great cultural fit would be someone who embodies drive, confidence, genuinely cares about people-both customers and our associates, is obsessed with technology, decisive, and strategic in the larger scheme of things.The Value You DeliverEngineering Leadership & Product Delivery: You provide engineering expertise and thought leadership across product management, engineering & human-centric design teams to ensure we are building the best products, platforms, and experiences functionally and technically. You establish key goals and performance metrics for the product area and are directly accountable for implementation, tracking and reporting on them. You work collaboratively across multiple teams to prioritize technical efforts and product features and capabilities. You are a key integrator bringing together teams by partnering across UX Design, architecture and product teams on setting technical direction and ensure alignment with our technology strategy while staying abreast of engineering trends in the industry. Establish a future vision to identify areas of need for large systems, initiatives and turn this into roadmaps with concrete landmarks. You establish structures and processes to drive scale & reuse by promoting a platform mentality to drive pace and efficiency. Drive and facilitate decision making around standards, resources, and overall direction of work through proactive partnership with senior leadership.Organizational Vision & Culture Champion: You lead by example and establish organizational core values, culture to inspire our community! Create and promote the vision, roadmap, and expectations for your technology organization. Harnessing the power of your network, you are adept at building teams, recruiting for culture and skills while coaching them to reach their peak potential. Collaborate with organizational leaders to plan for and provide the skilled talent needed to ensure teams have the right expertise, at the right time, to get work done You focus on lea