Silicon Valley has experienced rapid growth over the past decade. But as profits have piled up, corporate strategy around culture, diversity, and talent—the lifeblood of any organization—has become an afterthought.
“We went from a culture of innovation to a culture of greed in Silicon Valley,” says Neha Sampat, CEO of Contentstack, a content management system (CMS) company.
Amid the Great Resignation and a shrinking workforce that has left companies struggling to find and retain employees, that lackadaisical approach to talent now seems to be changing. Contentstack’s co-founders, which include Sampat, her husband Nishant Patel and COO Matthew Baier, think they’ve found a solution to widening the tech talent pool: identifying people with transferable skills from outside of the industry.
Sampat points to herself as a case study. While most of her venture-backed peers came from the likes of Stanford University, MIT, and UC Berkeley, she graduated from the University of Denver with a double major in French and communications, followed by an MBA from Santa Clara University. Her professional career began in the public relations industry before she later pivoted to tech, working at VMWare and Sun Microsystems over the course of 10 years.
The trio founded the San Francisco-based Contentstack in 2018 after selling their software company built.io earlier that year. In 2019, Sampat moved to Austin and opened a second U.S. Office there.
The company has raised over $80 million in venture funding to date and its customers include Sephora, JPMorgan Chase, and Riot Games. Contentstack attributes much of its growth to its focus on non-traditional talent, who bring a wide array of perspectives. Recent hires include a banker-turned-sales enablement leader, a former teacher who’s now in an HR role, and an accounting major now holding an engineering position at the software company.
“We almost didn’t hire [the accounting student]” Sampat says. “He’s now one of our top engineers.”
Hiring for skill instead of name-brand laurels is on the rise, although limited. IBM was one of the first large tech companies to embrace a skills over degrees approach and companies like Apple and Google have removed degree requirements from some jobs. But even at tech companies that have made job requirements more inclusive, many still rely on familiar networks or “elite” colleges to source candidates.
“Everything, to me, comes back to two things: access and relatability,” Sampat says, arguing that narrow standards for incoming employees have blocked quality applicants. Expanding those benchmarks could address internal talent gaps, she says. “It’s not about having the most experienced people. It’s about having people who have the willingness to learn and are driven to build something exciting.”
A “come from anywhere” culture
Megan Fogelsanger was an elementary school teacher in Maryland when COVID-19 hit. In 2020, she was hired part-time to help develop training materials for Contentstack, eventually earning a full-time role as a training and curriculum specialist. Now in tech, a far cry from overseeing third-graders, the skills she cultivated as a teacher have proven to be transferable, she says, such as building curricula for training, and explaining intricate concepts in simple, straightforward terms.
Her role has also expanded into employee engagement. With the team fully remote due to the pandemic, Fogelsanger is tasked with connecting colleagues across geographies and business units.
“We learned that she has this really special knack for getting to know people and connecting people within the organization,” Sampat says, emphasizing the impact of this kind of work on employee morale during the pandemic. “You don’t hire somebody to do that from the tech world.”
Not many companies have a teacher in HR, an accountant in engineering, an astrophysicist as the COO, or a woman CEO. Contentstack has all of that, and diversity, the CEO says. Women represent 42% of U.S. And EMEA employees and people of color make up 25%.
“Hiring really is based on values and personality, rather than a fixed skill set that can be taught,” says Shauna Kozinski, Contentstack’s senior director of revenue enablement. “Motivation cannot [be taught], so finding motivated people and then inspiring them is really at the core of the recruiting process.”
Sampat’s talent strategy is a postscript of sorts to her hiring efforts in previous tech roles. At VMWare, she recalls having to “fight like hell” to hire someone without a college degree. That applicant wound up as one of her top performers, she recalls.
She hasn’t battled the same challenges to hiring unconventional talent at Contentstack, but says she “did have to fight with others to get them to change their mindset.”
“Forcing yourself out of that comfort zone and including people who look different or talk differently is an important part of growing,” Sampat says. ”And a lot of companies just don’t know to do that.”
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