Ep.19- From Sales Engineer to VP: How to Builds Teams People Actually Want to Come Back To w/ Tamir Verthim

There we go. Hello, hello. You can still hear me, right, Tamir? Yeah, I can still hear me.

Yes. Well, welcome back, everybody, to presales unplug the leadership playbook. I'm Arvikarkanji. I'm the founder of Elite Talent, and I work with staff companies to help them hire pre-sales and post-sales talent.

But today, as you may know, it's not about me. This show is really about the leaders that are right here behind us working every single day, building these awesome teams and strategies that specifically work in today's market, as we know everything's changing so fast now. And if it's your first time joining us, one quick note before we jump in these conversations are completely live and intentionally unedited. So what you hear here today is exactly how it happened and real.

We stream it live, and then you can also catch our replay on our podcast around Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever your favorite platform is. And of course, if you do get value from this conversation, make sure to follow, subscribe, leave us your review, comment on LinkedIn. I personally read every single one of them. And if you have any specific questions about the guest that I can necessarily answer, I'll make sure to tag them afterwards as well so they can get that answer to you.

But with that being said, today I'm so excited to be joined by Tamir. He is the VP of customer experience at Apono. And honestly, somebody with a very strong rack record in the space, especially in pre-sales. And I'm so excited to hear his story, uh, pick his brain, of course, and just kind of dive into the topic today because he has so much value to give.

And um honestly, I would make sure that your notes uh you have like a notebook in front of you and taking some notes with a pen or kick in your note takers, whatever it's easier nowadays. But Tamir, thank you so much for joining me today. Of course. It's my pleasure.

Yeah, yeah. And obviously you've been with Opona for some time, but I would love to understand and if we can share with the get with everybody listening your career path a little bit. You know, where did you get started? How did you even end up in pre-sales?

You know, how did sales engineering even came about? And just what led you to where you are today? Okay, so it started in 2013 in HP. Um, I was a customer-facing RMV, it's actually being a pre-sale and a post sale and the same channel.

And from there I went to White Source. Today it's Mendaio. There I started as a sales engineer and became the mere team leaders, and from there I went into head of a pre-sales global. And I went, I moved to uh CyberMDX.

When I joined there, there were like already uh, you know, like 50 people, and uh I started the head of uh a senior director of uh sales engineering, and now I'm at Afono. Yeah from the start starting point of the startup, very exciting joining in here in Accono. Um I'm the DP of Customer Experience leading uh three different departments. Uh one is sales engineering, the other one is customer success ventures and supports.

Yeah, I mean we both know startups at least we'll we'll never let you get bored. There's always something happening that you're constantly, you know, jumping in, solving some fires or putting them out, you know, all that fun stuff. How did you even like is is sales engineering very common in like within your guys' country? And I know you're in Israel, or is it just something that you discovered like once you start within the software like journey?

No, sales engineering is very popular in Israel, you know. Well we have a lot of uh technical people uh combined that with uh with uh people that are purple, it's a very unique uh finding, right? Yeah. When you have that two capabilities, it's uh it's amazing.

That's awesome. Yeah, I guess it's not as common here in the US. I mean, once you're in the world of like SaaS and sales engineering, you feel like everybody is one. But I will say, I mean, even when I first joined the space, it was not a very common thing.

And you don't really know what a sales engineer does unless you were one or you kind of went within that space. So maybe we did copy you guys and you know, kind of started it over here. Um I wanted to ask, so obviously, right now you're the VP of customer experience at Apono, and you guys are really working within the zero standing uh privilege space and really kind of disrupting the market. Obviously, I know we work together.

Give us a quick like elevator spitch on Apono. Like, what problems are you guys solving right now? Why does that matter? So Apono gives employees and AI agents uh secure temporary access to system and data, right, without permanent permissions.

