Episode 2
The CMO's AI Operating System For Leading Now and Landing What’s Next
Host Erica Seidel interviews Corey McCarthy, who has held CMO roles at Axonify, Unifocus, and Webex Events, about how AI is changing CMO hiring, leadership, and team building in B2B SaaS.
You'll learn about:
- How AI is showing up in searches for CMOs -- on both sides of the table
- A simple, repeatable idea for breaking up your professional networking into bite-sized chunks that accelerate the speed of trust
- Ways to demonstrate your AI prowess as a CMO
- How someone 'in search' may actually be more up to date on AI than someone who's 'in seat'
- How the strongest GTM teams are going from single-player AI motions to multi-player motions – with positive impacts not just on overall GTM strategy, but on efficiency of AI spend
- How a CMO's value lies in orchestrating processes, systems, tools, data, and executive alignment with strong AI governance to avoid brand dilution, duplicated work, and runaway token costs
- How CMOs should approach team-building now that AI agents have joined the org
00:00 Welcome and AI focus
00:57 52 coffees networking
03:07 Career path and fun fact
04:53 In seat vs in search
06:05 AI job search system
08:07 Network plus dashboards
11:24 Proving AI leadership
14:19 Governance and token costs
16:39 Team building with AI
19:28 Recruiter advice for CMOs
21:13 Future of the CMO
22:54 Favorite interview question
24:51 How to answer AI questions
28:44 Wrap up and outro
The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and leadership in B2B SaaS marketing. We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today’s top marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
This season’s theme is focused on how AI is reshaping the CMO role: how you lead, how you hire, and how you get hired."
The Get’s host is Erica Seidel, who runs The Connective Good, an executive search practice with a hyper-focus on recruiting CMOs and VPs of Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS.
If you are looking to hire a CMO or VP of Marketing of the ‘make money’ variety, rather than the ‘make it pretty’ variety, contact Erica at erica@theconnectivegood.com. You can also follow Erica on LinkedIn or sign up for her newsletter at TheConnectiveGood.com.
The Get is produced by the team at Simpler Media Productions.
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcript
Welcome to The Get, the podcast that's all about recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:This season, we're exploring how AI is reshaping the CMO role, how you lead,
Speaker:how you hire, and how you get hired.
Speaker:Today, we will discuss how AI is affecting searches for CMOs on both sides of the
Speaker:table, ways to demonstrate your AI prowess as a CMO, how CMOs should approach team
Speaker:building now that AI has joined the team, whether somebody who is in seat as a CMO
Speaker:is more or less likely to be up to date on AI than somebody who is in search,
Speaker:and how AI governance really matters.
Speaker:My guest today is Corey McCarthy.
Speaker:Corey has been CMO at Axonify, the platform for upskilling frontline
Speaker:workforces, and previously was CMO at Unifocus and Webex Events.
Speaker:Corey, welcome to the show.
Speaker:Thank you so much, Erica.
Speaker:It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker:You and I met last year, and you said to me something I will not forget,
Speaker:which was you had a mission of having 52 coffee meetings, and that is so specific.
Speaker:That is so directed.
Speaker:Tell me about that.
Speaker:I'm wondering about that experience that you had and what was driving it,
Speaker:how it went, and how it was different than just being in networking mode?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:In seat, it's hard to come up for air and take a look at the outside world.
Speaker:It was COVID, and then we still weren't getting back to traveling really
Speaker:quickly, and I missed my connections.
Speaker:I missed my network.
Speaker:So I figured that I needed to start somewhere, and that
Speaker:one coffee a week was doable.
Speaker:So I broke it up into bite-sized chunks for me.
Speaker:I think I started it in 2023, and it's become this multi-year thing for me.
Speaker:It's great.
Speaker:It's such a wonderful reminder because your network is so important,
Speaker:and you don't know that you need it until you need it, and it's hard
Speaker:to get fired up all of a sudden.
Speaker:So I've got my 52 coffee sheet that sits on my desk at all times as a
Speaker:reminder to get out there and do it.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:And what's the mix of people that you have not met versus people that
Speaker:are in your network and you're, you know, getting back in touch with them?
