By Jennifer Doskow, Edge Connection Sales Recruiting

Talent does exist outside of the 101 Corridor – and software companies who find it are reaping the benefits.

To hire or NOT to hire in Silicon Valley…. That is the question I’m asked almost daily as my start-up software clients face frustration with hiring and retaining their sales talent. If you don’t live in or around Silicon Valley you probably envision a technology mecca where everyone drives Tesla’s to work where they play ping-pong while sipping a microbrew with their high top/hoody wearing executive leaders. Sure, this might be accurate for some of the Bay Area techies, but take a closer look and Silicon Valley talent is spending 1-2 hours each way in traffic to get to and from work and many Millennials are living with their parents because one bedroom apartments in San Francisco rent for $3398 a month on average. Recent college graduates in entry level sales positions make between 50-60K base salaries and hardly have enough money left over after they pay their rent and transportation costs LET ALONE have a car with a parking spot that costs almost as much as rent.

I recently wrote a blog post about the Shift in Silicon Valley Culture that went viral on Linkedin and it has really opened up dialogue about what the Human Capital of the Valley REALLY wants in a company. In summary, people over the age of 30 are more interested in work- life balance than work-hard/play-harder team cultures where getting wasted with your boss is a normal occurrence. These people are interested in being treated like grown-ups who are trusted to get their work done to the highest level whether they are in the office with the rest of the company or working from home. These people aren’t swooning over the free catered lunches, full bars in their offices or wild parties at the end of the successful quarter. Instead, they’re excited to use cutting edge technology and tools to get their work done more efficiently and save a lot of time, energy and frustration they’ve been wasting on their bumper to bumper commute. If you are a millennial perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, “Who is this crotchety, old fashioned, out-of-touch recruiter and why is she trying to squash the fun work hard/play hard culture?”  The fact is, I used to be just like you working in San Francisco and the Peninsula with all of the energy in the world but I got older, just like my peers, and very few of us wanted to endure this lifestyle long term.

A story on the survey by The Mercury News noted that 46% of millennials want to leave the Bay Area in the next few years and they point to traffic and skyrocketing housing costs as the main reasons. “It turns out that we were wrong about millennial preferences, the stories were wrong that millennials wanted to live in a hyper-urban environment and that it would be OK to raise families in a condo,” said Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “Millennials are putting off family formation, but when they have a family, they want what their parents had: a house on a nice lot pretty close to work.”

Our economy is growing and start-ups are still popping up throughout the Valley. Technology is also improving and disrupting the way business has been done for generations. With the invention of cloud and SaaS technology, customers are requesting web demos from their sales reps and product specialists instead of martini-lunches or power point presentations in their conference rooms. The question I ask myself and my clients daily is, “Why aren’t we capitalizing on the technology and create a win-win culture where companies are fostering successful teams without having everyone cramped on the 101 Corridor?” While Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs are very smart and innovative, many are blind to modern workplace business needs and are stuck creating working environments that are exactly like every other technology company in the Valley. My clients who are hiring A-players who work remotely or even in a satellite office in another part of the country are utilizing technology such as Skype, BlueJeans, Google Hangouts and Zoom. Not only are these companies able to save money on base salaries, they don’t have the enormous cost of housing all of their sales people in expensive office space. Sales people are working in their local time zones and are able to be in customer-facing selling opportunities without coast-to-coast travel.

Recently, an Ai client of mine was struggling with being able to stay competitive with paying salaries to the recent college graduates who they needed for their entry level lead generation positions. Just about every kid who came in was being offered base salaries 20% higher than they budgeted for and they were losing time and opportunities without having this team in place. This same company had a satellite office in Kansas City, Missouri and before we knew it, we were hiring hard working, farm-raised, college graduates who were developing leads for the Enterprise Sales Reps in San Mateo. Their base salaries were $24,000 lower and yet their production was the same as their predecessors before them who were based in San Mateo. The cost of living in Kansas City is 47% less expensive than San Francisco and although there weren’t as many technology companies to recruit from, the quality of hard working/hungry sales talent was just about the same if not greater than in Silicon Valley. My client hosted quarterly meetings at the Bay Area Headquarters where everyone was able to collaborate and foster a great team culture. I think this system works as my client was just recognized as one of the top 100 fastest-growing private companies of 2017.

Currently, 90% of all of my openings are out of state and I’ve found a lot of success working with Silicon Valley companies who are hiring A-Players without the headache and aggravation that’s normal in San Francisco’s job market with a 2.8% unemployment, (September of 2017). The “up and coming,” tech markets I’ve had success recruiting include Denver, Atlanta, Boston, Austin, Chicago, Portland, Seattle and St. Louis to name a few. There are also incredible opportunities to recruit in cities just outside San Francisco in the Sacramento Region where I happen to reside/recruit from my home office. It’s my sincere hope that technology companies start seeing that they are wasting a lot of money focusing solely on hiring sales talent in the Bay Area. Find the best sales talent you can find and then build around them wherever they live because we have the tools to make the connections, build the culture and create effective selling processes with the evolution of the incredible tools that are at our fingertips. Take a risk and look outside the box~ it’s working for many of your competitors.