Hiring the first international talent at
Z1 Tech (formerly, Z1 Media)
Background
Z1 Tech is a technological company offering multiple product solutions to redefine an individual’s content consumption experience. When I joined the company, it was a small team of 35 people based out of India. As COVID entailed a boom in digital spending and content consumption, Z1 Tech was able to tap into the opportunity and witnessed a significant growth. In January 2021, I was asked by the founder to plan a hire in the US who would be able to open the North American market for the company and enable further growth.
REQUIREMENTS
I proposed a bottom-down approach, hiring a proactive person with 15+ years of agency experience who could join the company as Head of North America, get initial traction for the company, and eventually set up their own team.
CHALLENGES
There were majorly three roadblocks:
Since there was no physical presence of the company (in terms of office & employees) in the US, it was difficult to attract experienced talent.
The job posting in the careers section yielded almost zero profiles since the company operated in a niche industry.
The company was entirely bootstrapped, and thus couldn’t invest into hiring a recruiter based out of the US.
INITIAL STEPS
I applied a hit-and-trial method by trying out traditional ways such as posting on job boards common in the US market, running paid ad campaigns, reaching out to freelancing & recruiting agencies, and reaching out to potential candidates on LinkedIn. None of the steps yielded any positive results. That’s where I stopped and spent some time learning about the work culture in the US.
NEW APPROACH
Combining the lessons from previous failures and merging them with the newfound learnings of the US culture, I started leveraging the LinkedIn account of the company’s CEO to initiate reachouts. The message wasn’t posed as a job opportunity but a ‘handshake call’ discussing growth avenues.
RESULTS
The new approach was able to give positive results as we got a pool of 10+ candidates to decide from. Within a month, Z1 Tech onboarded Sean Black as the Head of North America. In the same year, I was awarded the Employee of the Year award by the company.
LEARNINGS
The major takeaway from this assignment for me was that an out-of-the-box solution doesn’t necessarily mean a completely non-traditional, unrelated solution but it can simply be a new, refined approach gleaned from previous learnings.