Speaker:Former coworkers.
Speaker:Love meeting recruiters or new private equity firms, VC firms, former CEOs.
Speaker:Different people that I've met along the way.
Speaker:The other thing I like doing is I'm a big fan of Matt Heinz’s CMO Coffee Talk,
Speaker:and if somebody pops up with a really great thought, I'll reach out to them
Speaker:on LinkedIn, say, "Hi, I loved what you said. Let's connect." And I've had
Speaker:some really great conversations and met some really great people that way, too.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:I feel like everybody should be strategically networky or " "commercially
Speaker:social" is how one of my friends puts it because I could tell you
Speaker:as a search person I'm always in that mode as well, and then there's
Speaker:plenty of people who will only talk to me when they're in between roles.
Speaker:And sometimes they miss out on a role because they didn't tell me until
Speaker:they were like three months into the role and I'll say, Well, if I had
Speaker:known that you had this experience and that experience and that you
Speaker:wanted XYZ, I would've come to you.
Speaker:So good for you for being commercially social.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:So tell me more about you, your career path in a nutshell.
Speaker:I gave a little overview, but talk to us about that, and maybe share a fun fact
Speaker:that would never appear on LinkedIn.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I started off in sales.
Speaker:I sold advertising way back before it was cool, and so I've got a
Speaker:long history of figuring out how to make things generate revenue.
Speaker:So I was given digital advertising, emails, social media, and I
Speaker:was the one figuring out how to sell it, how to monetize it,
Speaker:what worked, what didn't work.
Speaker:From there, I jumped into marketing leadership at B2B SaaS
Speaker:companies, and built companies, scaled the process and teams.
Speaker:It's funny now that AI has come back around, I feel like we're, all the
Speaker:way back to the beginning, figuring out a new set of rhythms and tools,
Speaker:and getting in there and rolling up sleeves, and figuring out how to stitch
Speaker:it all together and make it all work.
Speaker:Yeah, you can't really be like, Oh, I've done this for X amount
Speaker:of years and I am the expert.
Speaker:You have to throw away that and any kind of hubris and be a little bit of
Speaker:a learner all over again it seems like.
Speaker:Always.
Speaker:Which is cool.
Speaker:And what's your fun fact?
Speaker:Fun fact is I've been on TV.
Speaker:I was on HGTV Color Splash.
Speaker:My sister-in-law was a producer.
Speaker:So we did that, and then we produced a documentary together.
Speaker:I brought her into an engagement that I was working with, and we had a blast
Speaker:pulling together the most beautiful footage for a $34 million pink diamond.
Speaker:A $34 million pink diamond?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That is random.
Speaker:How big is such a diamond?
Speaker:14 carats.
Speaker:14.1 or so.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:Who knew?
Speaker:Fabulous.
Speaker:So we are talking when you're actually in between roles, and I wanted to talk with
Speaker:you because of that and not despite that.
Speaker:I was curious to poke at, with all the changes with AI, how somebody
Speaker:who is working on their own time with AI as you are is more or less up to
Speaker:date than somebody who is in the seat?
Speaker:So in seat versus in search.
Speaker:I know there's a bit of a debate about this and what's your take on
Speaker:the experience with AI upskilling and scaling in seat versus in search?
Speaker:It's different.
Speaker:In seat you have time constraints.
Speaker:You've got budgets, you've got your ELT, and then you've also got processes.
Speaker:You've also got the systems, tools, and data to plug into the
Speaker:AI to play around with and figure out how to best operate with.
Speaker:Out of seat I think that it's fun to figure out like what actually
Speaker:makes AI tick behind the scenes, and so I've been building like crazy.
Speaker:It's been wonderful to actually get my hands deep in and figuring
Speaker:out, okay, this connects with that, that connects with that.
Speaker:We can be more efficient here.
Speaker:I've been token maxing here.
