For the third episode of our Career Inspiration podcast, we are really excited to have Keith Pescosolido - Director of Recruiting at Drift - join us!

Founded by serial entrepreneurs David Cancel and Elias Torres back in 2014, Drift is the maker of the world's first and only conversational marketing and sales platform. The company recently closed $32M in Series B funding.

Pescosolido led engineering and product hiring at HubSpot, where they were scaling aggressively prior to going public. At Drift, he was the fifth employee at the company, which has now grown to over 80 people. 

In this episode we discuss:

• Pescosolido's background
• When entrepreneurs should bring in a recruiter
• How to build out the talent acquisition function from scratch at a startup
• Hiring engineers
• Pescosolido's secret weapon for building a top team
• How to get a job at Drift
• ...and lots more!

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing a 5-star review - it will definitely help us get the word out there!

Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz.  Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

Whether it is for people joining my own team or those joining our company, I have spent quite a bit of time contemplating senior hire onboarding.  I’ve noted one trend over time, which seems to be more significant as of late. It is this: the more senior the hire, the more they seem to want to bring their “playbook” to the table.  Here’s why that’s not such a great idea for either side....

Let’s start with why this pattern of behavior that, most likely, happens. We hire people with significant experience because they have proven themselves impactful in their former roles. We are excited by their great reputation, their years of experience, and the belief that they will be game changers at our companies. And yet, when they arrive and immediately try to hit the ground running with their former recipe for success, it doesn’t always meet our expectations.

Why? Because your company is different from every other company.

Let me offer this analogy. I am a mother. My daughters are now teenagers, and I have seventeen years of experience under my belt. While I am by no means a perfect mother, I seem to be doing it with some success. However, my girls are very different from one another. While there are some basic guidelines I can apply to both (moral code, boundary setting, etc.), my parenting style varies widely with each. In other words, there might be a basic blueprint to guide me along, but when it comes to my actual success building a strong relationship with each daughter, it’s vital that I adapt to meet their different needs. In short, just because they are both girls and they share a mother doesn’t mean my past success with one will work with the other.

Now, apply that same mentality to business. Not only is it arrogant to think that what has made you successful before can just be ‘plugged and played’ in a new role, one must consider the changing dynamics of business as well. In an age of rapidly changing technology transformation and disruption in just about every element of our world, nearly every business operates differently from even a few short years ago. With advancements in areas like big data, AI, and a highly networked world, we all likely feel the tension between endless possibilities and massive upheaval. So when we look at all those dynamics in the context of a new person joining the team, and they’re trying to make an impact quickly, how can both the company and new hire get off to a fantastic start with each other?

ACKNOWLEDGE A PERIOD OF TRANSITION

Company: You may have just hired a true superstar. Congrats! You are thrilled to have them hit the ground running and driving impact...and here’s where it’s critical to take a beat. Appreciate that it’s going to take a bit of time for them to adjust to your environment. Aid them in learning the basics before they try to add value. I don’t mean showing them where the supply closet and the snacks are kept; I’m referring to the important stuff.

Individual: Of course your inclination will be to make as much of an impact as quickly as possible. However, if you don’t set the expectation that it’s critical to learn how the company works, what it values, the stakeholders you’ll be engaging with, etc., before jumping in, you could really set yourself up to get off on the wrong foot.

INVEST IN GETTING TO KNOW PEOPLE

Company:  Before your new hire starts, take the time to identify the best possible people for them to meet during their first week or two. That means going way beyond ensuring them having a lunch buddy the first day, or introducing new team members in a team meeting. Start with their immediate colleagues to build a sense of collaboration and understanding. Then introduce to cross-functional partners and leaders in other teams who they’ll be working with. Investing the time to set up these meetings before the individual starts both allows you to have a pre-populated calendar for them to navigate their first week or two, and bypasses the need for them to spend their first days tracking people down.  

Individual: Your first few weeks are such a great opportunity to learn from as many people as possible. Don’t just check the box in terms of the “what do you do?” questions. Instead, ask deeper questions about how the teams partner together, or for a story about how they apply the company’s core values to enable their success. In essence, really work to get to know as many people as possible, and connect the dots about what approaches they share about what it means to add value and impact in the company. Super simple advice: be friendly to everyone, regardless of role. That receptionist or administrative assistant could seriously help you out at some point.

