A Letter from Will Ducey on Joining Ashby

Will Ducey

Recruiting Operations

7 minute read

May 27, 2025

I’m Will Ducey, and I’m starting my new role as Head of Recruiting Operations at Ashby.

For over ten years, I’ve built and led global recruiting teams. My journey has taken me through a variety of experiences, but the one that really changed my path was a work trial at Automattic. It gave me the opportunity to transition into Recruiting Operations, a field that perfectly aligned with my curiosity, my love of learning, and my passion for making teams better.

For the past three years, I’ve had the privilege of leading internal recruiting operations. What we accomplished together through many different hiring cycles is truly incredible. From centralizing our coordination team to transitioning from a legacy ATS to Ashby All-in-One, every step we took was an intentional move towards leveling up how we operate.

I’ve always prided myself on staying ahead of the game when it comes to hiring, and specifically, RecOps. Whether it was email automation in 2015, structured interviewing and recording interviews in 2019, or the many other topics I’ve written about here, I’ve always looked for ways to innovate. So in 2023 as we were implementing Ashby, I was curious to see what opportunities would present – namely in the areas of automation, standardization, alerting, reporting, and hiring transparency.

Why I’m excited about Ashby

Jim Miller wrote a job description for an audience of one. Multiple colleagues saw the job post and said, “it was written for you.” I took a look and agreed. I have been very intentional over the last couple of years to share my ideas, start a podcast, and ensure that I would be ready for a role like this.

I was an Ashby customer for three years. I started using Ashby Analytics and then transitioned to All-in-One. I recognized the Ashby team that drove our experience and knew firsthand what the product could do. I can still remember pushing our business leaders to make the switch to Ashby All-in-One. At the time, recruiting wasn’t a huge focus, and no one was complaining about our hiring stack. But I knew the next phase of growth was coming, and we’d need the full capacity of Ashby to hit our hiring targets. We couldn’t throw more people at the problem, and we certainly couldn’t have our recruiters bouncing between multiple systems. We needed a streamlined, efficient process, and I had conviction that Ashby was the solution.

After moving to Ashby All-in-One, we focused on improving our processes to scale and improving key performance metrics. Even as we onboarded brand-new team members, Ashby gave us a streamlined, scalable way of working that kept everyone aligned and moving fast. We accomplished this while architecting the system, migrating candidate records, launching new reporting dashboards, and adapting quickly to frequent product updates and evolving needs.

We delivered a step-function improvement in Recruiting in just a few months. With the foundation in place and the team positioned for long-term success, I made the decision to join Ashby and bring that level of impact to more organizations.

My second week at Ashby began in San Francisco for Ashby One. Who doesn’t love speaking at their company’s conference on week two?! I made the most of the opportunity and even danced on stage to my walk-up song.

It’s rare in a distributed company that you get to meet so many colleagues this quickly. Everyone I met exceeded my expectations. Benji greeted me with a hug and genuine excitement for me to be there. When I accepted my offer, so many of my future colleagues reached out to congratulate me. I have never felt so welcomed to join a company.

I have experienced the power of Ashby in rapidly and systematically scaling hiring, and I could not be more excited to champion market adoption across all businesses that want an efficient, fair, and effective hiring process.

What I'll be focusing on

Like all thoughtfully scaling organizations, I’ll be diving into Ashby’s internal hiring operations first. I’ll drive internal adoption of yet-to-be released capabilities while also focusing on the long-term architecture of our Hiring Excellence Framework.

Scale. I am a team of one, and my goal is to stay this way for as long as possible. Our hiring process is hiring manager-led, and I know what Ashby is capable of. We’ll use the Ashby product to increase our leverage as we scale.
Experimentation. As the best-in-breed hiring stack, we need to understand how to hire effectively and have an opinion on what works, what we’ve experimented with, and constantly evaluate our perspective.
Knowledge Sharing. Once I’m fully settled in, I look forward to connecting with our current and soon-to-be customers to better understand their challenges. This will deepen my understanding and help me figure out how to share best practices with our industry.
Product Influence. Like a puppy who sees his owner return home and open the door, I am so excited to learn about our immediate product roadmap and influence enhancements and new offerings for better hiring. As we continue to evaluate the first principles of hiring, I am certain we will re-imagine new workstreams and processes that enable companies to bring in the best person for the role.

Ashby is the real deal. The product, the people, and the product philosophy will continue to elevate hiring for everyone.

Even as a customer, I always felt like I was part of the Ashby story. Now, I’m grateful to be part of it from the inside.

I know considering a change of your hiring management system can be intimidating. I am here to tell you, with Ashby, anything is possible. As a RecOps practitioner, if I can help you with any questions or considerations, please reach out.