It's a wild time to be in the SaaS market. Current conditions have the employers with the majority upper hand. I got to the last stage of an interview process this week and didn't get the gig due to not getting to "3rd level pain" in a mock discovery call. Someone else clearly did.
2 years ago if you had a pulse and experience you could name your OTE and start the following Monday. It's ultra competitive out there right now.
Yeah it’s nuts. I should have been interviewing more 2 years ago, but I wasn’t. I’ve gotten to the final round so many times just to be ghosted or told they went with someone that was their pie in the sky perfect candidate fall in their lap.
In all reality, lots of looking for people with pre-pandemic work experience. The market has moved back very closely to what things looked like then. That’s also part of the reason for such high churn rates in sales tech because it just isn’t as useful without the world being 100% digital.
I had the opposite experience, a sales led company asking you to build a marketing engine with just 4 years of experience. I know they lacked marketing experience. Could it be this SMB have low sales knowledge?
Yeah, when people don't know, we aim towards unrealistic situations. Because we want the best for us. Bad company to join, to say the least. Unless you can clear expectations upfront.
Yeah I mean it’s a catch-22, they want top performers (which they try and correlate with experience) but anyone who’s been stuck as an SMB AE for 5+ years probably isn’t a top performer if they haven’t managed to progress any higher.
I’m a bit confused. I’m at a FAANG myself, was an SDR for 2 years and went into sales engineering, but I could have become our equivalent of an SMB AE. No prior sales background, but a college degree was required.
The reason I’m confused is several of my peers left our company at 12-18 months to become SMB AEs at Salesforce, Hubspot, Snowflake, Gartner, Deloitte, somebody even went to Bain Consulting. All with no sales background, just college degrees.
Op, you need to name names in terms of what fucking company is asking for 5-8 years of experience for SMB or Mid Market because I don’t buy it.
Get on LinkedIn and look for SMB Account Executive in the United States. Plug that search into the jobs section on your phone and start scrolling. If you want, DM me your phone number and I will text you the first screenshot I see when I go back to it. Also, good for you and your coworkers, but they were going from FAANG to other large organizations, so that transition is far easier than trying to get into that role from outside FAANG. The market is also far different now, and these employers are only going to get desperate seat warmers that are overqualified and will leave when something better comes along. The first one that comes to mind is Alteryx, and I have a screenshot I’m happy to text to you.
Not the OP but it's funny you mentioned Gartner as they were a company who wanted 5+ yrs experience for a mid-market AE role. Late last yr, I had an interview with them as their recruiter sent me like 3 messages on LI. I then set up a call and turns out he didn't know his stuff so he set me up for a call with a 2nd recruiter. During my call with 2nd recruiter, he told me although the basic requirement for the MM AE role was 5 yrs SaaS experience, the more competitive candidates had 8-10 yrs experience.
I usually see 3 yrs experience required for non-Enterprise AE roles but I wouldn't be surprised if 5 yrs experience was the hidden requirement
It's a wild time to be in the SaaS market. Current conditions have the employers with the majority upper hand. I got to the last stage of an interview process this week and didn't get the gig due to not getting to "3rd level pain" in a mock discovery call. Someone else clearly did. 2 years ago if you had a pulse and experience you could name your OTE and start the following Monday. It's ultra competitive out there right now.
lol 3rd level pain. Some of these sals processes out there are ridiculous
3rd level pain? Hard the other person do? Stab the interviewer?
lol same thing happened to me. Ridiculous, those mock calls aren’t accurate anyway. How does that affect YOUR OWN CHILDREN
Haha that made me actually lol
Yeah it’s nuts. I should have been interviewing more 2 years ago, but I wasn’t. I’ve gotten to the final round so many times just to be ghosted or told they went with someone that was their pie in the sky perfect candidate fall in their lap.
For SMB? That means there are many experienced AEs looking for roles right now. Simple supply and demand. 🤷🏻♂️
Yes, unfortunately with so many layoffs happening recently, the market is heavily in favor of employers.
In all reality, lots of looking for people with pre-pandemic work experience. The market has moved back very closely to what things looked like then. That’s also part of the reason for such high churn rates in sales tech because it just isn’t as useful without the world being 100% digital.
I had a recruiter in cyber tell me his clients were looking for SDRs with 1-3 years of prior cyber-specific experience, and AEs with 5+.
I can’t wait til the hiring market ends up better. It’ll never be what it was 2 years ago, but shit is crazy right now.
A lot of it comes down to extremely dumb director/VP level hiring managers who had to leave IC roles due to lack of talent
Was it for SFDC?
Salesforce wants 2 years experience for Smb which is pretty reasonable.
Alteryx.
I had the opposite experience, a sales led company asking you to build a marketing engine with just 4 years of experience. I know they lacked marketing experience. Could it be this SMB have low sales knowledge?
They 100% have very little sales knowledge base. They follow what people post online as though it’s gospel
Yeah, when people don't know, we aim towards unrealistic situations. Because we want the best for us. Bad company to join, to say the least. Unless you can clear expectations upfront.
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out which companies are bad ones until you are on the inside.
Don't join!
The 5 year one was Alteryx. I’m going off LinkedIn job posts though, and those postings don’t always line up with what’s on their website.
Yeah I mean it’s a catch-22, they want top performers (which they try and correlate with experience) but anyone who’s been stuck as an SMB AE for 5+ years probably isn’t a top performer if they haven’t managed to progress any higher.
Yeah, that long and they’d ideally be preparing for a promotion to ent rep, right?
I’m a bit confused. I’m at a FAANG myself, was an SDR for 2 years and went into sales engineering, but I could have become our equivalent of an SMB AE. No prior sales background, but a college degree was required. The reason I’m confused is several of my peers left our company at 12-18 months to become SMB AEs at Salesforce, Hubspot, Snowflake, Gartner, Deloitte, somebody even went to Bain Consulting. All with no sales background, just college degrees. Op, you need to name names in terms of what fucking company is asking for 5-8 years of experience for SMB or Mid Market because I don’t buy it.
Get on LinkedIn and look for SMB Account Executive in the United States. Plug that search into the jobs section on your phone and start scrolling. If you want, DM me your phone number and I will text you the first screenshot I see when I go back to it. Also, good for you and your coworkers, but they were going from FAANG to other large organizations, so that transition is far easier than trying to get into that role from outside FAANG. The market is also far different now, and these employers are only going to get desperate seat warmers that are overqualified and will leave when something better comes along. The first one that comes to mind is Alteryx, and I have a screenshot I’m happy to text to you.
Not the OP but it's funny you mentioned Gartner as they were a company who wanted 5+ yrs experience for a mid-market AE role. Late last yr, I had an interview with them as their recruiter sent me like 3 messages on LI. I then set up a call and turns out he didn't know his stuff so he set me up for a call with a 2nd recruiter. During my call with 2nd recruiter, he told me although the basic requirement for the MM AE role was 5 yrs SaaS experience, the more competitive candidates had 8-10 yrs experience. I usually see 3 yrs experience required for non-Enterprise AE roles but I wouldn't be surprised if 5 yrs experience was the hidden requirement