Latest / Pre-Sales Pathways / Land your next SE role at a start-up | Arvi Carkanji, Elite Talent Recruiting

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Land your next SE role at a start-up | Arvi Carkanji, Elite Talent Recruiting · Pre-Sales Pathways

• Chris: A startup is a very different proposition to an established or a scaled company. Arvi Carkanji: Walking into a startup, there's a lot of upside. There's huge potential for growth for your own career. There's a huge learning curve. Chris: I presume you're probably going to be the Founding SE when you're joining there. Arvi Carkanji: We've placed a Founding SE where they had to do discovery as an AE and then Chris: Wow. Arvi Carkanji: do post-sale implementation which sounds crazy for an SE to do all of that. Chris: The onboarding experience is going to be quite different. Arvi Carkanji: There is no onboarding. You'll meet with the CEO, jump in on calls with the CEO, you're on the phone to probably day seven. Chris: Would love to hear your perspective on some of the things that get candidates disqualified. Arvi Carkanji: Number one for me has been domain expertise. Then I would say is your experience within a similar startup. Chris: What would you recommend they could do to maximise their success? Arvi Carkanji: We always talk about like how, you need to update your resume to match the application or the company. If you're if that's what you're doing, like updating more than 50% of your resume. You're doing it wrong. Chris: Hey, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining me on the show. Arvi Carkanji: Thanks for having me, Chris. Chris: Yeah, no worries. I noticed you had come up to your three-year milestone of running your own business, which in and of itself is a very impressive milestone. But I didn't realize until recently Arvi Carkanji: Thank you. Chris: you did it more or less from a standing start, right? You had no network in pre-sales before that. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, literally brand new, like from zero brand new LinkedIn account too. So just yeah, for sure. Chris: Amazing. Yeah, as someone who's launched my own business, I have a lot of appreciation for it, particularly from a standing start. yeah, incredible. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, I appreciate that. I do doubt myself sometimes. I'm like, why did I do this from zero? versus maybe an industry that I knew a little bit better, but it's all worth it in the end. Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the topic today is about how to land a role at a startup. before we get into the specifics of how to do it, I thought it would probably be worth touching on why do it in the first place, right? Because A startup is a very different proposition to an established or a scaled company. I'd love to hear your Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: thoughts on some of the advantages or maybe what you hear from candidates, some of the reasons why they're interested in joining a startup in the first place. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think in my experience, I've found that there's really like two types of people. The ones that like love the startup risk and then the ones that don't. And both are valid, both are completely fair. It's not for everybody. There is a lot of I mean, Walking into a startup, there's a lot of upside. You're walking in early. There's huge potential for growth for your own career. There's a huge learning curve. Like, no matter if you've been in startups before, you're always learning something new no matter what. The market is completely changing, especially now. So now you add the I wouldn't say the uncertainty of AI, but all the changes that AI is bringing. and on the other hand, is the equity. You do get more equity in a startup. Now obviously not all of them go public or get sold or you know really succeed, but the ones that do, you do end up cashing in on, which is really nice. but walking into all of that, you need to understand that the same thing that they are pros, on the other hand, they're cons for somebody, right? So not everybody will love being constantly changing and having no direction and being able to make decisions on the go without weighing in on data sometimes or weighing in on you. know the a whole like company or having board meetings etc so the same things are pros for other people are cons. So you just gotta choose and really decide with yourself like what is it that you really like and there's again it's not that it's a wrong answer but which type of personality fits more for you and you go that route. Chris: Yeah, definitely. And the point around how AI is changing things definitely resonates with me. A lot of the people that I'm working with are really interested in the tech. Maybe they get some exposure to it at their current company, but they're really looking to get as close as possible and working in Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: a new environment with a totally new product and architecture is one way of doing that. Arvi Carkanji: For sure, for sure. Chris: One of the other things around that balancing of risk, can't remember who said it, but I saw it on LinkedIn the other day. They said that actually some of the labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, they're often hiring people that are ex-founders. And so it's kind of interesting that, you know, even if you join a startup now and it doesn't go anywhere, it potentially makes you more appealing to one of those big labs. So I thought that was interesting just in terms of like reducing the risk slightly for some individuals. Arvi Carkanji: For sure. Yeah, I think that within tech specifically, it's very I mean, we see startups coming in and out all the time. So it is very normal for companies or seeing individuals backgrounds have been been at startups for a little bit or you know a little bit more turnover than typical like if you had been at a company for longer or more like a scale up so those are it's like an accepting