Fast growth sees Aussie SaaS provider recruit CMO, CRO
- 08 June, 2021 06:38
Recruitment software vendor, JobAdder, has brought on a chief marketing officer as one of two new executive-level hires tasked with capitalising on its recent rapid growth.
The company has recruited Taz Bareham as its marketing chief, as well as Michael Savanis as its chief revenue officer. JobAdder said the decision was driven by experiencing 85 per cent growth since September 2020.
More widely, the company has grown its full team to 167 staff. The bullish ambition is to grow JobAdder’s user base tenfold in the next five years globally.
As CMO, Bareham is tasked with helping prepare the JobAdder brand for global scale through growth of a global marketing team, tools, resources and ways of working. The company also described the CMO role as an “adjunct of the founding team and their vision” for both the business and its culture.
Bareham comes with more than 20 years’ experience working on both the agency and in-house side of the fence as well as practical software-as-a-service (SaaS) scale-up experience, most recently as CMO of Rezdy. In this role, she chalked up a 177 per cent increase in inbound leads and 240 per cent improvement in lead quality. In addition, she was the founding marketing chief for SaaS business, Ansarada, which operates in the investment banking and corporate advisory sphere.
Bareham’s resume also includes a stint as head of brand and communications at eBay, where she led a program of work that delivered an 11 per cent uptick in brand consideration. Agency roles, meanwhile, encompass M&C Saatchi, Clemenger BBDO, FCB Global and others.
Bareham said she was attracted to JobAdder because of its values and company culture along with growth prospects. “The company is in a powerful stage of global growth and I'm honoured to have the opportunity to help shape and be part of that journey,” she commented.
“SaaS marketers need to be multi-skilled and multi-dimensional across seemingly competing attributes and continually evolving to be technical yet creative, data-driven yet instinctive, down in the detail yet up high with a bird’s eye view, delivering fast-increasing results today but investing and planning for the future. As a best-in-class recruitment software product, I’m looking forward to showcasing my expertise in order to help shape the future of the JobAdder brand, as it continues to stand out in new and existing markets for all the right reasons.”
JobAdder CEO, Martin Herbst, said growth to date had been driven by product, customer support and word of mouth. He said it was time to bring on an experienced marketing leader to build “more thoughtful brand marketing and lead generation”.
“Taz is a big picture thinker who is incredibly curious and is a fantastic storyteller. She has a rich history of growing digital and SaaS brands globally. She’s very thoughtful, considered and cares deeply for her team and others. When Taz speaks, we listen carefully,” he said.
Savanis meanwhile, has worked across the US, UK, Asia-Pacific and Australia and was most recently general manager of SaaS platform, Panopto. During his tenure, the company recorded a 99.9 per cent renewal rate and scaled up across Australia and New Zealand.
As CRO, he will oversee JobAdder’s commercial and go-to-market (GTM) strategies, including all new business acquisition and client retention. The company’s ambition is to grow its enterprise and corporate client base in Australia and New Zealand, as well as scale up its UK operations, grow in North America and operationalise its global customer success, inside sales and support teams.
“The role of CRO is definitely increasing in popularity and is no longer just an SV trend,” Savanis said. “I look forward to helping JobAdder achieve its vision of creating a product that its customers love using, through supporting the company’s ability to acquire and care for our customers, as well as being accountable for our revenue growth.”
Sydney-headquartered JobAdder said its customer base has expanded rapidly over the last couple of years to thousands of accounts with over 15,000 users across multiple countries. In 2020, it helped to place more than 230,000 jobs.
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