Notes:
Have you wondered why companies and businesses don’t hire you even if you have an impressive resume? Or you can’t believe why you were rejected after acing the interview? In this episode, you will know how Sales Engineer Leaders select and determine the applicant who is the best fit for their company as Jimmy Barens who has hired a leading team consisting of over 130 people reveals how he selects his SEs.
Jimmy Barens is an experienced and talented Sales and Pre Sales leader, with successful experiences in Digital Marketing, Digital Media, and Enterprise Content Management. He has a strong track record in building long-lasting businesses and organizations in Europe. He also has extensive experience in dealing with people from different countries and with different cultures and beliefs which he finds very interesting. He even said he does reassessment with his team not to fire the underperforming employees but to find what is missing and to identify what gaps need to be filled.
Key Takeaways:
- Why Jimmy finds dealing with people from different nationalities interesting and easier
- 2 factors Jimmy considers important in addressing people’s needs
- How Jimmy reassesses his team who needs to fill the gaps
- What Jimmy thinks the 50% of his job and where he’s really good at
- Having the self-discipline to step back to think more and do more
- The 10 categories Jimmy uses in recruiting
- What Jimmy pertains about the creativity that he’s looking for
- Jimmy explains the contradicting categories he seeks in recruiting
- What Ramzi added to one of Jimmy’s categories in recruiting
- Multitasking vs Task Switching
- Jimmy’s deal-breaker even if the applicant has the 10 categories
- How will Jimmy find out whether the applicant has his 10 categories or not during the interview
Quotes:
“Active listening doesn’t imply the right outcome. Active listening will just maximize your chance to understand exactly the situation. And then from there, eventually make the right actions.” –Jimmy Barens
“Some of my SEs have been recruited three or four years ago and they did not add technical background because it was not necessary at that time. But now it’s becoming necessary. I’m kind of rescreening, my actual employees to try to detect what is missing.” –Jimmy Barens
“The product is evolving, and the strategy of the company is changing. There are a lot of external factors that have a direct impact on me and on my team. Not recognizing those external factors or signals will be a leadership error.” –Jimmy Barens
“My recommendation is just maybe blocking two hours per week and say okay, nothing in my agenda.” –Jimmy Barens
“Find a framework or ideas, just be honest, take a sheet of paper and put all the ideas on the paper. And you really, really realize that if you use more you do that more you practice more, it will be easy to do that.” –Jimmy Barens
“Remember, when you recruit you’re not recruiting a friend, you are recruiting someone that needs to fit in the company culture, needs to fit in the team.” –Jimmy Barens
“Compatibility could be different. The way I was doing that compatibility check at Adobe, for RTX is not the same, because the core values of UX and the core values of Adobe are not the same.” –Jimmy Barens
“One of the categories that is really important to me is creativity. I think that SEs are puzzle solvers. And you need to love that. And you need to think out of the box, you need to like challenges. If you don’t like that, I think it’s it’s warning for me.” –Jimmy Barens
“If you’re not eager to improve, if you’re not here to be always at the edge of your knowledge, you can become obsolete very fast and useless, especially in the SE space.” –Jimmy Barens
“I’m trying to create a professional family when I’m talking about SEs. I think that’s that you need to be proud of being a part of that team; to work with them, to learn with them, to progress with them, and that the teamwork is inevitable for me.” –Jimmy Barens
“The best SEs that I’ve seen in my life are the best storytellers ever. And I think one part of our job is to illustrate, to explain, to simplify sometimes complex concepts which will lead to another criteria. You need to be able to explain that in a very impactful way. An easy way to understand for the audience.” –Jimmy Barens
“If you are not an active listener the rest of the process is useless. ” –Jimmy Barens
“You need to adapt in real-time because you know that if you are not doing that it will be a failure. I think that’s maybe the part which is the most stressful but also the most exciting for me when I’m delivering presentations in front of customers.” –Jimmy Barens
