Best Practices for Career Pathing in Startups

I was chatting with a fellow SDR leader this week about AE readiness/career progression from the SDR org and was reminded about a program we ran at Klue. 💌 If you're SDR org is typically entry level, career shifters or folks that might not know what path they want to take after SDR - try this at your org. 🤝 ✨ ✨ SDR Career Day ✨ ✨ Reach out to every department head/leader from other parts of the org and ask them if they'd be open to hiring SDRs into their team. If the answer is yes, ask which skillsets they think would be most transferrable, and then ask for a volunteer from their team. Block off 3 hours for your team - yes, 3 hours - it's worth it. 👏 Have a representative from all the teams/departments that are open to taking SDRs come and present for 20 mins: - A day in the life of that role - Most transferable skillset from SDR experience - Open Q&A If empowers SDRs to learn and understand, guided by you as their leader, what path they might want to take that they didn't even know was an option. Klue's leadership was so open minded and supportive, knowing the SDR org was the "farm team" to the rest of the business - Nick Ross and I took that very seriously and intentionally. We had presos [and later promotions] from: 💪 AE [make sure to include an AE in this day - often SDRs don't truly know what a day in the life of this role is 👀 ] 💪 CS 💪 Support 💪 Content Specialists 💪 SDR Manager 💪 Sales Enablement The list goes on, but you'll never know what options to put in front of your SDRs if you as the leader don't go find out! ☂️

Find your sweet spot and help your team find theirs. Each person on your team is on their own career journey. As a leader of the team, it’s your responsibility to nurture and support career development AND to keep a pulse of the overall health of the team. Here’s an approach I’ve used in the past that I hope you'll find helpful. The key to high performance is to find the sweet spot where each person on the team is really motivated by their work and also has a high degree of skill to actually do the work well. A great starting point is to have a conversation with each person on your team to get a sense of where they are in their journey. Using this framework can give you a sense of where they are in these four quadrants, and help you prioritize how you spend your time supporting the team. It can also be a useful tool for you to think about where you are personally on this arc. 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐀 (𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠) People usually start here. Eager to learn and seek out opportunities to stretch, but haven’t yet developed a high degree of competence in the work. * Action: connect them to experts to learn from and shadow. Expose them to stretch assignments to learn by doing. 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐁 (𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭) This is someone that’s really motivated by the work and is recognized as an expert. * Action: find out where they want to continue to grow to build upon their expertise. This could be expanding the scope of their role to anchor on areas of strength while exposing them to new opportunities. Find opportunities for them to mentor and coach others. 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐂 (𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐙𝐨𝐧𝐞) Someone that’s been doing the same thing for too long may become less interested in the work over time. It’s a natural progression. This is when people may be at risk of leaving or under performing. If they stay in this headspace for too long, they may become less effective in their role because they’re not motivated to learn new skills as the role evolves.  * Action: these are often people on the team that have been around longer or have more experience in a certain area. Look for opportunities to reboot and spark interest. These are great opportunities to leverage their expertise to apply to other types of adjacent work. For example, an experienced sourcer may be getting burned out from high volume engineering and could be energized by getting exposure to executive or leadership level searches. 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐃 (𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐎𝐮𝐭) When someone is here they’re not engaged with the work and don’t have a high degree of competence in the work either. This is a place that isn’t healthy for the team or the individual. * Action: find a role that plays to their strengths either on your team or elsewhere in the company. If there isn’t an opportunity internally, it may be time to help support them in finding something externally so that you can bring on someone that’s more motivated and qualified to do the work.

Most businesses only reward one career path long-term: leadership/management. And that’s where everything starts to break down. Not everyone wants to lead a team. Some want to become technical masters. Others prefer to chase deals and drive growth. However, when we prioritize promotions and titles over talent, we lose valuable employees, hinder development, and ultimately end up with frustrated individuals in roles they were never intended to fill. After working with hundreds of leaders, I’ve learned this: There are only three real career paths that matter—Technical Expert, Leadership & Management, and Business Development—and we need to compensate and support all three. In my latest blog, I break down how to identify the right path for each person, how to structure compensation fairly, and why experiments (and fallbacks) are essential to long-term success. Here are a few excerpts: "When things go sideways—when performance drops or a good employee suddenly leaves—it’s often because we tried to force the issue. We took someone talented and well-intentioned and placed them in a role that didn’t fit. Maybe they were the right person, but in the wrong seat. Or the wrong person, but somehow ended up in the right seat. Either way, the results don’t lie: misaligned paths lead to frustration, disengagement, and turnover." "We must stop treating career paths like puzzles that only a few people can solve. It’s not that mysterious. In fact, it’s pretty simple." I’m also a big believer in career experiments. Sometimes, an employee thinks they want to try a different path—perhaps step into management or explore sales. I say, let them. But let them try it with support and a safety net in place. If it’s not for them, let them return to what they’re great at without shame or penalty...Otherwise, you end up with the Peter Principle in full force: promoting people past the point of their competence—until they fail, lose confidence, and eventually leave. That’s a lose-lose. "Good people shouldn’t have to leave your company to find a role that fits them better. They should be able to explore, experiment, and grow right where they are." For a link to the full blog, please see the comments section below. #Leadership #CareerGrowth #EmployeeDevelopment #SmallBusiness #PeopleStrategy #Retention #Hiring #Compensation