Instead of manual uh ticketing, standard access, Apono automates self-serve, just in time access across cloud data, databases, Kubernetes, SaaS application, and AI environments. As the cloud infrastructure and I agent rapid growth, right? Apollo is basically help companies to stay secure while moving fast. Love that.

And I I oh go ahead. No, this isn't a national, that's it. I got you. I was gonna say, and that's just so important nowadays with first of all, all the AI and the fraud and all that happening.

And of course, you know, you want to help and automate things and speed things because everything's moving so fast that everybody you know is trying to catch up. So that's pretty awesome. And I wanted to ask, I know we touched this a little bit lightly on top there, but obviously you started in pre-sales and then you've also moved into customer experience. How much does the ST background kind of shape how you run post-sales?

And do you think like customer experience leaders, more of them should come from a pre-sales background? Um, my my sales engineering background basically helped me with combine technical depth with the business growth mindset, right? Driving customer success, expansion, and product and productive engagement across the organization. I strongly believe in the interproactive must win, right?

So leadership mindset creates a culture of ownership and collaboration and shared success. But the the mindset of a sales engineer is to win, always win. Nothing is optional, right? Everything is go directly to winning.

And you know, in in siloed organizations, let's take support for an example, right? They are reactive, right? Ticket comes in, issues get fixed, and the cycle repeats itself. When support basically and customer success integrating with sales engineering, it becomes a proactive mindset as we write identifying trends, improving customer journey, renting issue before they happen.

The mindset of CSM with a sales engineering way, the only thing we think about is expansions and um and basically apps are not only only not to churn the customer. Yeah, yeah. I will say that I mean, I I think the customer experience journey or leadership journey is more common in like startups for somebody to own both. But I will say that I see that being like super valuable even for bigger start or bigger scale-ups, you know, to just have it all under one because you can see what happens in pre-sales, right?

And you can try and implement that in post-sales, and you can see what happens here, and you can help fix it in the pre-sales side. And it's one person seeing both versus like trying to get two people to try and get on the same page for both of those actions. Have you kind of seen the same thing? Um, obviously, I know you've done that for for a long time in your end.

Yeah, for sure. I think uh the mindset of uh customer experience owning both pre-sale and post-sale creates like a new culture, right? Yeah. You know, when when a support engineer got interactions with a pre-sale on on the same deal with the customer success, it creates like a winning mentality, right?

Because the the support engineer gets interaction directly with the customer. Um, and he sees the way and the value the customer uses solution, it gives him a different mindset when he will get to the next ticket. Yeah. No, that's very true.

And I I want to shift a little bit because I know we're talking, you mentioned winning like three times, and I think that's really important in your own, you know, leadership and how you build teams and culture. And I want to unpack this publicly because I will say I obviously I work with leaders, right? But not everybody has the ability to really kind of rebuild teams and bring people back together again that they worked with in the past, you know, and all of that. How how intentional is you know you doing that?

I know you have that rare ability of bringing teams back together. And what what do you think? Like, how do you actually kind of build that loyalty as a leader? It's all about professionalism, right?

I make a strong effort to stay connected with the eight players I've worked with in the past, right? And many people across my department and the company, Aponel, come from those relationships. I think in my department, 60% of the people that I work with work with me in the past, or I know them through my colleagues in the market. Yeah.

And as a manager, I focus on creating you know an environment where people can success, can succeed, feel support, and push beyond what they think they can do. Right. I strongly believe in I call it an emotional bank account. Okay.

I strongly believe in in investing long-time relationships, you know, when emotional bank account is basically keeping touch with the people you know they can win with you without expecting anything. Like this is the idea. Okay. Like small personal touches, build trust, and keep connections strong over time.

This is where people remind you and want to work with you again. Yeah, I love that. I want to go a little bit deeper if you're okay with it, and if you're like, hey, that's my trade secrets, we don't have to like go into it. But what are some like give us some examples of like what do you do?