Speaker:We need to pull back, and really getting a better understanding of the
Speaker:behind-the-scenes motion, and it really opened up my eyes to what's possible.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:So, I know you said that you have used AI to build a job search application.
Speaker:Tell me about it.
Speaker:I'm wondering about how that works, and also the impacts that you're seeing?
Speaker:Any time savings ROI or big ahas or big breakthroughs that you've had with that?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:When I started on the job search, it's daunting.
Speaker:There are so many roles out there, and to sit down at your desk and search
Speaker:through every single one of them and figure out which one is new, which one
Speaker:you've already looked at, I figured that there had to be another way.
Speaker:Mmhmm.
Speaker:So, I figured we could lean into AI, and I ended up building a complete
Speaker:operating system that actually operates a lot like my marketing funnel would.
Speaker:So I've created a system that scrapes LinkedIn.
Speaker:It monitors various career pages and communities, recruiter sites.
Speaker:It brings all of these together.
Speaker:But not only does it bring all of the jobs together, it scores it for me based
Speaker:specifically on what I am looking for.
Speaker:Just because a job role is open doesn't mean I'm the right candidate for it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I've got a whole scoring methodology that I built based off of the target
Speaker:title that I want, industry growth stage, the geography comp range,
Speaker:in-office versus remote, travel reporting structure, the investment,
Speaker:is it a VC-backed or a PE-backed?
Speaker:So just started to layer on and build, and now I've got a fresh
Speaker:dashboard every day that I wake up.
Speaker:It shows me the most recent jobs that are posted within my target profile.
Speaker:It scores them for me, so I've got my A list and my B list to help me save
Speaker:a little time and be a little bit more thoughtful about how I move forward.
Speaker:Then it gives me a lot of research.
Speaker:And so going in, I know the pros, the cons.
Speaker:It has a script in it that pulls if there's been a lot of
Speaker:layoffs at the company recently.
Speaker:It flags if there's a new CEO.
Speaker:There's a lot of insight that this gives me to help me make a decision
Speaker:as to whether or not I wanna go for it, or prepping for the call with the
Speaker:recruiter, call with the CEO, the team.
Speaker:So it's been incredibly helpful.
Speaker:That's great.
Speaker:I'm wondering how does that compare with your 52 networking things per year?
Speaker:Because one is very, the job search system that you're talking about
Speaker:assumes that things are public.
Speaker:But we know that a lot of CMO jobs are not public.
Speaker:They're confidential, or they're just not posted, and so you're
Speaker:more likely to find one of those maybe through the 52 coffees thing.
Speaker:So how do you think about that?
Speaker:You need both.
Speaker:At the CMO level, you're absolutely right, most of the jobs come from your network.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So the way I've been operating is I've been making sure to touch base
Speaker:with everybody within my network, and making sure that everyone is
Speaker:aware of what I'm looking for very specifically and getting introductions.
Speaker:And so I've been introduced into a number of private equity firms,
Speaker:VC firms, and have had some really wonderful meetings with their
Speaker:talent partners, as well as CEOs.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So from there, I take that data and I put it into my system.
Speaker:It's half and half.
Speaker:It's half scraped.
Speaker:And while I am getting most of my leads from my own network, Slack channels
Speaker:like the CMO Coffee Talk are great because people will put roles in there.
Speaker:There's the whispered network, and so there are ways to find those roles
Speaker:that aren't posted just because I think that being part of the CMO community is
Speaker:incredibly important right now because it's going through so many changes.
Speaker:I think that we're doing a pretty good job of taking care of one another and
Speaker:keeping a lookout for, hey, here's something great, and bringing together
Speaker:great people to share that with.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's funny because a lot of people will come to me asking for
Speaker:networking tips, and people will say I've never had to look for a job.
Speaker:Things have always come to me.
Speaker:And there's some basic things that you are doing, in addition to your more
Speaker:advanced stuff, that a lot of people don't know, and one of them is just
Speaker:staying in touch with people on a cadence.
Speaker:It seems so obvious, but a lot of people don't realize that when you meet
Speaker:somebody once they could forget you.