SHARE A MEAL

Company: Yes, welcome lunches are lovely, and a nice way to get your new hire to meet team members in a friendly atmosphere. Also realize it can be awkward for any new person to join a new team and break through with pre-existing friendships and relationships. Be the manager who actively invites this new person out to foster their inclusion whether it’s breaking bread over a meal, enjoying an after work drink, or doing the mid-morning coffee run together. It’s allowing these personal relationships to flourish that plays a big role in the team coming together and ensuring alignment.

Individual: Say yes when people ask you to join them. Perhaps you are a little shy or maybe you just feel like you need to buckle down and get to work, but push yourself. If you aren’t invited, take the initiative to invite people to connect for a meal, coffee, etc. Taking the time to build those relationships will go a long way in contributing to your ultimate success.

SET EXPECTATIONS

Company: It’s so important to set expectations about your new hires’ transition, goals, and priority areas. It’s one thing to discuss these things in an interview...it’s quite another when the person has actually started and is attempting to plot how to get off to a successful start. Take time not just to provide what needs to be achieved, but provide why and how aspects as well. Context setting and providing an overview of rules of successful engagement are vital.

Individual: Actively seek out and align with your manager and where you should initially be focused. In addition, this expectation setting becomes especially important if you are managing a team. For example, if you have sold yourself during the interview process that you believe in flexible working practices then don’t make people feel guilty about working that way. You will be setting the tone for your team from day one as to the vibe you want to create.   

This also includes having meetings with your team to ensure everyone understands what success looks like to you, what you expect them to achieve. This will also give you an opportunity to find out and share what success looks like to your new manager -- this is especially important during your first weeks and quarter. You can’t deliver effectively if you have not set the expectations for the team to support the overall delivery.

There are so many ways for an incredible new hire to get off to a right start...and equally as many ways to get off to a poor one. It takes both the new manager and hire to partner together to create a great experience and results quickly. Setting up for success means taking the time to truly understand the company and the individual before attempting to drive change or apply a playbook. Do this from the start and just watch the magic happen!

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.

Lynne Capozzi is the Chief Marketing Officer at Acquia. She has a strong background and history of running marketing teams for several high-growth tech companies. After spending some time in a leadership role at a non-profit, Capozzi rejoined Acquia last year to help lead the company’s next phase of growth.

I had the opportunity to connect with Capozzi shortly after Acquia held its annual flagship user conference, Engage. We chatted about her experience, marketing at Acquia, and how to build high-performing marketing teams.

Alex Culafi (AC): How was the conference?

Lynne Capozzi (LC): It was really great! We had over 700 people, and it sold out about two weeks in advance, so there was a really high level of interest. We had a great crowd of all different types, from CMOs, to CIOs, to VPs of marketing, to Chief Digital Officers, so we had a good cross-mix as well as our partner community.

More than that, the energy level was super high. It was a great opportunity for us to have a little celebration of our 10-year anniversary, as well as to kick off our future endeavors. And I ran two panels, which were quite fun too.

AC: Switching gears, could you tell us a bit about your background, and you journey to become the CMO of Acquia?

LC: I grew up at Lotus. I started out in marketing and sales roles before working my way up into a VP of Marketing position. Then, I ran a product division of Lotus Notes for my last position there. We were acquired by IBM, and I stayed two more years.

I decided at that point I wanted to experience the startup world, so I moved to a couple of different startup companies. One was JackBe, an enterprise mashup company that was based out of Washington D.C. I was CMO, and after I left, the company was acquired by Software AG. Prior to JackBe, I was the CMO and COO at Systinet. I worked for Tom Erickson, who as you probably know is our current CEO at Acquia. Systinet was eventually acquired by Mercury Interactive, and within 60 to 90 days, Mercury was acquired by HP.

I stayed for a bit at HP, and then I decided I wanted to go back to the startup world again. So I went to Acquia. Tom had given me a call, and obviously I'd worked with Tom at Systinet, so I started as a consultant in 2009 at Acquia, and then fell in love with the company. I joined full-time, and then became CMO, where I was for a few years.

