Benjamin Encz

Ashby Culture

When the Ashby team met for the first time, we took a moment to reflect on and codify the attributes we value most in those we hire, and on the operating principles that guide our work. We'd like to share that with you here.

Ashby’s Operating Principles

aronow.io

Assured is a claims automation insurtech backed by leading Silicon Valley investors.

Assured

Astronomer

Attentive

Aurora Solar

Aven

Our camps give kids both a place to start and plenty of room to grow outdoors as they build skills in a wide range adventure sports, including mountain biking, hiking, kayaking, rock climbing and paddling.

Avid4 Adventure

Benchling

iPaaS integration platform with a worldwide reach

Boomi

Boulevard

Brightline brings virtual behavioral and mental health care to kids and teens, with a focus on also supporting families. 

Brightline

The Browser Company

Calm

Census

Character.AI

Clay

Clever

CloudTrucks

Coder is a remote infrastructure development platform that makes working with code easier than ever. Coder enables everyone from industry rookies to experts to develop code faster than ever before, using templatized starting points and ultra-secure workspaces.

Coder

Cognition Labs

Cohere

Cointracker

Color

Convictional uses technology to make logistics easier for retailers and their suppliers by automating supplier integration, onboarding, and merchandising.

Convictional

Costanoa Ventures

Enterprise-grade accounting, audit, and tax software for your digital assets

Cryptio

Dave

Decimal

Deel is payroll for modern business. No matter where you're hiring, Deel helps customers run payroll, supporting 150+ countries with hundreds of worldwide experts. Deel helps their customers know that hiring, paying, and managing stayed compliant and easy in their all-in-one platform.

Deel

Deepnote

Deliveroo

Docker

Dune

Duolingo

EightSleep is more than a mattress company - it's a suite of products devoted to sleep fitness. Their goal is to make sure that your sleep is as high-performing as you are, helping you meet and exceed the bar for excellence in your waking life. Athletes and scientists alike love their range of highly customizable sleep tech because it helps them live healthier.

EightSleep

ElevenLabs

Flock Safety

Form Energy

Format One

FullStory is an insight platform that aims to create a more perfect web experience by capturing website data to give clients like GNC, Carvana, and Lowe’s greater insight into how users access their websites.

FullStory

Galileo

Gorgias

Granola

GrowthAssistant

HackerOne

Harvey

Help Scout

incident.io

Infinite Lambda

Ironclad

January transforms the lives of borrowers by bringing humanity to consumer finance. Their data-driven products empower financial institutions to streamline collections, providing borrowers with straightforward and compassionate solutions to regain financial stability and control over their lives. 

January

Juni

Kustomer

Leapsome

Lemonade

Lime

Linear

Linktree

Machinify

Marqeta is a modern card issuing platform dedicated to empowering innovators to launch their products to the world. They have over a decade of experience as a trusted, high-tech solution for builders who need simple, scalable payment solutions.

Marqeta

Mastodon

Mercury

Metaview

Modern Treasury

Monte Carlo is a Series D data observability company helping its customers accelerate the adoption of data to eliminate downtime. 

Monte Carlo

Multiverse

NETGEAR

Notion is the go-to for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, blending everyday work apps into one. It serves as an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, task management, and project management. 

Notion

Compensation software that offers 5,000+ companies clarity for every pay decision.

OpenComp

Opendoor

Plato

PostHog

PostHog is an open source analytics platform. Their product is used by product, engineering, and marketing teams to understand user behavior, including product analytics, session recording, user paths, a/b testing, heatmaps, and more. The suite, founded through Y Combinator in 2020, has since been installed by over 10,000 companies.

Pragma Platform

ProAmpac

Pulley

QFinds

Quora

Ramp

Readme

Recruiting Pundit

Reddit

Replit

Resend

Retool

peer network for senior in-house resourcing leaders

RL100

Scratchpad

With over 2k clients and 20+ years of experience, Sequoia Consulting Group  is a services, tech, advisory business that provides clients with a platform for rich analytics.

