

Whispered Hiring
Whispered.com & Frontlines.io
Whispered Hiring - the podcast where we talk with senior GTM leaders about how they find, vet, attract and grow new talent. Hosted by the team at Whispered, each episode uncovers the unwritten playbook for executive hiring that drives exponential growth.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Aug 13, 2025 • 43min
Whispered Hiring with Connor Fee - COO @ Fathom.ai
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Connor Fee, COO at Fathom.ai, about his systematic approach to scaling operations across revenue, data, and finance functions at a 100-person company. Drawing from his leadership experience at UserVoice, Clearbit, Shortcut, and Winning by Design, Connor reveals how he transformed a company lacking leadership culture into an aligned executive team and shares his counterintuitive hiring methodologies. His insights demonstrate how AI-powered interview analysis can eliminate traditional hiring blind spots while accelerating senior talent evaluation.
Topics discussed:
How Connor conducted a three-day executive offsite that moved from "knockdown screaming match" over a game of Fishbowl to establishing four company-wide goals that directly dictate hiring priorities, transforming reactive backfilling into strategic talent acquisition aligned with business outcomes.
The "WHO method" scorecard methodology for senior roles that forces executive alignment by defining four specific six-month outcomes before considering candidates, including Connor's example of requiring five iterations to align on what their head of data would actually accomplish.
Connor's systematic approach to hiring unfamiliar roles: conducting 10-15 discovery interviews with finance leaders across PLG and non-PLG companies, then using Fathom's AI to extract common hiring mistakes and build targeted interview frameworks for functions outside his expertise.
The "top 10 strengths" phone screen technique that reveals self-awareness and coachability - Connor pushes candidates through the awkwardness of identifying strengths 7-10 using follow-up prompts like "What would your boss say?" and can predict final hiring outcomes based solely on how they navigate this discomfort.
Advanced reference check methodology that bypasses positive bias: asking "What was their biggest challenge way back when you worked with them?" to create temporal distance, then following with "This person told me you'd say their challenge was X - would you agree?" to give references explicit permission to elaborate on known weaknesses.
Implementation of RAPID decision framework to eliminate cross-functional bottlenecks, with Connor explicitly defining himself as "decider" while giving his CEO veto power and telling his team that input will be "taken very seriously" but final decisions aren't democratic.
AI-powered candidate screening using Ashby's pattern-matching against five ideal LinkedIn profiles to automatically score and surface top 10% of applicants, with Connor noting "it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to get us to the top 10%" to solve signal-to-noise problems.
The daily 30-minute check-in onboarding protocol for senior hires combined with shared Asana boards for queuing non-urgent questions, ensuring new executives are never more than 8 hours away from getting unstuck during their first three weeks while maintaining Connor's availability for immediate issues.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Aug 6, 2025 • 39min
Whispered Hiring With Alan Stein - CEO @ Kadima Careers
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Alan Stein, CEO of Kadima Careers and former post-sales/CS leader at Salesforce, Tableau, and Facebook, about his systematic approach to executive hiring after interviewing 500+ candidates at Google. Alan reveals the hidden reality that most senior roles are designed around specific people before posting, and shares the tactical frameworks that separate the 5% of standout candidates from those who unknowingly eliminate themselves. His insights expose the gap between what executives think matters in hiring versus what actually drives decisions behind closed doors.
Topics discussed:
The proactive role design strategy where Alan created positions around specific talent, including how he enhanced an escalation management role by incorporating predictive telemetry capabilities after the candidate suggested preventing escalations rather than just managing them.
The structured four-phase interview evaluation that 90% of interviews follow: recruiter knockout screen for location/comp/qualifications, hiring manager assessment for cultural fit + capability, loop interviews with specific behavioral/technical components, and the tactical "questions from you" phase where executives frequently self-eliminate.
Why LinkedIn optimization has replaced resume strategy for executive hiring, with specific examples of how Andy landed multiple unicorn roles without ever submitting a traditional resume, and the structured approach to making your profile function as an effective landing page.
The contrarian "take every interview to completion" philosophy, including Alan's real example of an offer being rescinded for being overqualified due to resource expectations from Google, and how to position yourself when pursuing roles below your traditional level.
Alan's Gmail monetization case study that he used across 500+ Google interviews to evaluate general cognitive ability through market sizing, pros/cons analysis, and executive recommendation synthesis—adaptable across companies for assessing strategic thinking under pressure.