Like that other leaders can say, I can do that too now. Now I understand what Tamir means that like the emotional banking and like keeping in touch, is it like LinkedIn messages? Is it you know industry events or just seeing when somebody has an update and you know you genuinely reach out to them? What does Tamir do that builds that?

I think first of all, if you have somebody that is an A player that you want to keep in touch, get his phone number. Nice, yeah. I think private messages, not only LinkedIn is is fun, but and it's fine, but you need to be much more personal, right? Yeah, birthdays, birthdays, uh a child's birth, you know, a promotion, something like that.

Don't put it in LinkedIn, put it as a personal message. You know, in Israel we use WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp is great. You know, general messages is amazing, even you know, sometimes send a present. Send flowers to the wife, for example, you know, yeah.

This is something that is remindable, right? And uh this is the way you keep in touch with the people you like because don't just you know, when when you need something, get in touch. Do you remember when we worked together? No, just keep the relationship on track, even if it's once a year, happy new year, right?

And this is the way people remind you. And then you see you, you know, you you see you see them in events, uh, you meet them in, I don't know, round tables, and they remind you, oh, this guy told me, Happy New Year this year. I love this year, yeah. Right, and this is how personal relationship and keeps, and this is when I'm calling when I call somebody, hey, I have an open position, would you consider to come back to work with me?

There is no no for an answer. There is yes that what's what's happening. Love that, yes, that is so true. And I will say I've seen some leaders, I mean, even being on like uh as a recruiter, when I've had candidates give notices to their current leaders, and they don't take it that well.

And I wouldn't say that you burn a bridge, but they're, you know, for the lack of a better word, a little bit butthurt, uh, which I can totally understand, right? Especially if you have an ape player on your team that's leaving. How is there like, I guess, what do you do in these situations if that happens? And I'm sure it might have happened, you know, it's a long, long career overall in, you know, the space.

What what is your way of handling those types of situations? Of an abler that leave the company? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Uh um I would never say somebody, please stay, right? If you don't feel that you need to stay, I will be your first um reference for a new job. Yeah, right. Um why?

Because I think this is how you keep people close to you. It doesn't make sense. We are not breaking up because we are in a relate a personal relationship, right? It's professional.

You find more you find new opportunities that looks great. Yeah. And by the way, if an April leave my team, I did something wrong. Right.

It's on me to understand why why I left, why wants to be in another place, right? Yeah. I need to do a post-mortem for myself on how how to make sure this is not gonna happen again. Yeah, so true.

Extreme extreme ownership. I I kind of run with the same thing. Is if something happened in my team or something, you know, that I didn't have control of or I didn't think I did at the time, I'll look back and say, okay, what did I do wrong that led to this outcome? No, I love that.

And I wanted to ask, you know, there's there's a difference between being liked as a leader and respected as a leader. Um, a lot of people confuse the both. I I'll be the first one to say when I first kind of had my journey in leadership overall, I thought I had to be liked and I didn't really understand the respected side at the time. How do you draw the line?

How do you make sure that your team is still having fun, but we're not losing the accountability? I think I I don't think I really believe great leadership requires both of them. Like you need to be liked and being respected. One should not come like an expense of the other.

Um being liked creates openness and trust, you know, and while being respect respected creates confidence and leadership. Um and actually decision making. People will follow your decisions if you are respected. Together, both of them they build like a low ego culture focused on collaboration and shared success.

This is the idea. It's not being light, that's fine, okay. Yeah, let's have fun, right? Being respected.

Yeah, I'm not gonna tell him everything because I don't know if he will take it good or bad, right? But being light and respectful as I as respected as I see is just being the human being. Being the human being, you know, use your soft skills as a manager in customer facing, you should have a lot of soft skills. Use that to build the trust with your uh team, build the trust and respect of they follow you because this is you, not because of anything else.

Yeah, no, that is very true. Is there any practical steps that you do that kind of builds both? Um, or I guess, yeah, if you can dive a little bit deeper into like maybe give us one or two tips of like what you do to build both so that they're not also confused within the team. Um, interesting.

