These days, when Anne Ngo sits down to interview a candidate, she gets questions about how her company thinks about runway and growth.
The Director of Talent Acquisition at Toronto-based Carbon6 said job seekers used to ask her about compensation and company perks. But recently, a different set of priorities has emerged.
“Employees are looking for stability, they’re looking for sustainability in their job searches,” said Ngo. “There’s a significant shift in candidates exploring if companies are financially responsible.”
“Employees are looking for stability, they’re looking for sustainability in their job searches.”
Anne Ngo
Carbon6
At a recent BetaKit Town Hall, engineering student Jocelyne Murphy said companies who want to hire new talent “need to rebuild trust” after years of subjecting job seekers to long hiring cycles and frequent layoffs.
“I’ve seen people get laid off three times in a year,” Murphy said. “It’s resulting in a workforce that really doesn’t feel like they have stable ground underneath them. That makes it really hard for us to give it our all at work and focus.”
Over the past two years, mass layoffs have hit big tech employers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet, as well as Canadian startups like SSENSE, #paid, and most recently, OpenText, which announced a plan to lay off 1,200 workers.
As a result, job seekers are increasingly gravitating toward stable, profitable companies. The focus has shifted from how much money a company has raised to whether it’s actually making money.
Carbon6 believes it can capitalize on this shift.
The e-commerce software start-up calls itself an all-in-one Amazon growth platform. They help Amazon sellers grow their businesses through a collection of tools like listing optimization, profit recovery, multi-channel advertising and inventory management.
Carbon6 Co-Founder Kazi Ahmed said today, the company is focused on consolidating all the tools in its portfolio into one platform.
“We’ve been focused on building our own products,” said Ahmed. “We’ve always been very customer-focused. What are all the things this customer needs? What are the solutions we can provide them?”
Since the company started in 2021 and raised its Series A, Ahmed says it has made a number of strategic acquisitions in e-commerce software companies, grown revenue by 6x and achieved profitability within three years.
The company grew 300% in 2023 without any acquisitions, he added. And while he is proud to describe Carbon6 as a rocketship company, he said the company’s work to be “fiscally responsible” is a major selling point to prospective employees.
“Even with this accelerated growth, we are stable,” he said.
With a staff of almost 100 people and an end-of-year target to hire another 100, Ahmed said the company is very intentional in ensuring its hiring doesn’t outpace its growth.
“We look at this every other week with the exec team,” said Ahmed about Carbon6’s hiring plan. “We don’t want to overhire and not hit our numbers.”
As Ngo’s team prepares to onboard their new hires before the end of the year, she is planning to refine the company’s benefits and perks to appeal to the current priorities of tech employees.
“While equity remains an important piece of the compensation puzzle, it’s a smaller piece than it used to be,” she notes. “If the business doesn’t sound sustainable, they’re not going to pursue it.”
As Carbon6 continues hiring across all teams, they’re looking for dynamic individuals who don’t just come with a playbook from past roles.
“There’s been a change in how we evaluate candidates based on actual competencies rather than what they’ve done in the past or what their education dictates,” Ngo said. “What helps me in understanding a great talent is actually understanding how multi-dimensional they are.”
These days, when candidates ask about the company’s runway, Ngo tells them about Carbon6’s unique success story.
“Carbon6 achieved profitability in less than three years in the midst of fluctuating markets,” she said. “So while no one was really hiring as much as we were last year, we grew thoughtfully and responsibly. It is an incredible place for driven individuals who want to be part of the culture of a fast-growing start-up, but one that is built to last.”
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Check out open roles at Carbon6.
All images courtesy Carbon6.