The back-channel reference methodology that circumvents provided references, including the tactical approach of identifying LinkedIn mutual connections with stronger relationships to you than the candidate, and the "only respond if awesome" communication framework.
How acquiring company-specific terminology differentiates you from 95% of candidates through strategic intelligence gathering—V2 MOMs at Salesforce, XFNs (cross-functional networks) at Facebook—rather than generic research that anyone can Google.
The advocate cultivation system for breaking into target companies, where Alan explains identifying decision-maker influencers who can bypass the thousands of posted applicants by getting your profile directly in front of hiring managers before formal processes begin.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jul 30, 2025 • 36min
Whispered Hiring with Mollie Bodensteiner - SVP of Operations @ Engine
When 70% year-over-year growth meets precision hiring, you get Mollie Bodensteiner's playbook. Instead of posting roles and drowning in LinkedIn noise, she's built Engine's operations engine through whispered networks and ruthless outcome definition. Her contrarian approach reveals why the best senior ops hires never see job boards—and why silence from new hires should terrify you more than any red flag.
From converting enablement pros into RevOps stars to using AI-era case studies that actually work, Mollie shares battle-tested frameworks for scaling teams when every hire matters and every miss costs months.
Topics discussed:
Working backwards from business outcomes to avoid organizational cargo cult hiring — Defining revenue targets, operational efficiency metrics, and market expansion goals first, then mapping scope and handoffs to prevent territorial conflicts during hypergrowth phases, rather than defaulting to "we need a CMO because we don't have one."
The two-week referral sprint methodology that eliminates job postings — Running network-first sourcing through VCs for pattern recognition and backdoor reference checks, using strategic investors as talent validators rather than just sourcing engines, before considering external postings that generate noise over signal.
Testing ICP thinking through the "describe yellow to someone blind" framework — Mollie's signature interview question that reveals how candidates adapt complex concepts to audience limitations and constraints, directly mirroring the core GTM challenge of messaging to prospects with different contexts and pain points.
Why enablement-to-operations career paths outperform traditional ops hiring — Converting people who teach processes into systems operators since they already understand stakeholder management and translation challenges that pure systems thinkers often struggle with in cross-functional environments.
The AI-resistant case study evaluation system using assumption mapping — Structuring 45-minute presentations focused on questioning and thought process rather than deliverables, specifically asking "what did you wish you knew that you didn't ask" to reveal reasoning patterns that ChatGPT can't replicate.
Daily communication protocols over structured onboarding documentation — Using Slack canvases for async question capture with three-times-weekly check-ins, since silence in the first two weeks indicates disengagement more reliably than any other early-stage performance metric.
The restaurant analogy for 90-day relationship crystallization — Explaining to new hires that working relationships solidify like choosing familiar restaurants after exploring a new town, requiring active feedback exchange during the exploration phase before patterns become permanent.
Systematic fresh-eyes capture through challenge permission protocols — Explicitly authorizing new hires to question status quo decisions with "see something, say something" frameworks, since hypergrowth companies lose decision rationale faster than they can document it.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jul 23, 2025 • 50min
Whispered Hiring with James Roth - CRO @ ZoomInfo
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with James Roth, Chief Revenue Officer at ZoomInfo, about his systematic approach to executive hiring at scale. Having risen from door-knocking outside sales to leading GTM at the company behind the literal GTM ticker symbol, James reveals how ZoomInfo maintains hiring velocity while raising the bar—processing thousands of applications for senior roles while consistently identifying transformational talent. His frameworks challenge hiring orthodoxy and expose the operational realities of talent acquisition at publicly traded SaaS companies.
Topics discussed:
The organizational design trap of proliferative C-suite titles—why "Chief Customer Officer" reporting to a "Chief Revenue Officer" creates catastrophic metric misalignment, and James's framework for determining when executive roles should be peers versus hierarchical based on outcome ownership.
The "calculator test" interrogation methodology for sales hires—how asking candidates to pull out calculators and walk through quota math, accelerator tiers, and deal timing exposes the difference between genuine 300% achievers and those gaming ramp periods or small quotas.
Why 90% of VP+ hires come from ZoomInfo's customer and vendor ecosystem rather than posted roles—the systematic approach to tracking prospects across 3+ year cycles and leveraging the unique advantage of selling directly to GTM executives who become hiring targets.
The three-minute constraint framework that replaces traditional behavioral interviews—"Tell me who you are and why you're here in exactly three minutes" as a forcing function to evaluate message discipline, prioritization under pressure, and executive presence without scripted responses.