I think it's kind of my personality of I can agree with that. I I'm very positive person, right? I I I I think all the time about the positive way of looking at things, not come directly from the negative. And by giving by thinking about different approaches for every situation, give me the ability to be respected.

Being liked is the way you present what you want to say, right? There is an option to say this is my decision that you should follow. Or guys, I thought about two of those things, which one of them do you think is the best way? Right?

And being like that is you've been liked and being respected because professionally you gave two options, not only one, right? And you you share the team. It is a it is a team decision to follow one of them. Both of the of the options will lead to the same results, but I will give the team to decide on which way they want to take it.

So this is being liked because I'm giving them the opportunity to choose the way when the results are the same results. Yeah, and I'll I'll attest to that firsthand. I know you obviously you and I have worked together. And one of the biggest things, even as I've seen you interact with the team, as you know, we're helping build it, is been exactly that.

I mean, even with me, you've been like, hey, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think we should do with Sister Right? Or, hey, I think this way, I know you told me something different, but we can try it your way and see if it works. Um, and that just gives that um, how do I say like warmth in a relationship in the sense that like Tamir doesn't have an ego, like I can trust Tamir.

And if he says, you know, this way, I can follow it. And exactly what you said earlier, I think it just builds that like low ego but collaborative environment. And at the end of the day, I mean, nobody knows it all. Like in leadership, you you you want, and I you've told me this before, is you want to build a team that brings different perspectives that is not the same.

Because if they all thought like you, I mean, would we even move forward, right? In a in a company if we all think the exact same same. So I can definitely attest to you actually implementing that firsthand. Um, and I have to ask, I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit here.

And uh, you've obviously worked with a lot of recruiters over your career. What what do you think in your end like makes a good recruiting partnership from a leader's perspective? Um, first of all, um I think the leader should set the expectations very clear, right? Don't give or fake, sorry, vague um instructions to the recruiter.

Tell exactly what you want. Years of experience so the recruiter can follow those guidance, right? Yeah, giving vague requirements will only bring you not good candidates. Right?

And I think working closely, right? Don't don't think that the recruiter should do all the work and you should just sit aside and wait. Just be proactive, contact, react, give feedback all the time. There is a CBA that you don't like, tell why you don't like, not like, no, this is not a good candidate.

Just shape the requirements if needed. Work closely with the recruiter in the way that like you would recruit somebody, right? Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

I that's what I preach all the time. So I have nothing else to add to that. You you nailed it. And you work with technical teams across like very different stages from scales up to you know high startup girls.

Does your leadership style kind of shift maybe a little bit depending on the stage where the company's at? And maybe is there like a mistake that leaders make if they don't adjust that? Um actually no. My leadership style has stayed consistent across different company stages and different company overall.

You know, what changes is the expectation. So as company grows, teams and individuals need to evolve with the business. Adapt quickly and align around the company goals and changing and priorities. Right?

So as a leader, it's my responsibility to make sure every individual on the team understands those changes and basically set the expectations for the team to adopt it accordingly, both professionally, by the way, and personally to support the bigger the bigger goals of the company. Right? So leadership should not be changed. You should not be more aggressive, you know, if the company gets bigger, you should not be more like politicians if the company gets bigger.

The styles of the leadership style should stay the same. The only thing needs to be changed is the expectations from the team and be very transparent with what the government. Are so the team can follow. And this is by the way, this is another point of how being liked and respected and respected together at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think there's a difference, Amir, in um in terms of like running a team that is remote versus like in person or hybrid or both? Interesting question.

I think I I I worked as a global manager almost for 10 years. Yeah. And there is no way I would sit with everyone on my team on the same on the same office, right? It's the same office.

Yeah. It's it's exactly as a company grows, you need to adopt different communication channels. Right? Make sure you understand what are the uh there is no like body language in Zoom, right?

