Meet Kate Scafidi, Our Newest Husker
Can you share a bit about yourself and your background?
I actually started my career in executive recruiting right out of college. I spent the better part of the last 10 years at Daversa Partners, focused on VP and C-level hiring across sales, marketing, customer success, and general management. While I wouldn't have guessed this is where I'd end up, I loved it from day one. There's nothing better than getting to serve as an advisor to founders, executives, and investors who are building innovative businesses. No two days are the same and it's incredibly energizing!
What drew you to recruiting so early in your career?
I'm a lifelong athlete - I played volleyball in college and still coach today - and the thing that drew me to executive recruiting was the opportunity to keep working with and building teams. I really believe that even the best idea entering the market at the ideal time will fail if the right team isn't in place to execute. Being a headhunter allows me to really get to know teams and their cultures so that I can help build the foundation of everything they'll accomplish in the future. When I see a team I've built succeeding, hitting their numbers, even celebrating an exit, it's the best feeling.
What big shifts are you seeing in GTM hiring now versus a decade ago?
One of the biggest shifts, and the one I'm most excited about, has been in customer success. Customer success was hardly its own defined function a decade ago - it was more often an afterthought for salespeople with very little continuity in terms of ownership, process, etc. Now, we're seeing customer success leaders being hired earlier and more often, we're seeing them own the renewal and expansion numbers more frequently, and we're even seeing post-sales executives being pulled up to CRO, COO, and CEO roles more often. It makes all the sense in the world - customer success is, when done right, the connective tissue between revenue and product, and I think we'll continue to see the importance of the function being recognized, along with the market for customer success talent becoming more and more competitive.
Are there any spaces you're particularly excited about?
There's no shortage whatsoever of things to be excited about in tech right now, but I'm pretty bullish on verticalized software. We've had such an oversaturated market in enterprise software for such a long time, and the last few years have started to address the excess of solutions. But that oversaturation also created a vacuum for personalization. Verticalized solutions are approaching age-old problems with far more appreciation for the nuances of spaces like life sciences, the public sector, and manufacturing. This is going to lead to better solutions that give companies more latitude to innovate.
You're just a couple weeks into your role at Husk - how's it going so far?
My first few weeks at Husk have been fantastic. I knew I was joining a great team at a really special inflection point, but there have been more wins in such a short time than I think Ben, Corey, and I could've expected. Joining a team of this size is so fulfilling, and we have so much flexibility to do the little things that make a boutique search experience so special. I can't overstate how knowledgeable and capable this team is - it's really awesome to be a part of it and to see how my experience can complement what's already working so well at Husk today.
BONUS QUESTION: Why should someone retain you to help find a GTM leader?
There are a lot of things that come to mind like a personalized process with constant momentum, a deep network across GTM functions, and a really awesome team around me. But I think when it comes down to it, there are 2 things that really differentiate me from other great search partners.
I care enough about the businesses I partner with and the functions I recruit for to really understand them. My research and idea generation isn't going to be limited to the competitors in a market map or the same 25 executives for every search with a similar profile, it's going to be out of the box while still curated specifically for each client. I'm a true retained partner, not just a seller trying to get the placement made and get out as fast as I can. I'm an expert in the spaces I do work in because I'm fully immersed in them, and that gives me a competitive edge. This knowledge also means that the relationships I build are never transactional. When I get to know an executive, it isn't just so that I have their team sizes and revenue ownership to send to one client. It's the foundation of a relationship that allows me to know their motivations, their passions, and the spaces and situations they'd be most successful in for reasons you can't read on their resume. These relationships are strengthened by my knowledge of the nuances of their businesses and spaces, and they're why they call me back even when they're not looking. It's a big piece of why, when my clients focus in on who they want to hire, the percentage of successful closes is astronomically higher.
I've said this many times, but a true boutique experience is rare in today's executive search market. When you work with me, you're working with a specialized retained partner, and you're not just getting my knowledge; you're getting the collective wisdom and network of every person at Husk. Because we're so efficient and nimble, we can do the things that bigger firms can't, and the result is that we can move faster, mitigate risk effectively, and connect with great executives outside of the networks of just the people on the search. So many firms claim to be Partner led, but our team at Husk is disciplined about how we operate, so each client gets exactly what we promise on pitches - two or more experts on each search, at least one of which is a Partner who is fully engaged at all times, and the full power of the Husk team.