Speaker:When you meet them a second time, that's gonna compound a little bit.
Speaker:And by the time you meet them for a third time, god you're like
Speaker:the best of friends sometimes.
Speaker:So getting to that second or third or fourth meeting bears way
Speaker:more fruit than you might think.
Speaker:That has been my experience.
Speaker:Is your experience similar?
Speaker:Oh my gosh, 100%.
Speaker:It is that repeated touchpoint and getting to know somebody.
Speaker:So I think that the people that I've worked with before in the past
Speaker:are some of my very good friends.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then, over the years, I now know a number of different CMOs,
Speaker:recruiters, and other peers that have become friends as well.
Speaker:It's important to keep up with them.
Speaker:It's interesting, I've been having quite a few conversations about your own personal
Speaker:database because keeping all of these people in one system and all of the notes
Speaker:to remember everything, so you can refresh your memory and refresh yourself before
Speaker:going into a conversation, and knowing when to reach out and how much to reach
Speaker:out because there's no handbook for it.
Speaker:Yeah, I have some people ping me like once a week, once every two weeks,
Speaker:and I'm like, not much has changed in me finding the 11 out of 10 things
Speaker:that are going to be pertinent to you versus being very different.
Speaker:Very interesting.
Speaker:And there is a database.
Speaker:I have one.
Speaker:It's called Clockwork.
Speaker:This is an executive search database but you can write in, oh, this person
Speaker:introduced me to this person, and I'm sure you could use Claude to build
Speaker:something like this as well, but it's like, oh you have three cats named
Speaker:you know Suzy, Doozy, and Floozy.
Speaker:You have that in there.
Speaker:Anyway, let's talk about something I have heard a little bit about, and
Speaker:that is that within the PE space, which you know well, I know well, sometimes
Speaker:you have PE folks, investors, and CEOs that are asking marketers to give a
Speaker:tour of what they are doing with AI.
Speaker:Show me your Claude instance, and show me what you're doing, et cetera.
Speaker:So I'm wondering if you can react to that, and also more broadly talk
Speaker:about how do you want to demonstrate your AI prowess so to speak?
Speaker:Yeah, I think that AI skills are almost table stakes at this point.
Speaker:If a private equity partner asks you to open up your Claude code on
Speaker:site to see what that is, I think it's missing the bigger picture.
Speaker:Because the job of a CMO now is being that orchestrator, stitching together
Speaker:the processes, the systems, the tools, the data, and doing so in collaboration
Speaker:with the entire executive team.
Speaker:I started up the AI initiative at Unifocus and then carried through over at Axonify.
Speaker:Working with the CFO is incredibly important, and working with the rev ops
Speaker:and the other ELT members to make sure that the systems are complete, that
Speaker:we're thinking about it holistically, and that we've got a lot of governance
Speaker:around it is incredibly important.
Speaker:Once you have that layer, then you can start dropping down and starting to move
Speaker:from that table stake single player motion into that built up, multiplayer motion
Speaker:that really starts to make an impact.
Speaker:Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker:You're basically saying if you just drop into one person's computer you're
Speaker:gonna see a less robust view than you actually want to see, like a less of a
Speaker:go-to-market, overarching kind of view.
Speaker:Yeah, you're gonna see one slice.
Speaker:You're gonna see my dashboards.
Speaker:You're going to see some of the research and other things that
Speaker:I specifically am working on.
Speaker:But some of the cool stuff is gonna live on my team's instance and
Speaker:my team's computers, especially in a single player motion.
Speaker:In this conversation around AI and AI fluency, where are CMOs, and
Speaker:the people hiring them, where else are they missing the boat here?
Speaker:Tell me more.
Speaker:I think that they are being pushed to ask about AI without actually seeing how it's
Speaker:all stitched together operationally for the entire go-to-market market function.
Speaker:So when you dig into that a little bit more, right now we're pretty inefficient
Speaker:if we're still in single player mode.
Speaker:AI is starting to become the average of everything on the internet.