But you need to to sense to sense the other side feelings or by only by looking at them. And yeah, if there is a doubt, I I I love the the the the sentence of if there is a doubt, there is no doubt. If you think something's wrong, just ask. Because you don't see you are not new to those people, right?

Ask in everything is okay. I'm here for anything, you can be very open with me. I'm here to help you to succeed, nothing else. Right?

So hybrid, every every day on the on the at the office or in Zoom, nothing's changed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree.

I think it's just to meet everyone to do I I recently did an off-sight in re-org for my entire department from Israel and from the US. And basically those kinds of engagements build very strong relationships, not only between me as a leader to my to my teams, between those teams, it's amazing to see how people that only know each other from the Zoom get in touch and uh have fun together. Yeah, yeah. No, for sure.

I can, I mean, I I've done the same thing, and I know that once you meet somebody in person and you have, you know, that personal relationship added on, then you also see the dynamic shift afterwards in Zoom and online. And it's it's a way closer relationship for sure. Exactly. Yeah.

Um, I think on that note, it's a really good segue to this question. Is one thing that I think it's undervalued in, you know, in our world in software and in SaaS and in security in general, is like the relationship between like a world-class SE motion and actual revenue retention. Um, and obviously you're running both right now at Opono. Is there anything that you think like if companies get wrong when it comes to pre-sales and post-sales being aligned together?

I think the the the core of my approach is aligned with pre-stell and postel around a shared customer journey and a shared company goals. Right. Yeah. Combining both of them together create like uh a strong relationship and bonding between the pre-stell and the postel.

Um, you know, I strongly this is why I strongly believe in customer experience that basically are sales engineering, customer success, and support. Because they need to operate as one connected organization, not separate functions. Because this way alignment is what drives trust, successful adoption, retention, and eventually, ultimately extensions. Like so working together in my departments, things are working, you know.

If we have an issue on the postal side with CSN, right, CSN's got an issue and support and reactive, you know, most of the time. They come on calls, they interact with the customers. And sometimes when there is a new feature that we need to introduce to an existing customer, we bring the SE's to package and the demo. When you do it in a separate department, not that it's not easy to do, it's almost impossible to bring an SE to a call with a post of customer.

And this is the idea, right? Combining everything together, the approach is the only thing that matters is the company revenue, right? And success. That's it.

I love that. That is so good. Is there any other tips in terms of like, because I I have heard before from leaders where you know there's friction between handing off, you know, a customer from like the SC to the post-sale side. Is there any other tips that you guys kind of integrate to make sure that the handoff journey is there?

And obviously, I can see how you also bring back the SE in certain features or you know, as needed, but at least on that initial approach. I think when you know the pre-sale and the CSM as their own responsibility, but I think the mutual responsibility, this is what um make the distinguish here. Why? Because when you think about how the customer feels right about this transition, sometimes it's hard to move from pre-sale to postale when there is no connection between those two departments.

Right? But you have a fluent way that the only mindset is the customer journey moving from pre-cell to post in this the most smooth way and frictionless. This is what creates the best customer experience. And you start on the right foot, on the onboarding, you feel supported, you know that it's not going to let go in any any way because the pre-cell is with the CSM on the first meeting, and it's kind of a handover in front of the customer and not behind his back.

So, hey, I'm your customer success manager, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? No, yeah, the pre-cell introduced the CSM that take over. And this is the idea of being a customer experience that both pre-sell and postell on the same department. Love that.

Uh I won't ask you any more in-depth question because I don't want to steal all your trade secrets. We'll leave it for a polo so you guys can keep crushing it. Um, I did want to move to a rapid-fire question, and they don't have to be short answers. If you want to elaborate, you're more than welcome to.

What is one tool you can't live without right now in 2026? AI. What how are you guys? That's a great question.

