Editor’s Note: April 8: We found the people we’re looking for in this version of the hiring journey. If you think you’re the perfect fit, you’re still welcome to send us a note. Frankly, we’ll always read a message from a prospective employee, whether we’re “hiring” or not.
2010 was good to us. We’ve built a great team of technical people, and they’ve built a great set of products. In fact, we’ve built so many cool products, we feel like we’re not doing a great job of telling the world about them. It’s time to fix that, so we’re ready to hire.
Mind you, when we go looking for new people, we aren’t just looking for someone who’s done this before. In fact, that might be a bad thing. What we always want is simple… brilliance. We want someone who can do this job at an exceptional level.
We believe that great people will all fit the following mold:
- Highly energetic and creative. Don’t just skip past this and assume you are. We actually care.
- Well written and well spoken. You’ll be representing the company publicly. We care a lot about how you do that. You need to be able to express complicated things simply. Language and other forms of communication need to come easily to you, so that you can add a layer of flair and humor on top of them.
- Obsessed with finishing. Tasks must be completed, and projects must be completed. Not almost. Just like our developers have to ship great products that are complete, you’ll have to ship great work all the time. Finished work.
- More than willing to learn… The opportunity to take on new tasks and learn our approach to them while injecting your own flavor.
- Web and tech aware. We can’t be spending all of our time explaining Twitter to you, or what a web server is. We need you to know some things, and to care enough that you’ll go figure out the things you don’t know.
- Smart. No, really, if you don’t feel like you can keep up in any conversation, you’re probably not the right person. We want you to have a lot of mental horsepower and believe in yourself and your ideas.
This time around, we’re looking for two slightly different people, and their highly technical, very precise descriptions look like this:
- Evangelist. Communicator-in-chief. “Marketer”. Preacher. We need this person to tell the world-writ-large about what we’re doing and why it’s useful to them. It is, frankly, a challenge of communication. The right person will be able to speak clearly about complicated things.
- Seller. Hunter. Educator. Pursuer. We don’t sell like other organizations, and we don’t want to. But we want to make sure that everyone who would benefit from the use of our products knows about them personally.
If you are a seriously energetic and persistent person who finishes things, please get in touch and tell us why you want this job. Please take the time to understand what we do and how we do it. Understand how selling and marketing on our behalf might be different from selling cars or marketing a law firm. And be prepared to demonstrate your level of competence and interest to us.
You can reach us at jobs+blog@scorm.com right now. If you just forward a resume to me, I’ll forward it to my trash can. Make me notice you
Tim
PS I’ve included longer form descriptions of the work you’ll be doing here below, in case you’re interested in knowing just a bit more.
Evangelist and Communicator-In-Chief
Can you explain Twitter to your grandparents? If so, we want to talk to you.
We’re looking for somebody to explain our uber-nerdy products to the merely somewhat geeky.
Rustici Software develops products that help companies adhere to a niche software standard called SCORM. You’ve probably never heard of us, but our little industry holds us in the highest regard.
As we continue to expand our product offerings, we need somebody who can explain them to the world faster than our world-class development team can turn them out. This position is something like a marketer, social media coordinator, product evangelist, or perhaps tweeter-in-chief.
We’re not hung up on a particular education or level of experience, but some thing we are looking for include:
- Energy and creativity
- Communication skills (written and spoken) – Can you clearly explain technical concepts in an accessible way and with some personality? Are you engaging, intelligent and insightful?
- Tone – The tone and personality of our communication is just as important as the content. Spend a few minutes on our website and you’ll see what we mean.
- Intelligence, talent, adaptability, intuition, persistence – basically the raw ability to excel at whatever you do.
- “Web awareness” – Are you a bit of a geek at heart? Do you keep up with the latest advances in technology and how they affect how people access information? Can you navigate social networks and make virtual friends?
- Marketing strategy and technique – We don’t require marketing experience out of the gate, but you’re going to have to learn quickly. You’ll probably want to become familiar with things like SEO, funnels, inbound marketing, Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Seller. Educator. Pursuer.
In our niche, people call us wanting to buy our products. We don’t go out knocking on doors. We don’t cold call people. They, literally, call us. This is a great place to be, and we’re succeeding, but we believe that we could do more. We could sell more, but we need some help in order to do it right.
We think that there are companies, and even industries, that could make great use of our software, but they don’t know how or what to ask for. We’re looking for someone who can seek out those companies, and thosepeople, and teach them about what we do in such a way that they want to work with us.
You will be asked to find the right set of people to reach out to, and to craft the right kind of message, and to determine if the people you talk to are the right kind of people for Rustici Software to work with. You’ll be asked to act intelligently on behalf of the company as a whole, not simply on behalf of a quota.
We don’t care about eduction or experience per se. The perfect fit will be:
- Creative and energetic
- Willing to learn and do things differently
- Smart
- Technically competent… selling our stuff requires an understanding of the technical details of what we do. You don’t have to know SCORM on day 1, but you have to be willing to fight to learn it.
- Persistent. You won’t make a sale your first day. You’ll probably try the wrong things. Your first idea may well get shot down. But you have to keep firing away. And learning.