Performance-background candidate sourcing beyond traditional athletics—targeting former founders, professional performers, and anyone conditioned to harsh feedback cycles, contrasting this with candidates from "everybody gets a trophy" environments who crumble under constructive criticism.
Strategic CEO involvement architecture—James's model for identifying specific hiring categories (upmarket roles, remote candidates, manager+ levels) that require executive oversight versus granting complete autonomy, avoiding the bottleneck trap while maintaining quality control.
The daily one-on-one onboarding intensive—forcing new executives through 50+ stakeholder meetings in 30 days, immediate MOR presentation accountability at 2.5 weeks, and structured "pop quiz" knowledge validation to compress traditional 6-month learning curves.
Leveraging sales prospect intelligence for talent acquisition—systematically tracking exceptional performers who attempt to sell to ZoomInfo leadership, building multi-year talent pipelines through vendor relationship management and customer success touchpoints.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jul 16, 2025 • 35min
Whispered Hiring with Josh Roth - VP Revenue @ Gorgias
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Josh Roth, VP of Global Sales at Gorgias, about his systematic approach to scaling revenue organizations through strategic internal development and disciplined hiring execution. Drawing from his experience leading sales at LOB and now building go-to-market at the AI-powered no-code automation platform, Josh shares tactical frameworks for evaluating promotion readiness, executing network-driven recruitment at scale, and making data-driven hiring decisions that drive sustainable growth. His insights reveal how rigorous talent evaluation and development methodology can differentiate high-performing revenue teams.
Topics discussed:
Why the three most dangerous promotion transitions (SDR to AE, BDR manager to Sales manager, Director to VP of Revenue) consistently fail due to delegation and prioritization skill gaps, and how to identify readiness beyond performance metrics.
The counterintuitive reality is that sales leaders who avoid selling make catastrophic AE managers—why mastering "internal sales" (securing resources, influence, cross-functional support) is more predictive of management success than quota attainment.
How Josh's network-driven recruitment strategy consistently generates 7-10 qualified candidates from targeted connections while avoiding the "inbox management" trap of public postings—including his AI-powered candidate identification process through Pipefy's platform.
The context-driven interviewing methodology that replaces structured question lists: giving candidates specific situational context about role challenges and evaluating granular specificity in their response stories to separate real experience from rehearsed answers.
Why Josh's comprehensive back-channeling approach for every hire focuses on consistency patterns (like "high standards") rather than universal approval, and how he coaches candidates to expect and embrace this process.
The 91-day performance identification framework: specific milestone mapping (day 1: communication systems, week 1: customer outreach, month 1: first opportunity generation) and why leaders own the outcome if they retain underperformers beyond month 3.
How high-performing ICs often provide more valuable hiring insights than managers from other functions, and why targeting your best individual contributors for candidate referrals generates a superior pipeline than traditional executive networking.
The behavioral input evaluation system that predicts sales success: measuring customer proximity, attention to execution detail, and evidence of legitimate effort as leading indicators, particularly for new hires struggling with initial outcomes but demonstrating correct process adherence.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jul 9, 2025 • 37min
Whispered Hiring with Tim Dorris - CRO @ Stensul
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Tim Dorris, Chief Revenue Officer at Stensul, about his systematic approach to hiring executive talent that goes far beyond traditional resume screening. With six years of leadership at Stensul and experience scaling revenue organizations, Tim shares his methodology for identifying the top 10% of executive candidates through outcome-based scorecards, deep historical analysis, and unconventional selling tactics. His insights reveal how to build bulletproof hiring processes that attract A-players while maintaining rigorous standards in today's noisy talent market.
Topics discussed:
How to create outcome-based scorecards collaboratively with founders, people leaders, and direct reports rather than jumping straight to job descriptions, ensuring alignment on what success actually looks like in the first 6-12 months.
The "Who" methodology's "top grade" interview technique—a 90-minute chronological deep dive through every role in a candidate's career that uncovers patterns, motivations, and red flags that traditional interviews miss entirely.
Why Tim positions himself as the first interviewer after recruiter screening to maintain tight feedback loops and prevent his team from wasting time on misaligned candidates, despite the time investment.
The strategic approach to reference checking that leverages the top grade process to identify specific former managers, peers, and direct reports rather than accepting candidates' self-selected references.