Sequoia

Shelby Wolpa Consulting

Shopify

Sift

Snowflake

Snyk

Solana Foundation

Sourcegraph

Stytch

Substack

Supabase

Engineering Updates

Recruiting Articles

Product Updates

Frank Weigel

From various roles at companies like CreditKarma, SigFig, and Lattice, my career in Information Security and IT has been focused on building reliable frameworks that grow with the company. At Lattice, for instance, I developed a security program that supported the company’s growth to 700 employees.

The challenge of security is that it protects against risks that are sometimes hard to quantify and not very tangible. A company is doing a good job if nothing bad happens — but nothing bad happening is often the result of a lot of work behind the scenes:

* It requires senior management to recognize the importance of security and give it priority and budget. 
* It succeeds off a commitment to staying in pace or ahead of evolving technology and legislation (GDPR is now a norm versus a future goal).
* It thrives when there’s an early commitment to the processes and tools required for proper security.

From my early conversations with leadership at Ashby, it was evident that all the above was very mature given the size of the company. That makes the opportunity of taking security to the next level an exciting opportunity and one I was excited to drive. 

## Why I Chose to Come to Ashby

Beyond the company’s commitment to security, Ashby for me is the people and the product. Throughout my career, I’ve seen the limitations of various Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS’) from both hiring and candidate perspectives. Ashby, however, stands out with its thoughtful approach and dedication to improving the hiring landscape.

From my first interactions with the team, I was impressed by the humility and professionalism of everyone at Ashby. This is a company where people genuinely care about their work and each other. And as importantly for me, Ashby treats security as a first-class product, recognizing its critical importance. The leadership at Ashby understands that investing in security and staying well ahead of industry norms is essential. This forward-thinking approach makes Ashby an exciting place to work and ensures that, as a Security leader, I feel valued.

## What I Hope to Achieve at Ashby

At a high level, the goal of Information Security is to protect the:

* **Confidentiality of information**: For instance, keep the data of individuals confidential as public exposure might cause them harm.
* **Integrity of information**: For instance, ensure their data cannot be tampered with so that hiring decisions can be trusted.
* **Availability of information**: For instance, make sure Ashby customers can use the Ashby system since there might be a financial loss for them if they can't.

My goal is to enhance our security measures across all these even further; it’s critical work that requires a proactive and comprehensive approach.

I believe that security measures need to be implemented in a way that doesn’t get in the way of employees or customers doing their work. Apart from just implementing security measures, security should be consulting the business on how to conduct their tasks in a secure fashion. I see security as the department of “How,” not “No.”

I plan to build on the strong foundation already in place by:

* Implementing stronger controls and processes in corporate, product, and cloud security — while still keeping the user experience in mind
* Ensuring we continue to meet international standards (such as GDPR, CCPA, and New York’s AI Bias Law)
* Using my Security and IT experience to support the development of excellent features and guidance that help our customers fulfill their compliance obligations
* Addressing any concerns directly and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to security and privacy

Being part of Ashby means joining a team dedicated to making a meaningful impact. I’m excited to contribute to our mission of improving the hiring process for companies and candidates alike. Together, we’ll continue to set new standards in the industry, ensuring that security remains a key part of our success.

I want to end by thanking the Ashby team for the warm welcome. I’m delighted to be here and look forward to working with everyone.

More on why Frank Weigel joined Ashby as Head of Security and IT.

A Letter from Frank Weigel, Head of Security

At Ashby, we don't have a long-term product roadmap. We've decided to take this approach for a number of reasons. In this post, we'll outline these reasons and our broader product philosophy.

## The problem with long-term roadmaps

While many companies publish 12+ month roadmaps, providing a sense of visibility of what is to come, they very often miss deadlines or kill features altogether, leaving their customers disappointed. Oftentimes, customers will also put off investment in additional tools (or hold out switching vendors) because they are expecting the promised functionality to be released on time. When that does not happen, they are stuck with a solution that does not meet their business needs.