culture on that end now of course every hiring manager has their own you know kind of threshold risk when it comes to turnovers and your one-year stints and things like that but it is a very much accepting culture and we do get that that a lot too on Honestly, some of our clients are always saying like, hey, if they were a previous founder, even better because they understand what goes into it. They love the chase, the thrill of the unknown and the chasing and making decisions on the go. They understand all of that. So that's I can totally see. Even at this stage for OpenAI, I mean, for them, I'm sure they're innovating on the go. So that background makes a lot of sense for them. Chris: Yeah. And interesting, you mentioned the term scale up because I actually think the term startup can be a bit misleading in that it sort of implies it's just one category of company or one stage, but in reality, there's lots of different types of startups, right? And so I would love Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: if you could share maybe a bit about what are the typical types of clients you work with or the types of startups that you work with and how do they differ by stage? Arvi Carkanji: For sure. So I think everybody yes has their own kind of definition of startups, scale-ups, and established enterprises. for us specifically, we mainly work with seed companies through Series C, it's kind of like our biggest client as of right now. Main reason for that, honestly, is just a little bit easier for us to get our foot in the door. in the early stages and really help them grow from there and obviously we grow with them. and then in terms of like the difference between like startup, scale up, you know, established enterprises, I would say that Typically, most companies will say if they're looking for somebody with like a startup background, I would say from zero to like 500 employees, or maybe seed series A, series B, or somebody that maybe started through seed series or pre-seed and helped grow that company to series C or D, that those are typically acceptable for them. but that's how I would say, at least for the intention of our conversation, is how I would define like a startup and then anything above 500 plus employees. I would assume it's a scale up at this point, and then you know, 5,000 plus more like an enterprise. Chris: Yeah, yeah. And how would you help your candidates understand the difference between, you know, the environment that you're walking into in a seed stage startup as an example, I presume you're probably going to be the Founding SE when you're joining there. You know, how would that look Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: different to say, walking into an established SE team at a series C startup or a scale up? Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, really good question. So It really what I like to say first of all is I'm completely transparent. I don't like I or at least the way the thing I always say is I'm not here to convince you to work for this company. I'm here to tell you all the information I have about them and see if this is something that you'd enjoy doing or not. It doesn't do me any favors for somebody to jump into a company and then 30 days later they're like, I hate this, why did I haven't listened to RV? Then my reputation's on the line, then the company's like, you brought us somebody horrible. that didn't even want this. And I know that as recruiters we always say, yeah, but the company makes a final decision. At the end of the day, we're there as also influencers. so we do have responsibility in that for sure. But in terms of like what I do, like I said, I literally just give out as much information as I can. I'm really, really good at when working with companies to extract as much info as possible on their end that I can share with the candidates. But that means the good and the bad. I think that it would be crazy for me to go into a call and assuming Chris you're like joining a startup that I'm representing and me saying, yeah, they have it all figured out. They're seat stage, but I mean you're walking into like you'll be like RV, that's I've never heard that before. So when I lead with saying, hey, here Here's all the pros. Here's what they're great at. This is what the product is at, product market fit, their, you know, NRR is crushing it, and multiple seven-figure ARRs, etc., for the last two years that they've been in business. But here's all the challenges. They don't have processes. You're gonna figure it out on the go. You're gonna wear five plus hats as a founding S E or founding AE or whatever that looks like. Is that something that you'd enjoy doing? And you also get above average equity. And then you'll let me know if that's something that you wanna hear more on or if it's like yeah that's not for me. I want more stability for where I'm at in my life. And there's that's not a bad thing either. Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And interestingly, you mentioned about that seed stage and joining a company and establishing processes. One of the things that a lot of people will be thinking about is particularly if they want to move into management, how do they get that, that first go, that first shot at trying it out? And guess one of the ways, if they're interested in that type of operating environment, we'd be joining a seed stage startup where you are the founding S E and you get to establish a lot of the processes and build the team. I guess you'd Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: probably be in a sort of player coach type role. Would I be right in assuming for that type of environment? Arvi Carkanji: For sure. now each role has kind of nuances, right? But like founding roles, you're definitely have a lot more writing on than just like a typical SE jumping in for a call, you know, doing your demos and then okay, maybe doing follow-up still cross-functionally working. On a founding SC role, you might be required to jump on actual sales calls and do discovery from the get-go, not