How are you guys implementing it? Or is there a certain aspect where you're like, I still want things to be quote unquote unscalable, where we don't automate everything, whether that's in the customer experience journey or internally. I think there was one thing that I don't see how AI will replace is relationship. Yeah.

Right? Working on a relationship. AI is great for communication, you know, build dashboards, present value, present usage, whatever, right? But yeah, personal interactions, this is something that I don't see AI replace in the main future or ever.

Um, and this is what CSMs and sales engineers and support both internally and externally with customers need to keep working on in order to keep a good environment of work. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, we're we're human creatures per se. Like we we crave um interaction, we crave relationships, and I I really can't see that either.

I mean, that would be a really boring world, and if that day ever comes, we might not even be here. So who knows? Um, okay, what about your biggest growth lever for SaaS in 2026? Um, good question.

I think each individual individual should understand the role in the bigger picture and how their contribution basically helps the company to succeed. Right. Don't look only on your role. Think about what you do on a daily basis.

That move the needle for the company. Right? Don't just say, yeah, this is my task, that's it. Right.

Think about how you contributing to the overall company it basically creates a winning mentality. It's an end-to-end responsibility because you don't left anything for others to do. You do end-to-end what you need to do, and it's mutual responsibility by yeah, I know customer success will need that and that, but not. I will do it for them so it will be easier for them to communicate it to the customer.

So every time on the end goal of the company on every task you do on a daily basis. I uh love that. Can you tell me maybe a tip on like how do you share that with the team? Like, how do you um is there anything you guys do internally to kind of showcase the impact that their role is having so that they can see the full vision beyond the task at hand?

I think one of the things I do all the time is when there is a friction between departments, not like the six department, like product, RB, CS, marketing. The first thing you need to do is to look inside and see what you can do to improve the communication. Not, yeah, marketing are do that, products are not doing that, right? Think about what you can do for them to help them succeed in the communication with you.

By the way, it was a huge topic on uh the CX off side that I did in New York last uh last month. That one of the things we identify the friction points with the other departments, and we suggested ways to reduce that friction only by improving our processes. Wow, that's good. That's really good.

I love that. Um, and I I think it's it kind of, at least like the way you're mentioning it, it it kind of goes back to like being a having a servant leadership mindset, right? It's like how do we look inside and how do we serve others to make them better? And I I do think that like when you genuinely do good, and like you said, you do things that you don't expect it back.

It it naturally in the other person, you know, it kind of gives you that same feeling of like, I want to do something for Tamir just because he did that. And I know he didn't ask, but like I want to now because it he made me feel this way, or he made me feel good, or he did this for me and he didn't ask for anything back. So that's really awesome. Yeah, you know, it's all about kindness, right?

Yeah. Um kindness should should come from a state of mind and basically the values that you are living for. Or yeah, for, right? Not because you expect something or somebody something in return.

It's it's it's basically about being kind. Like my motto in life is be kind always, right? People that know me personally, you know, this is how I react, how or like everything is I don't see anyone as a bad person. You know, and if somebody cut me in the road, I always think about what happened to his kid that he did that, right?

I don't think it's come from a bad situation. And I think this is the way for us to communicate. When you go into the elevator, elevator in the morning, say good morning. You're not expecting anything.

But if you do it three times, the person will react back with a good morning. And this is how you spread the kindness all over the place. Yeah, and I think you're honestly proof that like like we talked about like being a kind and fun but also respected leader does drive results. I think sometimes um leaders come from a place of like if I'm too kind or if I'm too nice, like they're just gonna walk all over me.

And I do think that the answer, and I'd love your opinion on this if I'm right or wrong, but the answer comes down to what you said earlier is like the expectations. How are you setting those expectations to the team? So that's amazing. And I think I might have um kind of jumped ahead here, but uh and you already answered this question.

But what is one belief that you have that most people would disagree with? It's interesting. I think it's a different topic to talk about. It's a different podcast.