Even if vendors deliver on all of their commitments on their long-term roadmap in time (something I personally have not seen in the past), this approach to product development still has a major issue: It is unclear if what was put on the roadmap 9-12 months ago is still the most pressing issue for customers.

I'm writing this in 2024, and if we look back at the last four years in the recruiting industry, the above point should be clear. The problems TA teams faced were wildly different every 6-9 months. On top of that, we witnessed a step-function improvement in AI capabilities that significantly changed the kind of functionality vendors could deliver.

## Why are long-term roadmaps so common?

There are a number of good reasons long-term roadmaps are used so frequently, despite their downsides.

[Enterprise customers](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/culture/series-c#expanding-into-enterprise-while-keeping-startups-front-&-center), understandably, want to know how the vendors they bet on will evolve over the coming years. But because long-term roadmaps are so often missed, we believe they mostly bring a misleading sense of comfort.

Vendors often feel the need to resort to long-term roadmaps because customers are pointing to significant gaps in their products. The vendor may not be able to address these issues quickly enough, so these "complaints" are turned into functionality that is added to the promised roadmap to buy time to solve them. Such vendors will also often use the allure of the future roadmap to help close deals despite missing product functionality.

## Ashby's Approach

**First and foremost, we're focused on product velocity**. We think that how often we ship *meaningful* product improvements is one of the most important metrics to track. It leads to fewer gaps in the product and, as a result, reduces the need to make forward-looking promises.

**Second, we make commitments to invest in specific product areas (instead of individual features)**. We've staffed all of our core product areas, Core ATS, Scheduling, CRM, Analytics, Enterprise, and Usability (and now AI), to ensure they receive ongoing improvements over time. This should give you an idea of what to plan for, as you don't need to worry that a specific product area will stagnate.

**Lastly, we have priorities within each of these product areas**. This is where we get to the exciting part — what do we pick to build and how? There are three main inputs to that:

1. Customer feedback (we look at both the impact of the potential change and the quantity of the request)
2. Our long-term product vision for each of these product areas
3. Changes in the market (e.g., [new legislation around Salary Transparency](https://www.ashbyhq.com/product-updates/pay-transparency-feature-announcment))

We are constantly reviewing the above, and it drives how we pick the next set of projects within each product area.

This means at any given point in time, we'll have several product updates that we know will be released in the next 1-3 months. At the same time, we're constantly evaluating what should come next based on your input.

For individual feature requests, this means they either have an ETA in the next 1-3 months or no ETA. No ETA certainly does not mean we won't ship an update for this request; it simply means we have not committed to it yet because we haven't started work on it yet. So, we're keeping it in the backlog as a candidate to be prioritized when the next set of projects in the relevant product area are completed.

There's one more benefit to this approach that is worth calling out: In addition to our ongoing major releases, we also ship dozens of smaller but impactful improvements that never make it onto the formal roadmap (which also means they don't have a public timeline). Vendors that cram their entire Engineering schedule with pre-planned releases lose the ability to invest in iterative and ongoing polish. Often, these smaller improvements have the strongest impact on day-to-day users of a product (and they come as a surprise and delight moments for our users).

## Interfacing with our CS & Product teams

We view all of our customers who provide material customer feedback as design partners. While we don't have a formal program today, our CS team works very closely with customers to understand their unique needs and how some of them should translate into future product improvements. They are always in sync with the product team and will often loop in individual Product Managers to connect with customers directly on individual product areas.

## Never say never

We may not keep this approach to long-term roadmaps forever. We continuously evaluate how to evolve our product development practice (once again, based on your feedback!).

But for now, we believe strongly that focusing on product velocity, [close partnership with customers](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/culture/series-c#investment-in-customer-success), agility in our roadmap, and not overpromising but rather surprising and delighting are the right way to go.