Speaker:So if your sales team is out there doing their own thing, your content marketers
Speaker:are out there doing their own thing without any sort of single frame of
Speaker:context that keeps the brand in check, your brand starts to be diluted, you
Speaker:start to sound like everybody else.
Speaker:Even worse, you start to sound like AI, and we're missing a
Speaker:lot of those humanistic things that make the brand special.
Speaker:Even if it goes into product or your tech team is using it, it starts to slip
Speaker:the further away it goes from center, and it's really easy to have happen if
Speaker:you don't have that governance, if you don't have those operating procedures
Speaker:or that context layer built in.
Speaker:You're so operationally oriented.
Speaker:You really, in previous conversations as well, you beat the drum of AI governance.
Speaker:Where does that come from?
Speaker:Is there anything else you wanna add to that?
Speaker:I've lived it.
Speaker:I've lived the sales team going one direction, the BDRs
Speaker:going a different direction.
Speaker:If everybody isn't really focused on the actual strategy and agreeing on
Speaker:the actual strategy, everything slips.
Speaker:And then from a cost perspective, it's expensive.
Speaker:If you have everybody out there doing their own thing, and everybody is
Speaker:token maxing, and everyone is going on their single player route, everybody is
Speaker:reinventing the wheel over and over again.
Speaker:If I go into my Claude instance, and if I'm looking to run a persona report, and
Speaker:then my product marketer does the same thing, we're hitting Claude instance
Speaker:every single time we're doing it, and it might generate different answers.
Speaker:If we're not capturing and agreeing on that common thread, all of a
Speaker:sudden we're incredibly inefficient because everybody is spinning their
Speaker:own wheels over and over again.
Speaker:It's expensive and it's taking up a lot of time that we don't have to.
Speaker:So it'll be really interesting, I think, when the CFOs come together to
Speaker:do their 6 plus 6 and take a look at the token usage for the first half of this
Speaker:year because it's hard to budget for.
Speaker:Three months ago everybody was being applauded for token maxing.
Speaker:Like, "Yeah, I'm using AI." But now I think when we are gonna be able to take
Speaker:a look at the H1 numbers, going into H 2, it's gonna be a much different world.
Speaker:And going into 2027, the budget conversations are
Speaker:gonna be a lot different.
Speaker:Even Microsoft has gone back and hired a lot of their human engineers because
Speaker:now it's less expensive to have the human engineers than it is to run AI.
Speaker:So I think we're gonna find a lot of this.
Speaker:It's going to be an area that we're all gonna need to come into, really doubling
Speaker:down on efficiency, and what are the people on the team specifically doing?
Speaker:What are they doing with AI?
Speaker:Where's the overlap?
Speaker:Where are they spinning their wheels?
Speaker:Where does it not make sense anymore?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:There's efficiency of what you're shooting for in your marketing results,
Speaker:but there's also the efficiency of actually using the AI, which you
Speaker:don't hear that from a lot of people.
Speaker:So thank you for bringing that up.
Speaker:Let's talk about team building.
Speaker:How are you thinking about how CMOs should approach team building and where
Speaker:to put their resources going forward?
Speaker:And how is this different than a couple years ago?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:I think that to go and completely reorg based on AI, we're still a
Speaker:little bit early for that right now.
Speaker:There are enough things that are gonna shift and change that
Speaker:that is a little bit premature.
Speaker:However, even in 2022, I started to loosen up my viewpoint on where
Speaker:I could have a content marketer.
Speaker:I was more comfortable with having somebody that was not a native
Speaker:English speaker because ChatGPT could help resolve some of the issues
Speaker:that came along with that for me.
Speaker:It's gonna be going back and figuring out what are your processes?
Speaker:What are the SLAs between the teams?
Speaker:What's actually working?
Speaker:And doubling down on the process and the systems, and figuring out
Speaker:what actually can be automated and what makes sense to be automated.
Speaker:There are many things that should not be automated.
Speaker:We're going into a world where product marketing is becoming even
Speaker:more impactful because that is the strategy and a lot of the secret sauce
Speaker:behind where the company is going.
Speaker:Same with brand.
