Case Study
Stellar Cyber
A custom approach for cyber security startups recruiting field engineers.
Overview
Stellar Cyber relies on technology professionals to develop, sell, and implement its industry leading network-based XDR platform. As the company expanded its US-based footprint, it encountered a familiar problem in the Cyber Security industry: the so-called skills gap.
About Stellar Cyber
Stellar Cyber is an A-round start-up with the industry’s leading
XDR platform. Since being established in 2015, Stellar has raised
~$22M in VC funding and is deployed in enterprise environments.
The Challenge
Stellar had a problem many of Pinpoint’s startup clients experience: it needed a Hybrid Field Engineer.
A Hybrid Field Engineer has the soft skills and customer facing experience of a Sales Engineer, while also maintaining hands-on deployment capabilities. Because companies tend to separate Pre-Sales and Post Sales into different organizations, the talent pool for Sales Engineers that can deploy products is limited.
Strategy
Based on the discovery call conducted by Pinpoint, a new recruitment strategy was designed to focus on two types of professional profiles:
Profile 1
Sales Engineer
With a career history of working at early stage startups, this person would have experience working as a hybrid resource as many early stage companies combine the role to start.
Profile 2
Senior Professional Services Engineers
Senior-level, Post-Sales professionals with hands-on network security deployment expertise could ramp up on Sales Engineering skills more quickly than the reverse.
Profile 1
Sales Engineer
With a career history of working at early stage startups, this person would have experience working as a hybrid resource as many early stage companies combine the role to start.
Profile 2
Senior Professional Services Engineers
Senior-level, Post-Sales professionals with hands-on network security deployment expertise could ramp up on Sales Engineering skills more quickly than the reverse.
Solution
Pinpoint presented the Custom Search FormTM to Stellar Cyber’s VP of Sales Engineering. By collaborating with clients on this process we are able to achieve three main objectives:
1. Effectively identify required skills. 2. Create a custom company value proposition for candidate consumption. 3. Identify the employment value proposition.
QUALIFYING QUESTIONS
TARGET COMPANIES
ASSESS BUDGET
INTERVIEW PROCESS
COMPANY INFORMATION
VALUE PROPOSITION
Results
With the completed Custom Search Form, Pinpoints’ recruiters qualified candidates and communicated Stellar Cyber’s value proposition with messaging created by Pinpoint and Stellar’s VP of Sales Engineering.
“Pinpoint really did their due-diligence on all of the candidates before introducing them to us. Every person they brought to us was a possible candidate. Mark, Managing Partner of Pinpoint, spent many hours understanding our needs and exactly what we were looking for in the candidate. As a result, they fulfilled all of our recs in a very efficient time period and were extremely professional to work with.”
– Snehal Contractor, VP
The Difference
Pinpoint understood the challenge and the needs of Stellar. Instead of recruiting off a job description and wasting time presenting traditional Sales Engineering candidates, Pinpoint knew what questions to ask based on experience filling similar searches for early-stage startup clients.
With Stellar’s VP fully entrenched as a partner in the creation of Pinpoint’s Custom Search Form, Pinpoint was positioned to conduct the search efficiently. In turn, a select number of qualified candidates were presented for interviews. This resulted in countless hours saved as the VP only interviewed relevant candidates. Relevancy is based on skills, budget, location, motivation for change, and a fit based on the candidate’s desired career progression.
The position was filled and both the new hire and VP are very pleased with the result.