Ashby's perspective on product roadmaps and why we focused on product velocity instead.

Why Ashby Focuses on Product Velocity Over Long-Term Roadmaps

As a founder it is most enjoyable to fundraise when you’re trying to accelerate something that is already going really well. We’ve been fortunate to be in that position since our public launch in September 2022. Today I’m excited to announce our $30M Series C.

We had planned this round for later in the year, but were presented with strong offers earlier than expected that provided a healthy up-round from our Series B.

Of course we’re very excited. Of course we’ll continue to invest in Product and Engineering. Of course we’ll also continue to scale our Customer Success teams and Go-To-Market motion. But my goal with this post is to go a bit beyond a regular financing announcement and provide a bit more visibility into where we’re at and what’s next at Ashby. 

## Starting with a Thank You

Before we get into details, I want to start with a huge thank you to our customers. It goes without saying that we would not be here without you. Many of you have been early believers in what we’re doing. Virtually all of you have continued to shape Ashby’s product over the recent years by being highly engaged users sharing incredibly valuable feedback.

You’ve also simply been a huge joy to work alongside. For many of you the last few years have not been easy; that makes your partnership with us even more meaningful.

Next, I want to thank the entire Ashby team. You all have delivered exceptional and consistent execution over the last two years. I frequently get notes from customers and other founders about how much we’ve accomplished with a relatively small team. Your work has let us achieve outlier performance in a challenging market.

## Picking a Partner for this Round

We were fortunate to receive multiple competitive term sheets. In the end, we decided to go with Lachy Groom, who also led our seed round and has a deep understanding of how we operate, which is nicely summed up in this message I received when he extended his offer:

![](/images/lachy-text.png)

We’re excited by this vote of confidence. Other existing investors including Elad Gil, F-Prime, and Y Combinator joined this round as well.

Lachy’s note also gives you a sense of what comes next: a continued focus on strong, consistent execution.

Raising money, in and of itself, is by no means a guarantor of future success. We’ll take this moment to reflect on the progress we’ve made in the 19 months since we publicly launched, but then we’re quickly getting back to work.

While we have grown revenue >6x since our Series B and we’re now serving over 1,300 customers (a count that’s quickly growing). We are by no means complacent. 

There remains a lot left to be done and there’s still a huge gap between what we offer today and our ultimate ambition of building truly exceptional software for the talent community.

## Our Opportunity & Ambition

We started working on Ashby in late 2018 with the key insight that the work talent teams were doing had changed drastically from the ~2010s (you can read more about our story [here](https://www.ashbyhq.com/story)).

Recruiting Operations was becoming an increasingly common function. Data was being used to inform more and more decisions. Talent teams were buying a lot of additional tools to plug gaps that had opened up between the prior generation of recruiting software and where TA teams were headed.

At that time, both Abhik and I were very involved in hiring and embedded ourselves with our recruiting teams. We quickly found ourselves thinking: modern TA teams deserve better and more powerful software.

Today, we’ve accomplished a good amount of our “v1 vision.” We have enabled TA teams to use a single, powerful product to run their entire recruiting process across candidate CRM, ATS, and scheduling automation. And we’ve helped TA teams become more data-driven with our uniquely powerful recruiting analytics functionality.

But there’s a lot more to do. Advancements in AI allow a whole set of new functionality that wasn’t thinkable a couple years ago. You’ve seen early versions of this in the Ashby product but there’s a lot more to come. 

Beyond AI, we’re still just scratching the surface of what’s possible when bringing all key TA workflows into a single tool that’s built on a single technology platform. In many areas of the product we’re now spending more energy on “polish and delight.” That means we’ll make many of our most powerful features more accessible and ensure that Ashby continues to do more for you.

The following has been on our [careers page](https://www.ashbyhq.com/careers) since the day we started Ashby and you can think of it as one of our guiding principles:

*We are continuously disappointed by the state of software products today —software should be more intelligent, powerful, and do much more for us. Today, most business software is still a simple database with few delightful and truly helpful features.*

While we’re excited about our progress to date, this “north star” keeps us focused on all the ways in which we want to improve Ashby in the coming months and years.