We'll have to do a part two. Okay, okay, awesome. Um, all right, then I we always end up with hiring in our podcast, um, the hiring section, and specifically just like you know, building winning teams and uh eight players, you know, versus somebody that's just good. And as you're building and scaling, what do you look for like in early hires that really impact the company?

I I I think it's all around player, right? Someone who doesn't focus only on their defined role, but instead does whatever is needed to help the company to move forward. Yeah. And this is the idea, right?

You hire somebody, yeah, everyone has his title, right? And everyone has their um job description, but if you come only to do what you need to do, it's not enough for me. I think to work in a startup company or in a growth company or even in an enterprise, when when you come to the role, think about what you can do more, not not what look not what exactly what you need to do, right? But try to understand how you can make the company or even your peers that need to sit next to you better in in their job.

Yeah, no, that is so true. And when you're hiring for obviously these types of people in pre-sales or post-sales as well, are there any common red flags that like jump up to you immediately? Yeah, I I think smiling. If somebody is not smiling in the first interaction with me, it's a red flag, right?

Yeah, because for me, if you are a customer-facing candidate that doesn't smile during the first interaction, yeah, how you react to in a stress situation with a customer, right? It's beyond the professional skills, the most important thing is culture. And if you are not a person that can give the customer the confidence to work with you, and most of the time when you smile with somebody, most of the time you smile back, right? Yeah, so customer facing basically in general, it's a role that is built on energy, trust, communication, right?

Everything is related, you can't do that without a positive way of presenting your understanding. Or sometimes when you know, if you get into a situation, let's say production is done, right? How do you communicate it if you're stressed, right? You need to you stress, but you need to do it in a good way, right?

Smile. Hey, we are here. So customer will like you and respect you. Yeah, yeah.

That's true. And it it's hard to be mad at somebody like if they're smiling or you know, if they're being so positive and just being self-spoken or whatever that is, you know, especially in a customer journey experience. I'm sure you guys have angry customers from time to time or just frustrated, maybe not necessarily angry. No.

I was gonna say, wait, I need to talk about that. Um, yeah, and then I mean, if you have a post sales customer success person jumping in and smiling and just saying, like, I know how frustrated it is, like, let me tell you how we can fix it. It's so hard to be mad at that person. Like, your just aura is gonna change overall.

So totally see that. Okay, what is the number one skill set that you look for in a candidate right now? And how do you test for that in the process? Um, I think it's it's like an A-player, right?

A good employee is someone who does their job well. But I I'm not looking on for that. I'm looking on for you know actively serving a friction, like as I see a person that I will bring, it's somebody that's serving as a friction reducer, basically, who elevate the people around them, right? And I'm asking those questions in an interview.

How do you make other people better? Right? Not only yourself. I I can understand how you make yourself better, for sure.

What you can what you do on a daily basis, or what are the action you take in order to make your peers better? But not only your peers, like like your colleagues from other departments, what you do in order to empower them, not only yourself. Yeah, and that is that's a really good question. And honestly, it can be hard to answer.

Um, because we we take it. You have to Yeah, yeah, that is true. Have you any heard have you ever heard any answers that's like really surprised you either for the better or for worse? I'm sure you have some funny stories on your under your bills.

Yeah, there is someone that you know, one of the interviews told me, What do you mean? Why I need to empower to empower others. Oh man. Yeah.

I think that person does not work with you. No, he does not. Um, and the other one is just give me an example, you know. I will just give you uh a short example about um many years ago I introduced a developer, and he I asked him how to empower others, what you do for others to be better.

He said, I fixed the bug, right? It doesn't mean that I just need to fix the bug and commit it and now it's in production. I made I made sure that the docs are ready with the new information about the situation, right? I updated the custom the uh the customer success with what I did so he can tell it to the customer because most of the time when there is ban, the customer will ask you what you did.

Right? So the customer success has all the information. There are two things here. One is the is we have all the information to the customer to share, and the other one is I the customer success does not need to bring any technical resource in order to explain that.