even like having an AC support you. I'm not saying that's the case for all s companies, but some of them do do that. We've placed a Founding SE where they had to do discovery as an AE potentially bring their own leads and hunt for their own leads and then Chris: Wow. Arvi Carkanji: do post-sale implementation which sounds crazy for an SE to do all of that. but that is the seeds and you know the startup world right now. They will require more hat. so yeah if if you're looking to get into startup world like that you just have to realize that you're gonna take on a lot more than what you normally would. The upside to it, honestly, you're gonna learn, I don't know if I can curse here, but like a shit ton of stuff. So. Chris: Yeah, and one of the things I guess people need to be conscious of is if they're joining an environment where they're the first and only SE, The onboarding experience is going to be quite different. to maybe what they were used to, right? There's not necessarily someone that you can tap up that's already been doing the role for a while. You need to be quite self-sufficient, I would guess. Arvi Carkanji: There is no onboarding. So yes. The onboarding will typically consist of You'll meet with the CEO, jump in on calls with the CEO, and see how he runs his technical demo or maybe the VP of Go to Market or VP of technical go to market and see how they run it and then you're on the phone to probably day seven. Chris: Wow, okay, very different experience Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: to what I've had, even at the most extreme onboarding. So what are Arvi Carkanji: A yes. Chris: the sorts of things that hiring managers would be looking for at that stage? then how do those expectations change a bit as the startup matures to maybe a series A or a series B or C? Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, so I always say this as well because like I do talk to a lot of candidates that have been in scale-ups environments and they're like, no, but I wanna join a founding like SC role or whatever I like this. The problem with it is that sometimes hiring managers can be really cutthroat in their requirements and they know what it takes. Like I just mentioned to you, that could be that just onboarding is five days by day seven, you're on the phones. It's not for everybody. It is a really tough environment to be in. So typically hiring managers will be very, very cutthroat in their asking of non-negotiables. Like have you ever worked at a startup? Have you done any founding SE role, etc.? So that is really important. In terms of like how that changes, I would say again with seed, you're the doer, but also you know the player and the coach, right? Yeah, you're playing it, but you're also coaching it and you're ideally trying to establish some SOPs. Now, obviously, we all know it's impossible to do it all. With AR nowadays, that's made it even more accessible. So there is a lot of help and capacity generated because of that. How things change, I would say, you know, series A. Probably not that much from seed. Typically, similar requirements. It's just that you're not joining as the first person. You have maybe a second or a third higher and there's a little bit more support. Like you somebody else has figured out the hardest stuff prior to you, but you're still figuring out hard stuff. And then series B plus things get a little bit more lenient. And I would also say, like for example, on a seed stage. Domain expertise is insanely, you know, a big requirement. Series A, probably I would say like eighty percent. And then series B starts going down to 70 and series C, etc., you know, goes a little bit lower. and I I will say too is right now The biggest reason why most candidates get declined on my end would just be domain expertise. And it's just The way the startup world works, I guess. Chris: Yeah, interesting. It's almost an inverse of what I initially expected. And I think what a lot of people are expecting that they kind of imagine that startups will be quite flexible. They'll be looking for people that have the right attitude and mindset, but they're not that selective necessarily on skills and experience. But by the sounds of things, they're really looking for someone that can hit the ground running that doesn't need the hand holding that, like you said, could be on a call with the CEO potentially within the first week. Arvi Carkanji: Yes, yeah. I mean again, usually when startups list their non-negotiables on their job description, they literally mean non-negotiables for like 99% of it. They might be lenient on like one or two things, but really they want all of them. And I know it's tough for for some people. I mean, I think you and I even talked about an example. I think it was Harvey AI where they hire lawyers because of the domain experience and they teach them the rest. So that's become more and more of a thing. I've even seen them honestly overpay for somebody that like, for example, has been in domain experience for longer because the expertise comes extremely in handy for them. but I also I also know we have the devil's advocate of like, okay, but I can bring a fresh new perspective. I agree. You can, you should, but they're probably not gonna do it in a seed stage. They might do that a little bit later on series A or series B. So it's just important to understand the nuances and honestly not take it personally, especially if you're a candidate in this job market. Chris: Yeah. And, you know, people will be told not necessarily within the SE world or within tech, but just generally speaking, if you're reading a job description, you know, don't feel like you need necessarily to tick all the boxes, but it does sound like with the non-negotiables as their term, those really are non-negotiable most the time. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. And again I'm saying this for startups, like like we're talking either pre seed or seed and you know, series A, I'll include them in there. That that I would say is really important. But at the end of the day, if you have, I mean, your network is your net worth. Like I know it sounds cheesy, but at the end of the day, it's what really works too. So there's times where, you know, I might know you, Chris, from previously, and yes, you don't have domain expertise on something specifically, but I'm willing to come in and teach it to you because I know that you excel at everything else. So there's those nuances too, you know, where the network will bring you in and things like that. So that's why I'm a huge, huge fan of using your network. But if you're talking also like, you know, called applying, you the expectations will be much higher. Chris: Yeah, yeah, that's a really good shout. And I guess with the networking side of things, sort of de-risks it for the startup in that scenario. If the individual, hiring managers already worked with you, they know you, they've got confidence that you would hit the ground running. Yeah. Arvi Carkanji: Exactly. Absolutely, yep. Chris: So you alluded to this already in terms of talking about the domain expertise, but Would love to hear your perspective on some of the things that you know, most typically get candidates disqualified. in the pipeline. And it could be, you know, at seed stage or like as the companies get, larger through to A, Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: B and C. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Good question. I will say this is my experience. So just because it's mine and doesn't mean that, you know, it's a hundred percent how I say it. So I wanted to leave with that disclaimer. But again, Number one for me has been domain expertise. And that could look like just to clarify, like what I would call a domain expertise, is somebody that's come from that vertical, like accounting or cybersecurity identity space, anything from like AI SaaS or like a creator outreach like AI SaaS type company. So though that's what I call domain expertise. Then I would say is your experience within a similar startup. ideally or helped grow a startup. Typically those are huge points for especially seed or series A is where if you know if you've been part of a similar company before, you've grown with them for a long time. That would be a really good plus. outside of that, I would say your experience in seeds specifically. Like, have you worn multiple hats? Have you grown stuff from scratch before? That kind of like zero to one builder mentality plus experience. And if you've worked at a scale-up, for example, there's ways to overcome that. Like, hey, yes, I know it hasn't been a seed stage that I worked in, but I joined a brand new department at a scale-up. It was zero to one. Now we all know it's not gonna be exactly the same. department because you'll probably have a budget and you know things are different, you still have support from other departments, etc. But at least it shows that you've had that scrappiness and grit mentality. So that would be the next thing. and then outside of that, I will say depending on the candidates or the hiring manager, at the end of the day, hiring is a very human process and it will really depend what the person that's hiring for and what for they are looking for, you know, their personality, their experience in general. maybe things that they've encountered in the past versus not. So everything else kind of depends at that point, you know, what the hiring manager is looking for. Chris: Yeah. It's interesting. You mentioned that the preference there would be for people who have experience operating in a startup environment, but there are ways that someone in a more established, a scale up or a much larger scaled up company could at least try to demonstrate some of that experience. Right. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: One of the things I've seen from some of the guests I've had on the show so far is that they get involved in opening an office or a market in another country. And certainly that was my experience when I joined. Slack I was the first SE in the UK and it sort of felt like you were building a company or at least a culture within the wider Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: company there. It feels like that could be one way of sort of demonstrating Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely. Chris: that type of work as well. Arvi Carkanji: Yes. And what I would say for things like that, it's important to put it in your resume or your CV. Again, if that if you're looking to go into a startup environment. If you're like, no, I want to go to a different scale-up, then yeah, just saying Slack on there obviously will will attract the name itself. But if you're looking to go from Slack to a seed stage, I would encourage you to put that on your resume and say I build you know, the UK from zero to whatever, five hundred or two hundred or five, whatever that looks like. Chris: Yeah. Have you got any advice for those candidates that maybe don't have the domain expertise that you talked about? Like how they can start thinking about ways to develop that. Arvi Carkanji: really good question. I would say very hard to answer. So if you're, for example, somebody that really wants to get into the cyberspace, which it's the most technical product of probably all of them, that or like a DevOps or something like that. personal projects would be like number one. So training certificates, doing personal projects, you know, within those to showcase some true kind of experience in a sense. even joining at a bigger company, first of all, like there's bigger cybersecurity companies that don't need you to have domain expertise, but you will learn it once you're there because they will train you on it. so I've seen that being a really good step too is having the bigger company in your background, but the domain is there. not again, not all hiring managers look for somebody that comes from a seed stage. Sometimes the domain is like so specific that they're like, okay, as long as it's from like these whatever five plus companies, we'll still, we'll still train them or