## Investment in Customer Success

We also understand that your experience with Ashby goes well beyond the product we offer. From day one, we’ve invested deeply in Customer Success and many of you have shared with us how much of an impact that has had on your experience with Ashby.

Excellent customer success is notoriously hard to scale. We’re committed to spending the time, energy, and money to make it happen. We’ve made a number of key hires across our Success teams in the last few months, including our new Head of Support, [Allie Hurley](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allie-hurley-75557b89/). She most recently led Support at ClickUp and will help us expand our support team and further improve our product documentation and self-service capabilities.

## Expanding into Enterprise While Keeping Startups Front & Center

Since our Series B, we’ve extended our reach into the Enterprise segment and we’re now working with some of the largest and fastest growing technology companies (many of which we can’t name just yet!). We’ve made deep product investments here, including our unique [integration with Workday](https://www.ashbyhq.com/customers/aurora-solar). We believe that our focus on customizability and automation makes us a unique fit for [Enterprise companies](https://www.ashbyhq.com/enterprise) that are scaling out of legacy solutions.

While not easy, at the same time we are keeping [early stage startups](https://www.ashbyhq.com/startups) front and center as we continue to improve Ashby. We believe that startups keep us honest in our pursuit of providing best-in-class UX. Startups also serve as a strong foundation for future growth as breakout companies start and scale on Ashby. Rather than the status quo of scaling out of an ATS, our promise to startups is a robust system that scales with them, ensuring they can put talent front and center from day one. 

## Join us - We’re Hiring!

Of course we’re continuing to ([thoughtfully](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/culture/ashbys-operating-principles#5---be-frustratingly-patient-about-hiring)) grow our own team. No fundraising announcement would be complete without a shout out to our [open roles](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ashby). We also continuously hire for roles that you may not see posted right now. If you want to be considered for these roles as they open, you can join our [talent community](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/Ashby/form/ashby-talent-community) which we review whenever we open and post new roles.

## Thank you again!

If you made it this far: Thanks a lot for your interest in Ashby, whether you’re a customer, prospect, candidate, or partner. If you like to stay in touch with updates we recommend following our [LinkedIn page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/ashbyhq/).

Onward, upward and back to work! 📈

This post goes a bit beyond a regular financing announcement and provide a bit more visibility into where Ashby is at and what’s next for the company.


Announcing Ashby’s $30M Series C - Doing More of What We Already Do, Just Faster and Better

Jack Hanratty

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have spent the majority of my career being an early GTM hire for U.S. based SaaS Companies with strong presence here in the EMEA region, most notably at LinkedIn and Asana. Both of these companies went on to support thousands of customers across the region in a manner that’s already taking shape here at Ashby.

At both LinkedIn and Asana, the following was true:

1. **Disruptive Technology**: They had a strong belief (validated by thousands of early customers) that the technology was transforming a space that hadn’t seen innovation either ever or in quite some time.
2. **Early Global Success**: EMEA was already seeing strong, organic success with hundreds of successful customers and a local community raving about the power of the product.
3. **Purposeful Culture**: As known to many outside their doors now, LinkedIn & Asana deeply invested in building a culture with a particular emphasis on hiring while enabling talented people to best support their customers in the region. 
4. **Clear Market Opportunity**: EMEA was seen as a key market to unlock in order to drive sustainable growth, whilst thoughtfully acknowledging the local nuances. 

When joining such companies early, it’s not always clear which of these elements are already in play — or if they will ever be. When the opportunity to join Ashby was presented, I became more and more excited as each of the four criteria listed above became apparent through the hiring process. I’m thrilled to have joined and hear similar excitement from the EMEA community we have using the product already. 

