Michael C. Bertoni, Founder and CEO of PhillyTech–the industry leader in assisting Software as a Service (SaaS) and Hi-Tech companies hire talent, generate leads, and drive sales–sat down with Consumer51’s Director of Strategic Development Justin Butler to discuss the Hiring Differentiation Index (HDI).

Justin: Mike, can you kick us off by telling us about the Hiring Differentiation Index?

Mike: Justin, we’re really excited to unveil this new and comprehensive resource today. As you know, we’re experts in working with SaaS and Hi-Tech companies to hire talent. For these companies, talent is often the differentiator. Having worked with hundreds of SaaS and Hi-Tech clients over the years, it became apparent to me that we need a way to measure and articulate the hiring strategy for these fast-growing companies. 

Our goal in developing the Hiring Differentiation Index, which specifically emphasizes to the market the critical elements involved in hiring best-fit individuals, is to help the leaders within SaaS and Hi-Tech companies think about their hiring strategy in an objective and quantitative way.

This Hiring Differentiation Index is composed of twenty-four categories, assembled to differentiate staffing and recruiting companies from one another. It is an index of components that we find the most relevant when selecting a recruiting company. Our objective is to introduce the Hiring Differentiation Index to the market so SaaS and High-Tech companies can learn how to more efficiently and effectively bring on competent people who stay with their organization for the long term. Categories and scoring used in the Hiring Differentiation Index

Justin: Before we dive into the components of the index, I’d like you to take some time to talk about the types of entities being compared in this index.

Mike: We're looking at different variations of recruitment options that businesses have, specifically, in-house staff, a large recruitment firm, a boutique firm, and of course PhillyTech.

 HDI categories comparison using colors as a visual instead of numbers; red = 1 point, orange = 2 points, green = 3 points

Justin: Great! So where did this index come from, and what is it telling me? 

 Image of the Hiring Differentiation Index

Mike: Justin, imagine you’re hiring talent at your firm–I am sure you probably are. This index will help you, as a hiring manager, decide which path you should choose to build your team. What actually happened is that one of our top SaaS clients came to us with a challenge to articulate our differentiators against other recruiting agencies. So, I sat down with William Mellinger, our CMO, and we thought about the state of the industry and how recruitment companies offer commodity-like, cookie-cutter solutions. Then we put together a compilation of reasons for how PhillyTech is diverse and unique from our competition. That’s how we came up with the idea of an index that actually works like a scale for fast-growing SaaS and Hi-Tech companies to evaluate their recruitment strategy.

Now, let me add something here: the cost of a bad hire is extremely detrimental; it could disrupt company culture and even lead to a series of financial losses. Each of these areas that we’re going to touch on in this series, plays a part in how well your recruiting partner is going to be able to find suitable candidates, as quickly as possible, in order to grow your organization.

Justin: Then let’s look at one of the comparisons. Why is PhillyTech a wiser, more effective choice than an in-house team?

Mike: That’s a great question! I will say that in some rare instances, we may not be the best choice. However, in most cases, what differentiates us on this matrix–one of the most important points–is Hyper-Targeting. This is a practice we excel at that most in-house teams are unable to execute at scale and speed.

Let me give you an example: let’s say a client wants to hire a Node.js engineer. To start off, we already have a data set of 5,000+ Node.js engineers in the United States and Colombia, South America. We've already built multiple data sets for every position within a SaaS and Hi-Tech company, including jobs in multiple levels within engineering, sales, marketing, business analysis, solution engineers, product managers, customer success, operations, helpdesk, and all other jobs.  Our clients have very specific requirements for people, and in most cases, we understand exactly what they need and already have experience finding these people.

Then we work on the job requirements. Even though every hire begins with a job requirement, for many companies it's typically an afterthought. However, it is key since it has to be reviewed by potential employees in order for them to determine if they meet the job requirements for that job, correct? It’s going to be their career, so it’s vitally important for potential applicants to review and apply to a well-written job requirement.

A majority of job requirements are terribly written. They are basically copied and pasted from one job to the next. Inversely, at PhillyTech we spend a lot of time crafting a job requirement that has marketing, PR, sales, qualifications, and essential topics regarding the business. When a potential candidate is reading one of these job requirements, we want them to get excited about the company culture and what they will be doing since it’s the first impression people get about the company. This is a massive differentiator for us.

So first, we have a data set of candidates, and then we write an incredible job description to match talent to the opportunity.

From there, we have a methodology to find qualified people on an individual basis, which is based on the data set and each individual’s personal information. We then hyper-target them with LinkedIn messages, email messages, email marketing, text messages, and blast messages. About 90-95% of the time, an in-house recruiting team is not going to be able to execute such an effort.  In our experience, the best, long-term, hires typically come from hyper-targeting and we're the best in the world at executing this for our clients.

Another major differentiator is speed. The PhillyTech team is very prompt and efficient due to our existing data, our methodology, our templates, as well as our systems and applications. All of these assets working together allow us to find suitable applicants quickly and accurately. 

The final point I’ll mention here is client experience. Our clients have conveyed that PhillyTech is the fabric of their company, not as a vendor, but as a partner. The experience that clients receive when trusting us with hiring new team members makes them feel like we are all playing for the same team. They trust us.

Justin: Ok, well that seems clear. So why would someone choose PhillyTech over one of the larger-scale, more well-known recruitment firms?

Mike: For the last 24 years, our company has focused on working with SaaS and Hi-Tech companies, that's all we do, Justin. We specialize in finding talent for these companies.

So let’s apply our Hiring Differentiation Index to make the comparison here. When going to a large-scale recruitment firm, they're working with any and every type of company under the sun, as well as hiring for various types of roles. In contrast, we understand the bits and bytes of how a SaaS company functions because this is all we focus on.

We at PhillyTech truly understand how a software product is built, how it is sold, and how it is marketed. 

That is the biggest differentiator between any recruiting company and us. Another recruiter might be working with hospital systems, a healthcare organization, or even with a financial services company while we only hire for SaaS and High-Tech companies. We understand our clients better than anyone else in the world.

Stay tuned as we continue to dive deeper into the different markers of the HDI and why they matter to your company culture and bottom line. If you’re interested in working with SaaS Talent, set up a Free Strategy Session with us here to understand how the HDI can help your organization succeed in hiring, or set up a meeting using the calendar below to learn how we can help streamline your hiring operations.