How I conduct due diligence on companies as a candidate

When I was looking for a job this year, I decided to take the due diligence on the companies much more seriously.

In the past, I focused on short term factors like market conditions. My assessment was right and I made money from having the correct judgement.

However, looking back at my career overall, I realized I did not assess for quality of talent; competence of higher leadership and stage of company. This impacted long term growth potential.

The quality of the company you join can slow or accelerate your career.

Working for weak leadership or a slow growing company is like moving through the sea on a sampan, while others are taking motorboats.

You can row as hard as you want but your career will never progress at the same speed.

I am in my prime years. I cannot afford to waste time by working for weak leaders. It is not respecting myself. And, every minute spent in the wrong company or with the wrong leaders is a massive opportunity cost.

As everyone is different in terms of values, life stage and industry, this is not meant to be career advice but more of sharing a general idea of how I think and approach decisions

Here are 5 of my criteria and why I chose this job.

1. High growth company

High growth companies typically do not have many incompetent people. They tend to have a high bar for attitude and aptitude.

Furthermore in such an environment, there is a low tolerance for deadweight and little place for lazy people to hide.

Just like high finance and MBB attract many of the top talents, high growth SaaS companies also attract the best. This means you get to work with and learn from many smart people. As a result, your standards will be raised too.

As high growth companies come with several opportunities, every effort you put in, will multiply and compound. This translates into greater rewards for yourself and the company itself.

In contrast, in slow growing companies or declining ones in sunset sectors, you often get a lot of people who are in retirement mode; or perhaps just not as skilled.

In my experience, a lot of the work done tends to go into compensating for free riders. I learned this when I saw an incompetent elderly man who did not contribute to my results much at all get recognized on stage instead of me.

A bulk of his performance came from me. Without contribution, his revenue number will be absolute shit.

For publicly listed companies, you can find company metrics on their earnings reports. For privates, news is the main source.

2. Quality of Leadership

Due to bad experiences early in my career, my expectation of what makes a strong sales manager was not high over the past few years.

I just wanted someone who give us freedom; caring to the team and does his best to remove some obstacles.

Since I am a lot better now in terms of skills and market value, I feel that now I am in a good position to choose to work for superstars.

I want to look for someone I aspire to be like and who has a stellar track record in scaling SaaS companies.

The qualities I want include: Extremely driven; can provide actionable feedback; high EQ and willing to empower me to participate in company building.

I value this so much that I can even sacrifice a factor that was important to me for several years, freedom. This meant losing my status as a remote worker to coming into office three times per week.

One of the key indicators I looked at is tenure with progression. Excluding layoffs, any RVP/SVP with several < 2 years experience in a direct sales leadership role is a red flag. It signals weak internal politics skill, poor sales strategy and execution, or both.

I also focused a lot on their track record and mindset. This due diligence process involved stalking their LinkedIn to look for evidence of the above; sourcing for testimonials from people who worked with them and listening to podcasts of C-suite of the companies.

Besides raising my expectations, I also put more emphasis on the top 2 layers of leadership in an organization versus merely my direct manager.

I have learned that your first line sales manager may be good at his job and kind. However, he doesn’t have much power.

Therefore, it is more important to “super-structure” leadership in place to make sure that you are successful and they will pick the right first line manager for you.

3. High performance culture

Having worked for a couple of years, I find that I fit best in slightly more Westernized cultures with energetic vibrant people with progressive ways of thinking.