My husband is an entrepreneurial CEO in Boston, and we eventually decided that two startups was a little tough on the family, so I left to help run a nonprofit based out of Boston Children’s Hospital. I did that for a few years, and then just about this time last year, Tom Erickson gave me a call and invited me out to lunch. I came back to Acquia and took over the CMO role, so as I like to say, I fell in love with Acquia all over again.

AC: If you had to narrow it down, what is the point of a marketing team?

LC: I think that the place of a marketing team is to work hand-in-hand with sales to acquire customers. I think the other big part of a marketing function is to decide who we are as a company, what we do, and what our go-to-market strategy is.

AC: How do you measure that?

LC: We do a lot of measurements here actually – we love data. Unlike some other companies, we have pretty clear objectives and a pretty clear ROI on what we're doing. Anything we can measure in marketing, we do. All of our programs are measured on particular targets that we set ahead of time, as well as how we do against those targets. So if it's, for instance, a demand gen program, we measure based on the number of marketing-qualified leads that we generate. If it's a program to acquire customers, our objectives are based on a particular quantity of customers to acquire. It's a combination of art and science.

AC: You talk about the “art” of marketing. What does that mean?

LC: I think that's the creative side. It is definitely about being on the forefront to make sure that we are creative, modern, social, and that we are talking our customer’s language. We do not market the same way to an IT director that we would to a marketing director.

AC: In 2009, when you joined, what was the size of Acquia, and what did the team look like back then?

LC: I think we had about 100 people in the company, and it must have been a handful of marketers. I think I used to supplement with some contractors, but I'd say it was a handful.

AC: Fast-forward to today – how many employees are there at Acquia and on your marketing team?

LC: We are at 800 employees, and my global marketing team is over 30.

AC: What does your marketing stack look like?

LC: I actually just counted it because I was doing a presentation for marketers recently. 27 different products, if you can believe it.

We use Salesforce and Marketo. We are also now using Acquia DAM, which is a digital asset management product that we just came out with. Our team has been using that product, and before we rolled out the product, it had been used internally here at Acquia. It's a cool new offering for us because it's our first non-Drupal offering to the market. Obviously, we use Drupal for our content management system, and we also use another product called Acquia Journey, which is a journey-mapping product. It’s a nice combination for us.

AC: What do you consider to be the anchors of your marketing strategy?

LC: I think that a main anchor for us is multichannel data, because there are so many different sources of data coming from so many different places. In additin, we focus a lot on content, and I think for us, and for me also, it's about looking at a coordinated effort so that we can control our brand’s image.

AC: If you were talking to someone with an idea, like a founder starting to build a company, at what point should they think to bring marketing into the company?

LC: At the beginning of the founding of the company! For me, marketing is about defining who the company is, who you sell to, what you are, and what you are not. The more specific you can get, the faster the ramp-up period will be. If you don't do that from the beginning, I think that's a mistake.

AC: At what point does a company need a true CMO?

LC: I think it's probably at a point where the company's growth is in a place where you need to think about other areas of the business, like maybe other markets or new segments. I think the decision about when to bring in a CMO is very equivalent to other C-level positions.

AC: How do you recruit for your team? How do you go about evaluating talent in marketing?

LC: A lot of it is what I hear through word-of-mouth from people, and from our current employees recommending other people. In addition to that, we are a very social company, and being able to communicate socially brings us a lot of candidates.

We are known for our interviewing process, which is pretty rigorous. I have candidates meet with a lot of people, because part of what I need to do in building my team is to make sure that people are working together as a team, which includes the interview process. And we get a lot of people involved. It's a triangle between marketing, product, and sales, and it's an important triangle, especially for a senior-level position. I recently hired a VP of Digital Marketing, and he interviewed with our Chief Product Officer as well as our Chief Revenue Officer.

AC: We started the conversation talking about Engage. I've noticed that other companies are starting their own industry conferences in Boston, which I think is good for the city. When should a company start to think about hosting their own conference, and what should they realistically expect to get out of it?

LC:  For us, it's certainly thought leadership. It's also a way for us to keep our existing customers in the fold, so that they know what's going on and what it looks like on the horizon. It's also good for our newly-acquired customers, because it's a good chance for them to come to the event and get a lot of current and future information, all at once.