Speaker:We can't have everybody out there looking the same and talking the same.
Speaker:What are those really special moments that happen for the
Speaker:brand that make it memorable?
Speaker:As long as we're still selling to people, there's a big part of that human
Speaker:element that needs to come through.
Speaker:So, field marketing, events, those personal touchpoints.
Speaker:What do those look like and how do we really lean into those a little bit more?
Speaker:Understanding that there are some more of the data and operationally suited
Speaker:functions that we might have more of a person that is more of a prompt engineer,
Speaker:and I don't even know if that's gonna be the right way to go about it either
Speaker:because things are moving so quickly.
Speaker:But, you know, a resource allocation manager.
Speaker:It seems like a lot of companies that I'm working with lately are saying
Speaker:our differentiator is going to be knowing our audience very, very well.
Speaker:So there are a lot of vertical specific tech where they say,
Speaker:look, we know this semantic domain.
Speaker:We know this audience.
Speaker:We can describe the problem that our customers are having
Speaker:better than anybody else.
Speaker:And maybe that's obvious, but I think that is another way of
Speaker:saying what you're talking about.
Speaker:That vertical expertise is incredibly important.
Speaker:It's funny, I've had conversations with my content marketers, and
Speaker:they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, AI doesn't produce great copy."
Speaker:I'm like, "Okay, it doesn't if you're not giving it the right prompts, if
Speaker:you yourself don't understand the audience, and if you're not, figuring
Speaker:out how to connect with another human."
Speaker:We should be able to document enough of it, and AI is smart enough that,
Speaker:at this point, we can get away with automating quite a bit of the content.
Speaker:Not saying we should automate all of it, but I think it's far enough
Speaker:along that that prompt and that understanding, that context layer
Speaker:really becomes more important.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Since you've been talking to all these different people, this is maybe
Speaker:a little touchy subject, but what's one thing that CMOs want recruiters
Speaker:to know or to do differently?
Speaker:I think understanding the deeper layers of our own context.
Speaker:We're talking a lot about what that means from an AI perspective, and I've
Speaker:been at it for more than twenty years.
Speaker:My experience is pretty broad.
Speaker:I am playing that fine line.
Speaker:I've done a couple of VC-backed firms.
Speaker:I've done a couple of PE firms, and it's hard to distill that twenty
Speaker:years of experience into one sheet of paper or onto my LinkedIn page.
Speaker:So where I might not seem like a slam dunk fit, I think that taking a look at
Speaker:what skills are needed and what mindset is needed and what sort of person is
Speaker:gonna fit in culturally are really important and make a lot of difference.
Speaker:A lot of recruiters do that well.
Speaker:But some recruiters are really looking to check the box and making sure that they
Speaker:have somebody that fits exactly within the confines, and they're missing out on
Speaker:a lot of wonderful talent by doing that.
Speaker:You know, you remind me of something I've said before, which is when talking
Speaker:about your experience, what the recruiter and the company wanna hear is everything
Speaker:that's relevant for them and nothing else.
Speaker:It's like my dad used to say, you know, Italian cooking, what you leave out is
Speaker:just as important as what you put in.
Speaker:And that's harder if you have a varied background, some VC, some
Speaker:PE, some this industry, that industry, this ICP, that ICP.
Speaker:I do think going forward we have to change the conversation and not just be
Speaker:looking backwards at what somebody has done but forwards at what they can do.
Speaker:That's where those curiosity and adaptability skills are coming into play.
Speaker:Two questions more for you.
Speaker:The next one is prognosticate for us- I love chatting with you because
Speaker:I think you're able to think ahead.
Speaker:The world is so uncertain right now.
Speaker:What do you anticipate for CMO careers and leadership in the next year or so?
Speaker:Any thoughts?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:CMOs are becoming more and more technology-focused.
Speaker:We're becoming much more operationally savvy.
Speaker:We are going to be the protectors of brand and differentiation.