For me, joining Ashby represents more than just a career move. It’s also a

* commitment to being a part of a company that is shaping the future of Talent Tech
* statement that Ashby is determined to support talent and people team’s across the EMEA region

## Working for the first company to prioritize me as a hiring manager

I was first introduced to Ashby in 2023 when we became a customer at a previous company. As a hiring manager for over 10 years, I was disappointed that Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS’s) hadn’t evolved in line with other tech. I had already seen the evolution of sales tech firsthand, yet it was still taking me far too long to find and engage with talent. I struggled to align internal stakeholders and make data-informed decisions at the speed needed to maintain sales momentum. That changed once I started using Ashby. 

As a GTM leader, talent has always been my number one operating priority. Every second that my requisition is not filled it costs me and my business money. The speed at which I can fill that seat matters. However, the cost of filling that seat incorrectly is far more costly. Combine that with an economy that is focusing us on efficient growth and suddenly both speed and [Quality of Hire](https://www.ashbyhq.com/product-updates/quality-of-hire-surveys) matter more than ever. I strongly believe that Ashby has built an [All-in-One](https://www.ashbyhq.com/growth) solution that can help teams best achieve that.

## My role as Head of GTM, EMEA

Working from my home here in Dublin, I am thrilled to be:

* **Leading our sales efforts in EMEA** by hiring a diverse, international team and driving collaboration across our EMEA GTM business to ensure our prospects and customers are as well served as possible.
* **Engaging and partnering with the Talent/People community** to understand what Talent Technology should look like in EMEA now and for the next 10 years.
* **Elevate the talent profession across EMEA** by providing talent teams with the best data and technology to do your best hiring — something I’m excited to make use of soon.  

If you’re among the impressive EMEA companies using Ashby, attending our community dinners in EMEA, or have simply been following the journey so far — please get in touch.

Jack

P.S. [Request a demo here](https://www.ashbyhq.com/request-demo). ;)

Seasoned EMEA sales leader Jack Hanratty shares his excitement for Ashby and what he'll be prioritizing in his new role. 

A Letter from Jack Hanratty on Joining Ashby

Kat Fergerson

I watched Ashby come onto the HR tech scene out of nowhere. It was 2022, the market was starting to withdraw from hiring — and bam! Ashby hit the scene with momentum. They were: 

* thoughtful about culture (see [Thoughtful Communication](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/culture/thoughtful-communication) practices and using [Operating Principles](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/culture/ashbys-operating-principles) instead of values)
* had a highly differentiated product
* had a vision and founding story that resonated
* genuine brand fans

As head of marketing for a DEI tech company at the time, I watched them gain traction in the marketplace. We soon had overlapping customers, and it made sense to explore a more strategic partnership. Our meet cute: Transform 2023 (shout out to Samara Jaffe and team!). We strategized on integrations, mapped out event opportunities, and have been close partners ever since.

When the opportunity came up to work together more directly, it was an easy yes. Soon after, I joined as Head of Partnerships. 

While I have a relatively unconventional partnerships background as a previous head of marketing, I’ve worked with some of the best brands in the world to launch and scale their programs. And that’s the exciting opportunity here. From launching new revenue streams through digital innovation at adidas, to building Bird’s partner ecosystem marketing programs, to scaling Mathison’s Equity Index, I feel uniquely positioned for this new opportunity with Ashby.

## Why I’m Excited About Ashby: The Hiring Excellence Opportunity

Ashby has an impressive foundation:

**Clear Founding Vision**

[Benji and Abhik’s firsthand experiences](https://www.ashbyhq.com/story) with the limitations of traditional hiring processes and their drive to innovate resonates deeply with me. They've built something that not only addresses their pain points but also elevates the [hiring experience](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/hiring-excellence-framework) significantly.

**Exceptional Product**

Ashby's product isn't just functional – it’s setting the standard. Its ability to generate genuine enthusiasm from customers is indicative of its value and potential.