you know, they want to work at a seed stage startup, like we'll work with them. So I would say those are some ways now, of course, if you have a network and you're willing to like volunteer some hours or join some calls, you know, with the through your network or something along those lines would be like your next best bet. going to events for cyberspace, for example, or you know, identity or creator or it's SaaS, whatever that looks like. so really being proactive on showing, and then last but not least, I would say posting on LinkedIn of your experience. experience and knowledge within that domain is also a huge plus. So Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are really good points. It feels to me, you know, it is a sort of longer term play, right? I think if candidates are excited about a particular company and they want to demonstrate domain expertise within that particular area, if it's a software category or an industry, it's not something that happens overnight, right? So the candidate needs to think carefully about Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely. Chris: is that really the direction they wanna go in? Are they just excited about that company or are they genuinely excited about that domain in that problem space? And if you are, There are ways you can build that domain expertise at your current company with a personal project, but it is a longer term commitment. Arvi Carkanji: For sure. And I will say having adjacent domain expertise also works. Like again, within the cyberspace, to give you example, there's so many niches within it. So like you have email security, then you have like identity, and you have you know observability. Those are all three different niches. So somebody that's hiring in the observability s like vertical doesn't mean that they want somebody from email security because it's two completely different things. So Having a JSON space it also very helpful because you can say, hey, I know I don't have observability or identity, but I have an email secured and here's what we've done within that that matches identity plus observability. So I was trying not to get too technical, but wanted to give a concrete example. Yeah. Chris: No, that's super helpful. So we've talked a bit about domain expertise and expertise within a particular size company. What would your more general advice be to candidates operating in this environment at the moment? It can be a really tough environment for candidates, but what's your take on the market and What would you recommend they could do to maximise their success? Arvi Carkanji: yeah, I I like to say it's a very weird market. It's not good or bad, it's just weird. And whenever people ask me how's the market been, it's kind of funny because I'm always hiring, so it's like the market's great, right? So that you can't take that for an answer. But I do understand there's a lot of people that are working hard to get a job or maybe have been out of a job for three plus months, and I know it's tough out there. A couple of things I would say. Number one is your network. I mean I can't emphasize that enough. I've seen so many candidates get skipped in line, even if we're hiring for the company, to just because you know Chris knew them or the VP knew them and they don't even do the five stages that everybody else did. They go straight to you know the last stage or you know fine-tuning the last details. So the network is like absolutely huge too. And on the network I mean also like obviously VPs or directors or peers as well because they know within the company. But also recruiters like myself and we can talk about this a little bit later too, but that also helps there's a lot of companies that don't post their jobs, especially because if they don't have the time in seed stage, like they just hire a recruiter or they you know, fill it in through their network. So all of those things are important. two, I would really optimize like which company you're going after. So going after seed series like series A, like those startups is completely different than going after this established companies or scale-ups or enterprises because Two sides have completely different hiring processes. On the bigger end, you're gonna be dealing with so much more politics. Like your hiring process could go from like zero to eight plus months because it's just the way the stages take. And then on this side, your hiring process can go from zero to three weeks, and you get an offer. and then being able to tailor your experience to both of those again, completely different things. Here they care about like on the cedar or the cedar, the star. startup world they care about you know your scrappiness your domain expertise you know all that stuff and here they care about your actual experience how you've grown from maybe 20 to 50 million and here's from zero to ten right so you need to really understand who you're going after and like one resume doesn't mean it's gonna match all of them on the other hand though, I I will say you're probably doing it wrong if you're updating your resume for every single application because that just means you're not focused. We always talk about like how, you need to update your resume to match the application or the company. Really, it shouldn't be a full on upgrade. Like it should be minor things, right? That you're updating or just adjusting versus like doing a whole new resume to match that. If you're if that's what you're doing, like updating more than 50% of your resume. You're doing it wrong. You're going after the wrong companies and you're wasting a lot of your time, but probably companies that might not hire you. So getting it Chris: Yeah, to your point that it's that's almost like an indication that you are looking at, you know, vastly different companies or vastly different roles if the single Arvi Carkanji: Yes. Chris: CV is not working. Arvi Carkanji: Exactly. so yeah, I mean you gotta be super clear. There's this expression nowadays that I'm sure you've heard, like riches is in the niches. It it tails exactly