Speaker:I think that a lot of what we're gonna be able to do is ride that mix of analytics,
Speaker:data operations, and the special sauce that we all really love and I think that
Speaker:a lot of us really got into marketing to do, which is connect with people and
Speaker:use our judgment to make some more of those human decisions about branding,
Speaker:positioning, communication, and helping our companies and the people that work
Speaker:with them build trust with the prospects that we're looking to work with.
Speaker:Yeah, the speed of trust is something I think about a lot.
Speaker:Not only working with marketers and how they do that, but also I'm
Speaker:thinking on the recruiting side.
Speaker:Part of how companies and talent come together is that they start trusting
Speaker:each other, and this is why sometimes if you've worked with somebody
Speaker:before, they know you from before, they know people you've worked with,
Speaker:that speed of trust happens faster.
Speaker:It's interesting how the hiring process and marketing funnels work so similarly.
Speaker:They're so aligned, and it goes back to the earlier point about
Speaker:what is that common touchpoint?
Speaker:In marketing we would call it an automated nurture or the automated drip.
Speaker:And so how many frequent touchpoints are you able to make in order to,
Speaker:like, "Hey, I thought of you," and send something quick over on LinkedIn.
Speaker:It's just to share knowledge and be useful and actually build those relationships.
Speaker:It's so true.
Speaker:Final question for you.
Speaker:I ask everybody this.
Speaker:What is your favorite interview question when evaluating somebody for your team?
Speaker:Something that you have found revealing?
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:It's twofold.
Speaker:I ask people what their three superpowers are, and then I very quickly follow it
Speaker:up with what are the three opportunities for their professional growth?
Speaker:What's fascinating is anybody can give you one, but it's hard to get to
Speaker:three, and to see what they do in that uncomfortable moment is fascinating.
Speaker:The superpower one is a little bit easier, and it gets them used to thinking with me.
Speaker:Then when it comes to the opportunities to professionally improve, that's where you
Speaker:get some really great insight to see how self-aware they are, to see how willing
Speaker:they are to share with you, or to see if they're gonna give you a line of BS, or if
Speaker:they get absolutely stuck and what they do when that silence becomes uncomfortable,
Speaker:how well they think on their feet.
Speaker:So that's one of the ones that I've had a lot of luck with.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:It's simple but it's interesting why you ask it and how you're
Speaker:looking for them to be revealing.
Speaker:Do you remember any particularly interesting ways that people
Speaker:handled the improvement category?
Speaker:Oh, this is where people lose it.
Speaker:There was one lady that I was interviewing and she, I forget exactly what it
Speaker:was, but she admitted that she did not do well on a date because she was so
Speaker:fixated on this particular type of food.
Speaker:So it was so random and out of context that showed a lack of
Speaker:self-awareness in that context.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm like, "Okay, thank you."
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:After she said it, she recognized, she says, "I probably just lost the interview
Speaker:on that question." [Erica laughs]
Speaker:What did you say?
Speaker:I'm like, "It was honest, and I have all the appreciation in the world for it."
Speaker:Oh, well done.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I don't think I would've been able to come up with something that appropriate
Speaker:and also noncommittal at the same time.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:Was there anything else you wanted to share that I haven't asked you about
Speaker:that you think is relevant to the topics that we are discussing today?
Speaker:I think that it would be great for you to share with us what guidance you're
Speaker:giving CMOs when it comes to how to answer the AI questions, and how do
Speaker:we position ourselves better for you, knowing that there's the past and then
Speaker:there's what we can do in the future?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well another podcast that is coming out this season is with Joe
Speaker:Sawyer who's a CMO at Flashpoint.
Speaker:I don't know if you know him, but he talked to me about how CMOs should talk
Speaker:with the board about their AI initiatives.
Speaker:He has this whole thing about don't just show up and talk about I hired
Speaker:this consultant, or I talked with, or I'm trying this tool or that tool.
Speaker:But really focus on what the board cares about which is
Speaker:enterprise value and focus on ROI.
Speaker:Narrow down to the use cases that are gonna help move the needle
Speaker:and talk about the ROI from them.
Speaker:Also talk about what the goal is cause for some companies the goal is replacement.