**Commitment to Talent Leaders**

Talent leaders are historically underserved and Ashby’s mission addresses that gap. They’re also committed to supporting the wider RecOps community who’ve been hit especially hard by layoffs ([1 in 2 recruiting professionals have been laid off](https://recruitment.com/recommendations/recruiter-layoffs)).

Through the hundreds of conversations I’ve already had with people leaders about how to build inclusive hiring practices, capture accurate reporting, and get a seat at the table for their Talent initiatives, I see a huge opportunity for Ashby to be the platform that operationalizes what hiring should be.

## What I’ll Be Focusing On: Partnerships at Ashby

My goal is to build a best-in-class partnership program that accelerates Ashby’s growth and amplifies our impact across the TA community. Partnerships is a gigantic discipline. There are about a hundred different ways I could run with this. To start, I’ll be focused on: 

1. **Making it incredibly easy to recommend Ashby**: This includes providing outsized value to startups in order to become the default ATS recommended by VCs & Accelerators.
2. **Helping experts close (and renew!) business**: This means enabling the growing ecosystem of consultants, recruitment agencies, and fractional talent leaders with the tools, benefits, and resources to be successful Ashby implementers.
3. **Giving our customers access to the tech stack they need**: This includes expanding our integration ecosystem and investing in strategic partnerships.

As I step into this role, I’m excited about the possibilities ahead. A lot of you will likely hear from me in the coming weeks as I look to deepen existing relationships and build new ones in the broader recruiting and talent communities. 

I’d love to hear from you if you're a:

* VC/Accelerator and interested in being part of our VC program
* consultant, recruiting agency, or fractional talent advisor interested in our referral program
* leader in the HR tech space interested in building best-in-class, mutually beneficial technical integrations

I have to give a huge thank you to the team, especially Harriet, Shannon, Lindsay, and Benji, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to an incredible mission and company.

Onwards,

Kat

P.S. LinkedIn connections are welcome!

Why Kat joined, what's exciting her about the opportunity, and how her focus on Partnerships will take shape. 

A Letter from Kat Fergerson on Joining Ashby

Jim Miller

Last week was my first as the VP of People and Talent at Ashby, and I’m humbled to have my first opportunity to lead a People function. The new role comes with input into the product roadmap and the interesting scope of both helping the internal team refine and deploy our hiring excellence framework, and also to help systematise and scale it for Ashby customers. This brings me into a thriving community of recruiters and TA professionals with whom I’m delighted to work.

  

For anybody that knows me – working with cutting edge technology and getting to help build and scale systems and processes is very much my bag of crisps. Needless to say, I’m excited to be here.

  

Usually I would stop here for a well-deserved series of thanks, but first I wanted to expand on why I joined and what I hope to achieve, so here we go. (You’ll find the thanks at the end instead.)

  

## Why I joined

  

As a little bit of context, I started my career like many recruiters – accidentally (thanks to a conversation with [Mike Fetters](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikefetters/)). I spent 15 years at Google, the last 5 of which involved leading the global online talent channels among other teams. I always wore a systems hat, and highlights of my Google time included helping to architect gHire, their internal ATS, and supporting LinkedIn’s advisory board for EMEA.

  

With Google’s scale and volume, it was easy to form hypotheses on how to test and improve the processes, though we always had to be careful how we implemented them due to the scale of change management required across roughly a hundred countries, and thousands of open requisitions at any one time.

  

Moving to Fullstory was my opportunity to implement what I had always thought would be an optimal recruiting strategy, leading with all the learning I had been gathering from previous roles and my teams’ own learnings. FullStory focused on helping the world have better digital experiences; thousands of companies build better and optimise their products accurately thanks to it. I’m proud of what we achieved, especially in the area of inbound-first hiring strategies.

  

Underpinning the talent side and all this growth and experimentation was Ashby.