How to evaluate whether candidates can step up from individual contributor to manager roles by testing for cross-functional project experience and the ability to manage managers, not just execute within a territory.
Tim's "going all in" candidate courting strategies, including traveling to meet prospects in their cities, involving them in team events like karaoke nights, and creating presentation-style offer processes that mirror executive sales proposals.
The counterintuitive requirement that all executive hires become product demo-certified and master individual contributor skills rather than managing purely through dashboards, ensuring hands-on leadership capability.
Why posting roles publicly still works despite AI-generated application volume, and how to balance broad visibility with targeted recruiting through networks and warm introductions.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jul 2, 2025 • 34min
Whispered Hiring with Evan Huck - CEO & Co-Founder @ UserEvidence
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Evan Huck, CEO & Co-Founder of UserEvidence, about his systematic approach to executive hiring while scaling from zero to 40 employees. As a former AE turned CEO who still interviews every single hire, Evan shares advanced frameworks for role architecture, candidate evaluation differentiation by function, and decision-making processes that prevent costly mis-hires. His methodology reveals how early-stage leaders can maintain hiring excellence while building the foundational team that determines long-term trajectory.
Topics discussed:
The role portfolio methodology for unfamiliar executive functions—how Evan mapped his first VP Marketing hire to 50% product marketing, 30% brand, 20% demand gen by conducting discovery interviews with marketers to understand skill set differences, then matching capabilities to company-specific initiatives rather than generic job descriptions.
Function-specific candidate evaluation strategies that match role requirements—why sales candidates must demonstrate multi-threaded outreach to multiple stakeholders during application (testing core job skills), while engineering candidates should follow standard application processes, with marketing requiring essay-based assessments for writing evaluation.
The rationalization identification framework for preventing mis-hires—distinguishing between candidates who make hiring managers "beaming and stoked" versus those who trigger qualification language like "lots of relevant experience" and "really good at this dimension," which signals dangerous rationalization patterns.
Advanced reference call techniques that extract meaningful differentiation—moving beyond checkbox validation to identify "would hire again" versus "top 1% of my career, would move mountains to work with again" responses, plus recognizing the power signal when employed candidates provide current CEO references.
The Socratic overrule method for maintaining hiring standards without undermining manager autonomy—using inception techniques to challenge enthusiasm levels and test conviction through defensive responses rather than direct vetoes, ensuring A-players hire A-players cascading effect.
Skip-level interview strategy as competitive differentiation—how CEO involvement in non-executive hires becomes a closing tool against competitors while serving as cultural bar-raising, with plans to maintain two-level skip interviews through 300+ employees.
The patience-over-urgency principle with quantified decision frameworks—recognizing that 3 weeks of additional search time prevents 4-6 months of performance management, while offering 2-week decompression periods between roles for tenured candidates to reset before multi-year commitments.
Consulting-style aptitude assessment across all roles using problem-solving scenarios unrelated to specific function—evaluating raw IQ, assumption-laying ability, and "chill humble" cultural fit over experience matching, particularly critical for early-career hires where potential trumps track record.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jun 25, 2025 • 32min
Whispered Hiring with Dustin Joost - CRO @ Suralink
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Dustin Joost, CRO at Suralink, about his systematic approach to breaking traditional hiring patterns that create organizational blind spots. From his experience scaling revenue teams from seed stage through public companies, Dustin reveals how talent market dynamics fundamentally alter recruiting strategies and why the best revenue leaders optimize for stage-fit over industry experience. His frameworks challenge executives to rethink what makes candidates "incredibly deadly" in evolving GTM environments.
Topics discussed:
Why optimizing for "complementary excellence" over carbon copies prevents blind spots as businesses mature, and the specific assessment criteria Dustin uses to identify candidates who fill strategic gaps rather than replicate existing team strengths.
The intellectual curiosity + hunger + self-awareness combination that creates "incredible deadliness" through coachability, including how to evaluate these intangibles during interviews and why this trinity outweighs industry-specific experience for executive hires.
How to implement "just-in-time hiring sprints" with 90-day retrospectives covering channel conversion metrics, bottleneck analysis, and specific SLAs for interviewing committees—treating talent acquisition like product development cycles.
The bench pipeline methodology of maintaining 3-5 pre-vetted candidates through weekly conversations, enabling urgency without lowered standards while staying two quarters ahead of hiring needs based on 90-day average time-to-fill benchmarks.
Why non-traditional backgrounds (teachers managing 30 different learning styles, theater actors mastering tension/payoff storytelling) consistently outperform traditional sales hires in complex category creation and enterprise motions.