Speaker:Oh, we wanna spend a lot less and just be radically efficient and have a tiny team.
Speaker:For some companies, it's the people plus the AI.
Speaker:We want an elevation.
Speaker:So that has informed my view a lot lately.
Speaker:I feel like I'm punting and saying, listen to Joe, but that is helpful.
Speaker:I also, experientially, when I talk with people and they talk more
Speaker:theoretically that's not as helpful as being very tangible, as the "Let
Speaker:me show my screen," "let me share with you this." "Here's a dashboard and
Speaker:this is how it's updated regularly with AI." Here's kind of the from to.
Speaker:I always talk about like the from to.
Speaker:Then in terms of positioning better, you're right, there's the
Speaker:looking back and looking forward.
Speaker:I posted on LinkedIn a while ago this framework that some of my
Speaker:clients have been asking for, which is not a resume but a quick these
Speaker:are the companies I worked for.
Speaker:This was the revenue when I got there, the revenue when I left.
Speaker:It was this go-to-market motion.
Speaker:This was the deal size.
Speaker:This was the deal cycle length, et cetera.
Speaker:These are the impacts I had.
Speaker:Very quickhitting, numerical.
Speaker:That can be very helpful because then somebody interviewing you can get the
Speaker:context of what you've done and it's just the meat that they're looking for.
Speaker:I know not everybody has a perfect story and that's more okay than you would think.
Speaker:Then that leaves time to think about looking forward.
Speaker:I also think when people bring to an interview some kind of show and tell
Speaker:or some kind of, oh, hey, this is how I learned about you, and this is
Speaker:how I might tackle the role, the show and tell can really be very helpful
Speaker:and it can speed that time to trust.
Speaker:Does that make sense so far?
Speaker:It does and I've experienced it, and thank you, because when we touched
Speaker:base a few months ago, you mentioned that from to, and I built out a
Speaker:dashboard and actually got a couple of different inputs from other recruiters.
Speaker:And so have a pretty nice look at my arc and the from to and why I
Speaker:started one job, why I left another.
Speaker:So that's been incredibly helpful.
Speaker:And then yes, to anyone out there who's looking, definitely
Speaker:have something to show.
Speaker:I've got a few things I can show.
Speaker:I've got my job search operating model.
Speaker:I've got something else that I've been working on.
Speaker:When people see the prolific systems that we're building on the bench, it's
Speaker:pretty cool, and it definitely levels up and gives a different perspective on our
Speaker:ability and the way we think about things.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I have heard recently a client say, oh, I like that this candidate
Speaker:was consulting in between roles because he probably saw a lot of different
Speaker:companies, and it was just him, so he had to use AI to get things done, so I'd
Speaker:imagine he'd be more up to speed than if somebody had been at a huge company.
Speaker:And I thought, wow, that's cool that he would have that perspective.
Speaker:Whether it's true or not is TBD, but in your case definitely it's true.
Speaker:I love hearing about your take on things, what you're doing,
Speaker:and your prodigious skills.
Speaker:Thank you so much for joining the pod today, Corey.
Speaker:This has been awesome.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I appreciate it.
Speaker:This has been fun.
Speaker:That was Corey McCarthy.
Speaker:Now that you've heard from her, think about how the playbook for your
Speaker:career management may change with AI.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to The Get.
Speaker:I'm your host, Erica Seidel.
Speaker:The Get is here to drive smart decisions around recruiting and
Speaker:leadership in B2B SaaS marketing.
Speaker:We explore the trends, tribulations, and triumphs of today's top
Speaker:marketing leaders in B2B SaaS.
Speaker:For more about The Get, visit TheGetPodcast.com.
Speaker:If you like The Get, please share it, and please leave a review.
Speaker:To learn more about my executive search practice, which focuses on recruiting the
Speaker:make-money marketing leaders rather than the make-it-pretty ones, follow me on
Speaker:LinkedIn or visit TheConnectiveGood.com.
Speaker:The Get is produced by Evo Terra and the team at Simpler Media Productions.