to hiring too. Like you're gonna get hired the more niche you are, and you probably especially if you're not on j the job market, I totally get it because you have the scarcity and you're like, I need, you know, whatever to pay bills, I need to support my family, and you're like, okay I'll cast a wider net because it's gonna be way better. It's actually the opposite. The nicher you are, the more focused you are the more the or the higher are your chance of getting hired and you can also manage the process better. Like I I've seen candidates manage it like literally like a sales process. They use like Notion and AI to track and like where did they apply you know. Did they find hiring managers? Applications and loan also is not enough. Like going after hiring managers, peers, potential HR in that company is also really big. So, like what I would expect is if you're applying for a company, you're also messaging the hiring manager if you can find them. I mean, Sales Navigator is pretty cheap cost nowadays. and the first month is free if you've never used it, so you can capitalize on that first month too. And I actually had a funny conversation on this because everybody was like, Well, if I message all the hiring managers, then how am I gonna stand out? When I tell you that like less than 10% of people actually do this nowadays, it's truly what happens. So you just messaging them and finding them on LinkedIn is already gonna put you at the top 10%. Like no questions asked. So I I kind of went on on a long answer, but those I would say are like the biggest things right now that would probably make you stand out in this market. Chris: Yeah. The last point in particular, I think will resonate with a lot of people in pre-sales when they draw the analogy to their own deals, right? Like when you're working with a customer, it's sensible to be Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: doing discovery, multi-threading, trying to reach out to different people within that organization. And like, you're to have much Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely. Chris: better success with customers if you understand that space and you have a targeted message as opposed to going out with something really sort of broad, which could be applicable to any vendor. Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely, a hundred percent. Especially in pre sales for sure. And again, you've done that for a living, so now you can just apply that to the job aspect. Yeah. Chris: Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned networking and sort of applying for these companies, but also working with recruiters. That might be something that's new for some individuals or maybe they haven't worked with a recruiter in a while. How would you recommend pre-sales professionals or SEs go about doing that? Like what would a best in class engagement between you and one of your candidates look like? Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. it's a really good question and there's some nuances to it. So first and foremost I'll say the type of recruiter matters a lot. Like I specialize in pre-sales and sales and you know similar go-to-market roles. If you're going out to a recruiter as a sales engineer and you're not I'm just gonna say like let's just say you go after like a manufacturing recruiter. It's completely different spaces, right? So like they're not gonna have opportunities or if they do it's like extremely rare. So you want to find the right recruiter. number two, the thing about recruiters and depending on the ones, because there's some that do both but multi recruiters are not like career services. They're they have some jobs, not all the jobs. And typically they are very dependent on what the hiring manager is asking for. So understanding also that like when you're talking to a recruiter, you can absolutely ask the question like, hey, do you do career services or is it just more jobs, you know, and you work with the the company side. So that's also a big nuance to understand. Outside of that, I will say is that like I said, it's we have some jobs, not all jobs. However, you and I can have this conversation today, and it could be a week, three months, six months, or sometimes even a year that I have a role and it's like the perfect fit for you. So I will reach out to you and do that. so just because you had a conversation with recruiter now doesn't mean it's gonna lead to something right away. It could actually, I mean, it's been plenty of times where I've talked to someone and I'm like, wait, you're like perfect for. this role. Let's have a chat. but outside of that, just understand that it's it's not gonna be, you know, a direct kind of think of it like a partnership. Like if you're a channel sales engineer, like you know that those partnerships don't turn out right away. Like that's good, they're gonna take some time. So similar to that. Chris: And so would your advice for candidates be if they're thinking about making a move, even if it's not in the short term, but maybe they're starting to look outside their current company, that you would want to have conversations with them ahead of them, you necessarily having a role that's a perfect fit. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean we we take in like obviously all of our candidate systems now, like the ATSs that we use, et cetera, like they have AI, right? So like when I'm starting a new role, first thing I do is search who do I know right now that could be a good fit. So our system also helps us with that and you know, we use AI, et cetera, all that good stuff as well. So that's absolutely have conversation and have as many as met as them as possible. Like I might not have an opportunity, maybe the next recruiter next to me that does something similar or go to market roles might Have the right opportunity, and it doesn't mean or vice versa, right? Like maybe they didn't and I do. It doesn't mean that recruiters are good or bad because of it, it just depends on the opportunity they have at hand because it's an overall changing environment. But yeah, absolutely have conversations prior. I've actually had some candidates that I've had conversations prior. I got a role, I you know could have honestly forgotten about them, and they reach out and they say they saw that I posted something and they said, Hey, I just saw you post. to this i think it'd be a good fit and i'm like my gosh yes absolutely i totally forgot like let's have a chat so that also happens is like having a good relationship relationship and keeping on top of mind with them is absolutely a good thing too now obviously everybody has a day life and all that good stuff so i'm not saying you know go do it like on a weekly basis but monthly touch ups you know etc those are always helpful Chris: Yeah, that's great advice. And a common theme throughout is sort of that focus, be focused on where you want to go, have a long-term outlook and be proactive. It's not just about, hey, there's this role and now I'm really interested, but thinking longer term and having Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: that conversation with you ahead of time. Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely, for sure. Chris: Awesome. So Avi, there's a handful of questions I ask every guest on the show. So I'd love to move on to those. And the first one would be, it's interesting from someone in your role working and recruiting, but what do you Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: feel has been the most meaningful career change in your career so far and why? Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, good question. So prior to getting in recruiting or way prior before that, like after college, I was in a completely different industry. I opened a different business and I decided to close that and actually go work for a startup. We were consulting businesses and that was honestly hands down the hardest but also the best experience that I've had because my learning curve went from like You know, not zero, but from zero to like a hundred. And I learned so much from mistakes that other companies were making, especially people related, because a lot of the mistakes were always people related. you know, processes, a like systems or the wrong CRM, etc. Like those are fixable, usually not that bad, but typically people was the one that we were training on the most. So it taught me so much. and obviously, you know, helped me prepare for where I am today. Chris: Yeah, you must have such an empathy for the people that you're working with, the candidates, because you've been through that experience of working in that startup environment. Arvi Carkanji: For sure. Yes, yes. I was in the experience of building a business before. Obviously I'm doing it now too. So I understand the client side but also the candidate side from having done both like early in my career. Chris: Yeah. You mentioned some of the mistakes that companies could make. I'm curious to hear, have you got a failure from your own career that you feel that you took something from that you learned from that you'd like to share? Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, It at the time it felt like failure. Now it feels way better than that. But I would say the b the first business I was in that I the company I started, it felt like a failure when I closed it out. I didn't want to let go. It was really hard. It's kinda like your baby, right? Like you just don't want to let go and you put so much time and effort into it and it felt like I had completely failed myself, obviously my family and yeah, that that that was that was really hard at the time. However, now that I'm on this side, I'm like, my gosh, it taught me so much. First of all, I was like so young when I started it. I was right out of college, like 21 years old, made so many mistakes, had literally no clue what it was like to build a business. And I was just doing and learning. And it was like a crash course to my own personality too, because you just start learning so much about yourself when you're building a business and all the things that you do wrong versus not. Versus when you work for a company, it's a little bit different. So I would say that was definitely my biggest kind of crash course and crash too of failing in the business but coming out on the other side. Chris: Yeah, and clearly it didn't put you off starting your own business because here you are now after three years. So amazing. Arvi Carkanji: yeah, yeah. I I got well at the time I was like I'm never doing this again and then working for the company I learned so much and I was like okay I'm ready now So yeah. Chris: Yeah. And we've talked about AI in a couple of contexts, both in terms of how you're using it with your applicant tracking system and also how it's shaping the industry. We'd love if you got any additional thoughts on how you see AI changing things. That could be within pre-sales, it could be within sort of recruiting. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. I'll tell you the pros and cons that I think. So the pro of it is it's giving everybody way more capacity. of course, right? Like we all know this, like being able to prep before a call or prep before a podcast, or you know, prep for your sales call, learn about the person a lot more in depth, and all of that is amazing. Helping you prep for discovery, discovery summaries, you know, reaching out, follow-up emails, things like that, amazing tool. I think we're all now in a Good consensus that it's not a replaceable tool for humans on some aspects. it is leading to less capacity needed from companies, so obviously that is a con. but on the company perspective, obviously that's good because it allows them to to obviously grow and have a leaner team, etc. that's number one. Number two, I would say on the con, specifically for your job, it's also like I like to say you still have to be good at your job. Like you can't just do the job with AI. And I'll give you an example. we were recruiting for a company and we're going through interview processes like screenings on our