Alexander Culafi is a Staff Writer for VentureFizz. You can follow him on Twitter @culafia. ​

Photos by Samara Vise.

As an employer, the digital age has put a spotlight on your organization that anyone can contribute to. Your digital presence can dictate your reputation, for better or for worse. As more candidates use these channels to research places to work, how you’re narrating your employer story impacts your chances of getting quality people applying to open jobs. Not to mention, how you’re perceived affects your current employees and retention numbers. So, how can you tell your story in a meaningful and authentic way?

Giving your employees a voice is important now more than ever. People want to hear from other people rather than a bunch of marketing fluff. Having company-led marketing materials to showcase your culture, jobs, teams, and so on is helpful but employee spotlights can make a significant difference in converting a candidate from passively interested to an engaged applicant. These unique perspectives add a new dimension to your overall employer story.

There are plenty of ways to give your employees a voice. Here are some options for spotlighting your people:

Blogs

This is an easy to way to create shareable and insightful content. You can write a blog post by setting up a Q&A session with an employee and building a blog from that. Or, if an employee feels strongly about writing it themselves, you can help them define a topic and key points and have them write away. At Carbon Black, this is one of the top career site referral sources we see and one of the most clicked things in our paid social campaigns.

Videos

If you have a social bunch and/or are skilled at light video editing, you can use this as an opportunity to create employee-generated videos. Or, if you have a little bit in your budget, use a professional vendor to create videos that focus on specific individuals or teams. Most production companies will have the option to break down videos into shorter snippets, so if you’re doing interview-style in your videos, you could develop the videos into specific topics that can be used for advertising.

Podcasts

Some people may not feel crazy about reading or may prefer to listen to something on their commute. A podcast could be a great option to share your employee stories. Write up some questions and share with the people you’re interviewing so they’re properly prepared for a good podcast session. You can also transcribe this conversation into blog-format down the line.

Social Media

Don’t have time to invest in a blog or video? A simple social media post could be the way to go. All you need to do is snap a photo of an employee and get a statement from them. Or if you want to go a different route, you could consider doing social media takeovers. Companies like Dell have seen some great success with this.

Events

You don’t have to limit spotlights to digital. There are other ways to showcase your employees and give them a voice. For example, having an internal “Lunch & Learn,” sponsoring an external event where your employees can be speakers, and supporting them if they want to do low-key speaking engagements such as a Meetup. Not only are you giving your employee a chance to tell their story, but it also allows them to engage the audience, answer questions, and help shed more light on the conversation.

Collateral

Testimonials can be great to use on your printed collateral, especially if you’re going to events, career fairs, or do campus recruiting. Create a few brochures about your company and culture and include your employee testimonials. Some companies also leverage these testimonials on their career pages.

Intranet

Keeping your own employees engaged and connected is just as important as bringing in new hires. If your company has an Intranet or some other way to communicate company-wide, use this as a way to share employee spotlights, too. It could be an awesome way to recognize your employees and help them get to know each other better. At Carbon Black, we have many employees who are remote throughout the world. Sharing our employee spotlight blogs on our Intranet has been a wonderful way to connect one another and bond.

Now that you know what you can do to for employee spotlights, you have to consider where to start. To build a list of employees you can contact, reach out to your human resources department to discover tenured employees, employee success stories, and employees who have moved up in the organization. These could provide helpful insights from people who have done well in the company.

Additionally, talk to hiring managers or team members to discover unsung heroes or people who are involved in the nitty-gritty. These could provide impactful and unique stories that HR may not be privy to. Lastly, you can post something on the Intranet welcoming your employees to share their stories with you.

Employee spotlights are a fast and easy way for you to create authentic content to share with your networks. And one you can get started with today!

Ashley Perez is the Talent Brand Ambassador at Carbon Black. Follow her on Twitter: @ashlaurenperez

Image courtesy of Unsplash user Alexander Dummer

For our second episode, we are really excited to have Chris McMahon - VP of People & Culture at Turbonomic - join us!

Chris and I go way back, as we actually cut our teeth in the recruiting profession at the same staffing firm many years ago. Since then, he's led the talent & HR functions at some of Boston's largest and fastest growing companies, like Turbonomic, Vistaprint, Endeca, and others. 