The "magic wand friction point" interview question that surfaces cross-functional empathy and systems-level problem-solving in one response, revealing how candidates think about their role in the entire customer journey versus lone-wolf mentalities.
How candidates break through noise using creative outbound tactics—commenting on CRO posts for pattern recognition, leveraging second-degree connections with templated referral messages, and demonstrating sales methodology in their own candidacy approach.
The "strategy, structure, people, process" onboarding framework combined with empowerment-then-monitoring approach, using first 30-60 day execution depth (sales leaders running cycles, marketing leaders joining prospect calls) to distinguish managing-up from genuine impact.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jun 18, 2025 • 33min
Whispered Hiring with Ejieme Eromosele - VP of Customer Growth @ Quiq
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Ejieme Eromosele, VP of Customer Growth at Quiq, about her systematic approach to evaluating three-dimensional candidate fit and her tactical frameworks for identifying transferable competencies in non-traditional hires. Drawing from her transition from management consulting at Accenture and PwC to customer experience leadership at The New York Times and now scaling customer success at a Series A startup, Ejieme reveals advanced hiring methodologies that prioritize core capabilities over industry experience.
Topics discussed:
How to evaluate three-dimensional candidate fit: role alignment, team maturity (process-builder vs. operator), and company stage matching—including the "machete vs. map" framework for identifying who thrives in ambiguous startup environments.
Why you need three types of references for leadership hires: manager, peer, and direct report perspectives that reveal candidates who manage up brilliantly but "elbow and knife" their peers to get ahead.
The "keep it real" pre-offer conversation that prevents misaligned hires—inspired by Ejieme's CEO taking her to lunch to honestly explain startup chaos before she joined, saving both parties from a costly mistake.
How top candidates differentiate themselves by explaining your company through customer pain points rather than product features, plus Ejieme's go-to question: "Tell me about a time a customer changed your point of view."
The onboarding template that accelerates cross-functional relationships by pre-mapping new hires to key stakeholders with specific conversation topics, turning generic coffee chats into strategic relationship building.
How to identify transferable skills in atypical hires by focusing on core competencies (leadership, relationship development, business acumen) rather than industry experience—the approach that got Ejieme her first VP role in tech.
Why AI is creating both smarter candidates and more hiring noise, plus tactical considerations for screening authenticity when candidates over-leverage AI research for interviews.
Real-world case study of redesigning roles when AI eliminates 50% of tasks—how Ejieme is creating a hybrid AM/RevOps position and applying the "scale rules" principle for sustainable growth.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Jun 3, 2025 • 33min
Whispered Hiring with Tim Geisenheimer, CRO @ Hatch
In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Tim Geisenheimer, CRO at Hatch, about building high-performing outbound sales teams in the AI era. Drawing from his experience scaling revenue organizations at Twitter, Correlated, and now Hatch, Tim shares tactical frameworks for identifying candidates who thrive in phone-centric environments, conducting scientific reference checks, and managing complex interview processes. His insights reveal how successful CROs are adapting their hiring strategies while maintaining focus on fundamental sales fundamentals that AI hasn't disrupted.
Topics discussed:
Why cold calling remains the dominant channel for B2B enterprise sales despite AI advancement, and how to screen SDRs specifically for phone-centric roles rather than multi-channel generalists.
The "stretch candidate" philosophy borrowed from Jason Lemkin—when to hire someone who hasn't seen your exact growth story before versus requiring proven pattern recognition at your stage and scale.
How to conduct "back-channel" reference checks by intentionally seeking out former colleagues the candidate didn't recommend, and the specific questioning framework that removes hiring bias to focus on management optimization.
The tactical approach to managing multiple candidates through lengthy interview processes—treating it like fundraising orchestration with transparent communication about timelines and decision points.
Why the best senior candidates proactively reach out with personalized research about specific open roles, and how this simple outbound tactic works because so few executives actually do it.
The intellectual curiosity framework for identifying early onboarding red flags—specifically looking for bias-to-action and self-directed learning within the first two weeks at fast-growing companies.
How AI tools like ChatGPT's O3 have raised the baseline expectation for candidate research, making company and role preparation non-negotiable rather than impressive.
The counterintuitive onboarding philosophy for 100-person startups that balances structured enablement with self-directed discovery, expecting new hires to schedule their own CEO meetings and cross-functional conversations.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search


