Take a Quick Six with New CRO

Meet Adrian Ivanov: SaaS nerd, sales veteran, and the busiest man alive.

You wouldn’t guess it from his level of engagement, even from 9,099 km away, but Adrian Ivanov is always en route to the next thing. His phone, even out of sight of the webcam, is an orchestra of notifications and when you log into his Google calendar it looks like an oriental rug.

I steal a moment in his round-the-clock Zoom conference for a quick breakdown of his new role.

Adrian is already signed into the Zoom conference, finishing a meeting with the lead of Sales Development. As Chief Revenue Officer, Adrian is responsible for all revenue and customer-facing functions at SmartRecruiters including Sales, Service, Support and Customer Success. Prior to joining our company, Adrian was a founding executive team member at FinancialForce, where he led global sales and customer success, helping to grow annual recurring revenue from zero to beyond $100 million.

As an established executive, what can you tell us about your first job – how did little Adrian get his start?

When I was a kid I delivered a local newspaper. It was a pretty common first job back then but the idea of a paperboy is totally foreign to my children now. Payment for the paper was voluntary, so I quickly learned how good customer service translated to more money in my pocket.

Chief Revenue Officer, it’s a fancy title. Tell us what you actually do.

What I really do is make sure the customer has a cohesive journey with SmartRecruiters – A SmartRecruiters experience. There are many teams in a SaaS company who interact with the client, sales, customer support, product etc. my function is to make sure that whichever team a buyer works with, they feel like we’re one company.

Why SmartRecruiters?

It’is the right place for me for three reasons: the people, the culture, and the importance of our solution. As a sales leader, I appreciate the necessity of hiring strong talent and how hard it is to find those people. Without a great team, you have a very low probability of achieving great things. So I fundamentally believe in the importance of our value proposition and Jerome’s vision for the future of recruiting.

What makes a great hire?

I learn as much or more about a candidate through the questions they ask – or don’t ask – as I do from their responses to my questions. Curiosity means you can learn. I also want to see passion. Passion for what they’ve done and a genuine interest in the job for which they are applying. The last quality is the hardest to assess but is obviously critical to success and that is drive. I often joke that if I could teach “drive”, I’d be retired by now.

What’s your favorite feature of the SmartRecruiters Platform?

As a sales professional, I’m always thinking “pipeline”. The ability to view our pipeline of candidates for any of the current and future open roles within my organization, and to be able to do so via my mobile phone, is game-changing. Recruiting is a team sport and frankly, I’m not sure how I managed without SmartRecruiters.