In this episode we discuss:

• Chris' background
• Turbonomic's hiring process
• Overcoming recruitment challenges
• The importance of a follow-up email
• ...and lots more!

You can listen to the podcast in the player below. To make sure you receive future episodes, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, or Soundcloud. If you enjoyed our show, please consider writing a 5-star review - it will definitely help us get the word out there!

Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz.  Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.

Wow, it’s November 9 already, and I still have all my National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) decorations up! I really need to take care of those. But, before I go and take down all my 2FA authentication token lawn decorations, I figured it’d be a good time to chat it up with “Olivia” and see how her NCSAM crash diet went.

For those who haven’t been following along, “Olivia” has been testing all the security advice that is commonly espoused, regardless if it’s followed or not. She has covered everything from Maintenance to Social Sharing & Travel to Privacy & Backups to IoT right here on VentureFizz to get a better idea of security best practices, common threats in the wild, and what needs to be done to protect the everyday person.

So, to wrap things up, I sat down with “Olivia” to get her thoughts on the process and hear some of her key takeaways.

Tod: So, what’s the one task you performed that benefited you the most?

Olivia: I’d say that pretty much all of Part One was laying the groundwork for the rest of the diets. The topics and tasks covered in there are the building blocks of pretty much everything in the following weeks—Wi-Fi awareness, passwords, updates, and backups. For example, it’s hard to talk about travel security without first talking about password maintenance.

That said, going through the backup and restore of my iPhone was 1000% the thing I dreaded the most, put off for three weeks, and (begrudgingly) the thing that I got the most value from. I used to be a security savvy person’s literal nightmare with my backup hygiene—triple digit days since my last backup, just living on a wing and a prayer. Luckily, I came to my senses, and now that I’ve actually gone through a backup and restore process, I feel much better about things. I now agree that this intimidating step is important for security AND for anticipating non-security disasters, like when phone-meets-water-and-rice just isn’t enough to revive it—but also to know the extent of information, settings, and passwords that your back-ups cover.

Tod: Aside from the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of testing your backups, what was the worst part of the month for you?

Olivia: Cleansing my email was/is a pretty massive chore: I still haven’t finished pruning down all of my email subscriptions, let alone dealing with deleting old emails. Not exaggerating, there are thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS in there. Getting a handle on those mailing lists is a big, dull task—but I guess it’s more like a real diet in that you’ve gotta chip away at it in realistic portions. Slow and steady?

Tod: What did you learn that was particularly surprising or enlightening?

Olivia: I got a lot of out the app privacy management in Part Three permissions management; it’s kind of fun and borderline creepy to know what apps have access to my microphone, location, and photos. I’d definitely recommend just touring through all the permissions that your phone manages, even if you don’t change anything because some of the apps that had access to things they didn’t really need were surprising. Also, I never really considered the implications of the difference between camera access and photo access, and I learned that photo access is also kinda, sorta location access.

As far as surprising, I was taken aback in Part Four by the lack of security information that’s readily available when it comes to IoT security. It seems weird that a device’s features page and marketing would brag about how there are seven microphones and that it’s listening all the time… but not a word about what happens with all that data – is it stored on the device (and for how long), is it copied out of the cloud, is the storage secure, is the transmission secure, who gets access to all that info about me… all that. I had pretty low expectations going into it but was shocked at just how bad it was.

Tod: Yeah, you pretty much have to be a superhero to figure out just what most IoT is actually up to under the hood. Pretty crazy.

Olivia: Speaking of “under the hood,” I’m still pretty proud of my own tech savviness when it came to inspecting my Wi-Fi router settings in Part One. I’m pretty psyched at how easy that was, and it’s well within reason for the average person to do. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s a fun party trick… but my roommates were pretty impressed.

Tod: Nice! So, after this whole experience, what’s the one thing you would recommend to your friends and family to up their security game?

Olivia: Hmm… I’d say after putting these diets through their paces, there’s definitely a reason that password maintenance and NOT REPEATING PASSWORDS is at the top of most security tip lists. I mentioned how all the maintenance steps are interconnected earlier, so if you think of how one password/login leads to another, that’s the way that an attacker could move around collecting your info given the chance. And no, using the same bad password for only the “unimportant” accounts doesn’t fly – every account has a surprising amount of info, and if it leads to another, and another, that adds up quickly and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes important.

