As next steps for finding a replacement for my business development role (announced in this thread), I’ve prepared the following job ad draft, which we’ll publish soon. I’d love to get your input, if you have any comments to share. Are we “selling” OpenCraft the right way? Is the tone okay? Anything you think should be changed, or is missing?
In an ideal world, we’d hire someone with both seniority in the bizdev field AND technical/dev skills, to better understand the solutions that we put forward. We probably won’t get lots of candidates that match both criteria, but @antoviaque suggested that we try by creating two versions of the ad, and do some good ol’ A/B testing:
One version for a more traditional BizDev specialist role, with technical knowledge as a “'nice to have”
A second version for a BizDev Engineer role, with technical knowledge as a firm requirement
@gabriel How would you describe your technical proficiency? How much do you feel it has impacted your role at OpenCraft?
I left a comment on the document on a potential alternate wording, which you could use in conjunction with the A/B testing if you like.
I think there might be more people who have at least played with code but do sales than you might expect. They’re liable to be “ADHD” sorts who are personable generalists. It’s definitely worth taking the time to wait a little bit longer if we can get someone who can better connect between the devs and the clients.
In the muggle world I’d be considered to have high digital proficiency, but my actual technical skills are very limited. I know the basics of HTML and Git, and I’m familiar with how IT infrastructures work. I can understand high-level technical stuff fairly quickly when required to do so. I have an extensive knowledge of the user-facing parts of the Open edX platform, having used it for a few years as an instructional designer even before I came to OpenCraft.
So, the combination of these two things (high-level familiarity with tech, and Open edX knowledge) have helped me tremendously in understanding the prospects requests and needs, and tailoring proposals that work for them. I’ve learned a ton about how a good open source project works and the dynamics of upstreaming vs. maintaining separate branches, etc.
Yep, great suggestion. Thanks to you and @farhaan for your suggestions
That’s good to hear And sure, I agree that bridging the gap between client and devs is of utmost importance, so we’ll take the time we need.
Technical knowledge is required even to do invoices and estimates, to operate JIRA or a CRM or to do documentation PRs, but I don’t think this role needs to know how to write code, it just needs a lot of knowledge about how software is built in large teams and projects.
And to give the outcome on this – I’m glad to announce that, after interviewing the candidates over the past few weeks, the person selected to take over @gabriel’s sales role is…
tadaaa… Fox!
As I told @Fox earlier, there were much more experienced salesperson applying, some of them seem very good, but we think that the fact that @Fox comes from the team’s technical perspective, and shows an appetite to learn and grow into the role, might produce the best results. It’s a bit unconventional, but it is also very much like us to take that path And @Fox will have two great mentors to lean on, in @gabriel and @douglas.
I expect I’ll be doing the occasional code and/or review task to make sure I don’t get too far from the code. Keeping up to date with the capabilities of systems and how the team is working will be essential to communicating with our clients in an effective manner.