So that is less frequent on both sides. That is so good. Yeah. And I I just want to say if there's any leaders listening to this right now or in our recording later, this is like something I would implement to your hiring process like ASAP if you've never done that before, because it it really shows you who that person is by just asking what they do for others, right?

And you I feel like, and you tell me if this is right, but I do feel like you can tell with somebody's just saying like superficial answers, right? Of like, oh, I, you know, I do this, and it's like, okay, give me an example. And then it's still like not deep enough or you know, an example like that where it really showcases how they do it and if it's in them or not. And by the way, you can see the passion in the eyes when they tell the truth.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I wanted to ask, and you can tell me no, that's okay. If you wanted to share your favorite interview question that you shared with me when we first started working with users.

Yeah. Um, now again, like if if you don't want to, that's totally fine. Of course, not of course, of course, of course. I think it's such a good question for pre-sales in general, especially somebody customer facing, maybe not just pre-sales.

And actually, that would be a really good question for post-sales too. So I think that if I have a leader, since we're talking about the hiring process, I think they should implement this one as well. So everybody listen up. So when we are in the middle of the interview, yeah, out of nowhere, when the when the when the candidate speaks and you know, emotional about what the dogs and whatever, just talking, say, wait a second.

Wait a second. I had a question. Or actually an exam. You have two minutes to teach me whatever you want.

It's not related to your work, it's whatever you want. Think about that. I don't know anything in the world. What would you teach me in two minutes?

I such a good question. How I want to hear me. Two things here, right? It creates you can see if the person knows how to handle uh contact switch, right?

Because he's switching him from the the path that he wrote in his mind that he needs to answer right. Yeah, you understand what his hobbies is are, and it's demonstrate how good he is in presenting things in front of customers. Yeah, so good. I mean, I yeah, that is so good.

Have you heard anything that's like you remember to this day that that was I don't know, maybe really cool or really weird? I I I would say I think the coolest thing I heard, it's actually um the new guy at Pono from in my department. He taught me how to do beatbox in the interview. That's hilarious.

That that is really hard now that I think about it. Did you try it? Did it work? I did not.

I did not, but he he was so good that it was amazing. That's so awesome. That's awesome. I learned how to create a pine to drive a motor motorcycle, how to ski, how to climb, how to do pasta.

Many things. And by the way, the the the thing is if somebody teaches you about technology, it probably is a boring person. Because it doesn't have any other problems. You know I you um when was this a couple weeks ago but I realized I so my son actually I my mom took him for like a couple weeks.

She lives in Florida and I'm in Ohio. And I realized that I am really boring like outside of work. Like I like to have fun but we don't have a ton of hobbies. So and this, you know what you just said, I was like I probably would have failed that question right now because I am really boring.

I did recently just learn how to make like really good espresso but I do need to implement like more hobbies just outside of work in general because maybe I can show you one of the examples I got in the past. Yeah you know I was thinking Tamir it would be really funny to have you implement all the answers that they give you and then you record yourself and then I need to stop working in order to do that. That's true. That is true.

Is there any like last minute thing that you might want to leave the audience with uh whether it's on the candidate side or the leadership side I think one thing maybe think about what you do on a daily basis to empower others this is the the most important thing because when you empower others you don't you not only make the company move forward you become the person that they will remember. Yeah so good. Thank you so much for coming on just being transparent being able to dive deep and answering all my questions.

This was so good. Anyone that joined us live or afterwards I hope you have a ton of notes and just things that you can implement right away. Timor somebody I absolutely look up to as a leader of and honestly you've inspired me to be a better leader too just from all of our interactions and I I really mean that um because it's not every day that you meet somebody that kind of takes and honestly in a way everything that I stand up for and has done it like really successfully. So I'm um really thankful that I got to know you and obviously we work together.

So yeah glad that our path crossed and we're we're where we're at right now.