Tod: Welcome to your new life as the designated holiday-time troubleshooter. :)

When I was just starting out, it was suggested to me that I go seek out mentors to aid in my career development. At the time, that ultimately meant if I could attach myself to senior people in my field, they could potentially dispense wisdom and guidance that I could hopefully benefit from.

Candidly, that approach didn’t work for me. In most cases, it felt forced, as if neither side was fully bought in. As a result, I took a different approach.

There are some elements of mentoring which are truly important and valid. Finding the right person - or combination of people - can help enhance perspective, develop skills, and strengthen engagement and productivity. Who doesn’t want that? The challenge is finding those people and matching in an authentic, impactful way.

If you are fortunate enough to identify people you respect and feel you could learn from who are willing to generously invest their time in you, wonderful. Proceed carefully though. On the surface, it might seem like a fantastic match. However, not every mentor, regardless of their willingness to help, is cut out to mentor others. And not every recipient, no matter how eager and open-minded, can receive information in that mentor’s particular way.  

Looking to pursue a meaningful mentor relationship? Read on for some simple guidelines to consider.

UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WANT A MENTOR

Many of us intellectually understand we could benefit from someone in our lives with experience, connections, and the willingness to coach and guide us. Maybe they can help us navigate pitfalls, introduce us to influential people, and inspire and encourage us along the way. Seriously, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to develop a relationship with someone who might potentially guide your career in a positive direction? And if that’s the case, why doesn’t everyone have one?  Often, people will seek out that magical person they think will be “that person” for them, and approach them with an earnest “Will you mentor me?” request.  Keep reading for a potentially better approach to get you what you are searching for.  

FOCUS ON THE RELATIONSHIP, NOT FORMALIZATION  

Step into the mentor’s shoes. If someone you don’t really know well or have a relationship with says something as intimate as “Will you mentor me?” how would you feel? Likely, slightly awkward.  There are so many unknowns… Why do I want to invest in this person? How much time? How frequently do you connect? Instead, focus on finding people you can nurture organic relationships with, regardless of title, structure or specific parameters. If you begin to build a network of wise people you can learn from, you are far more likely to gain access to a broad range of perspectives and benefit rather than hitching your wagon to one formal relationship.   

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN IDENTIFYING PEOPLE  

Don’t just shine your focus on that incredible CXO or high powered person you aspire to be someday. Think broader, and more diverse. Personally, I’ve found tremendous value investing in relationships with wide range people at all career levels, in varying functions.  I have something to learn from all of them. And when I reach out to ask that diverse group of people with the same question, I find if I can connect the dots in terms of themes I hear, I’m probably headed down the right path. Also valuable can be investing in fostering relationships with peer groups. By doing so, I’ve created the potential for people who understand my world, who have each other’s backs, are working through similar challenges, etc. In other words, cast a wide net to target people who meet a variety of your needs, and then invest the time to nurture those relationships with those who show mutual interest. For a deeper understanding of what I’m talking about here, check out this “diversity of mindset” post.    

...AND WHAT DO DO WHEN YOU FIND THEM.

Let’s start with the premise that anyone you feel like you might truly gain value from is likely fairly busy. Whether someone is introducing you, or you are reaching out cold, be respectful of what you are asking for. Attempt to find common ground, whether it’s referring to something they posted on social media or sharing why you believe there is an insight to be gained from a conversation with them and how you will apply it. In other words, people’s time is valuable.  If they invest time with a stranger, don’t abuse it by asking for a committed relationship before you’ve had a first date. If you are fortunate enough to get the person to sit down for a cup of coffee with you, be prepared with questions, perhaps a real life situation you are seeking guidance on, etc. Thank the person for their time, and ask if there is anything you can do to repay the favor. And cast a wide net; some of these relationships might flourish organically, while some may completely fizzle.

Building relationships with people you can grow and learn from are one of the best investments we can make in our careers. If you don’t know where to get started, ask your boss about her approach, or perhaps if they have suggestions for people she might introduce you too. In short, there is something to learn from nearly everyone. Just set your sights on a wide variety of people, invest the time and energy in those relationships, and be prepared to give as much as you take.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.