  

We initially worked with Ashby’s Analytics product in 2021 – it was the most powerful and easy-to-use tool I had seen in the TA space. For the first time, my team could self-serve just about any data request. Without trying to be everything for everyone it, in so many ways, improved the day-to-day experience of my team. Without overstating, Ashby’s All-in-one is the best recruiting software I have worked with – data-driven, recruiter-built, and efficient, with a responsive support system that has everything I would want in an ATS.

  

While tools don’t shape the culture of a team, I believe they are either the enabler or barrier to realising the culture the team is trying to build. Ashby enabled us to start to realise the process excellence we knew the team was capable of – and the result was a focus on a more representative, higher quality way of hiring.

  

Suffice to say: I’m a fan. Ashby is a tool I’m genuinely so humbled and excited to get to help support now.

  

## Finding cultural excellence

  

One of the most significant reasons I joined the team was the people. After working at organisations like Google and Fullstory with so many smart, hard working, and passionate people, culture is always a critical consideration for me.

  

Working with [Benji](https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminencz/), [Abhik](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhikpramanik/) and [Kyra](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyra-vargas-739b03b1/) as a customer over the past 2 years has always been such a pleasure. They always listened to what our teams needed and helped us build the new dashboards, ship new features, and operate as a partner instead of a vendor. It’s the people that make a company what it is, and I truly believe that these people are making Ashby into the next greatest tool in recruiting.

  

## An honest reflection on the TA space today

  

While I’m so happy to be at Ashby I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that it wasn’t a seamless journey into this role. It’s damn tough out there right now. The realities of the macroeconomic environment is that many great people in TA are without a role and are on the job market.

  

My manager and I had an honest conversation in January about this potential reality before I went out on paternity leave for my son, Eric, and so over my paternity leave I applied for hundreds of jobs. 2 months in, I plucked up the courage to pitch myself to Benji. It took many hours of calls with many people around the team before we decided it was a good match, and the business needed someone with my skills and experience.

  

All to say, it is hard, I know it is hard, but keep knocking on doors, get creative, and one will open – I’m also always open to chat if you want to connect.

  

## What’s next

  

You’re going to hear a lot from me in helping the Ashby team and product to continue to scale. If you have any suggestions or want a soundboard anything TA – reach out.

  

I want to thank the incredible team at Fullstory for an amazing 2 years and the opportunity to lead their talent function, and then thank [Ian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/isharp/), [Eric](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericthomas99/), [Kristina](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristina-graci-deluna-a0b335/), [Darcy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/darcy-casarella-39300a1/), [Peter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterclarkee/), [Dan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dkagdis/), [Ashley](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-dutra-2944301b/), [Lena McAfee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-mcafee/), [Luke Anderton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukeanderton/), [Greg Garrison](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gdgarrison/), and, of course, [Gabby](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielle-sirner-cohen-1896015/) & [Scott](https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmvoigt/) at FullStory for their incredible support and advice on job search journey I’ve had.
I’d also like to thank you for reading! I’m looking forward to saying more soon.

Jim
    
P.S. [Request an Ashby demo!](https://www.ashbyhq.com/request-demo)

Ashby welcomes the incomparable Jim Miller as our new VP of People & Talent -- here's his thoughts on joining the team.

Ashby Culture

A Letter from Frank Weigel, Head of Security

Why Ashby Focuses on Product Velocity Over Long-Term Roadmaps

Announcing Ashby’s $30M Series C - Doing More of What We Already Do, Just Faster and Better

A Letter from Jack Hanratty on Joining Ashby

A Letter from Kat Fergerson on Joining Ashby

A Letter from Jim Miller on Joining Ashby

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Ashby Culture

A Letter from Frank Weigel, Head of Security

Why Ashby Focuses on Product Velocity Over Long-Term Roadmaps

Announcing Ashby’s $30M Series C - Doing More of What We Already Do, Just Faster and Better

A Letter from Jack Hanratty on Joining Ashby

A Letter from Kat Fergerson on Joining Ashby

A Letter from Jim Miller on Joining Ashby

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