N2 and you know we just ask the question, if there was an issue, you know, what would you do? How would you handle it? Like how would you do so and so? And the answer was yeah, I would go to AI and Claude. And I was like, okay, that's that's great, that's fair. I mean, I would do the same thing, right? What happens if Claude is not there or AI or it's you know, something's not working, or you just removai completely out of function. And they just couldn't answer the question. So you cannot let AI take over your I don't know what the right word is, like responsibility, knowledge, like completely take a bait back seat and let AI be the driver. Like that's the wrong way to use it. So now of course companies want you to use AI, but they are gonna start filtering a lot more for these types of questions, right? Like, yes, we love AI, use AI to do the project. What would you do if there was no AI? You still need to be able to answer the question. So that would be the biggest con, I would say. Don't let AI be the driver, you be the driver. Chris: Yeah, one thing I've definitely found in starting my own business is I find AI really, really helpful for where I've already got a clear idea of what I'm trying to achieve. For instance, with the podcast, doing things like podcast Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: operations and the guest pipeline is something where like I already know what I need to do. It allows me to do it way faster. But when you're looking for help with a novel problem, it can help you with some ideas. But like you said, you want to give it quite a clear steer as to this is what good looks like. Arvi Carkanji: Absolutely. Chris: So we've already covered loads of different advice for candidates. Is there any other advice that you would have for candidates or for people in the pre-sale space more generally? Arvi Carkanji: pre-sales. I'm trying to think something pre-sale specifically. And I don't know if this is like new advice, but I would say definitely be proactive in knowing how to change with times, being able to wear more hats. Actually, I was on my own podcast yesterday and I was talking to a leader in that was a director of pre-sales and you know we talked about how I feel like the pre-sales community had always been trying to advocate for themselves that we're not just demo people, we're way more than that. And now we're at a time where everybody's like, You're right, we agree, you're way more than that. So now you're gonna wear multiple hats and like wets that are hats that are outside of your current job. So now we're getting a little bit of pushback of like, Well, why am I doing that? I'm a sales engineer, you know, I'm not supposed to be doing this, I'm not supposed to be doing that. And that's obviously, you know, kind of. Leading to a friction because we're advocating for our value. Now people are saying we see your value. Now we're wait, wait, wait, no, we liked it when we were just doing this. So be open to wearing more hats, being open to changing with the times, learning and be getting ahead of it. innovating if possible is huge. taking charge of things and I know that sometimes we're like, well they're not paying me enough. You're right, they're not probably, or they're not paying you for that specific task. But what are you learning from it? You know, how are you personally developing from it is also huge. And you can use that to go into another company that can pay you more because of all the things you did for this one. So have a longer vision and longer term goal versus just like looking at the short vision and shorter goal. Chris: Yeah, I love it. And the point around continuously learning, I mean, I feel like that's always been relevant, but never more than now with AI with how quickly things are changing. So Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: being flexible and open-minded to how the role might evolve. Arvi Carkanji: Yes, for sure. Chris: And on that topic, Avi, I'm sure you love your job. run your own business, but if you could Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: do one other job, it could be anything completely outside of tech. What would your other dream role be? Arvi Carkanji: a hundred percent bias, but pre sales, not outside of tech. I Chris: Okay, correct answer. Arvi Carkanji: I know. I was thinking about this, but I'm I s I like sales. I I like still talking to people. I'm a very much relationship person-based and like very value-driven type of sales. So I was like, that I would fit so well in this in this role. and honestly, some of the roles that I hired for, I'm like really jealous because I'm like, wow, that's a really good opportunity to learn and grow. so 100% bias, but hands down pre-sales. Chris: Yeah. Well, I don't know if you follow, there's a podcast called Lenny's podcast. It's more in the sort of product and engineering space that I follow. And Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: he does a survey once a year on how people in tech are feeling, what their sentiments like. people in sales are up there as some of the most happy people in tech. I think, like you said, it's because so much of the role is the human element and that feels, you know, one of the things Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: AI is not coming for anytime soon. I think, yeah, we don't always... Arvi Carkanji: That is true. Chris: realize how lucky we are in sales and in our space, certainly relative to some other professions. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean I I know sales in general has a lot of pros and cons, but most people wouldn't do it if they didn't have more pros and cons. Chris: Yeah, couldn't agree more. Well, R.V., this Arvi Carkanji: Yeah. Chris: has been such an interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Arvi Carkanji: Yeah, thanks Chris. It was nice having a a different I'm usually the one asking the questions. So Chris: I'm Arvi Carkanji: this was a nice nice break. Chris: Absolutely. Okay, cheers Avi, bye bye. Arvi Carkanji: Thanks everyone.