If you want to learn how to be an exceptional recruitment marketer and employment brand superstar, it might help to listen to a pro at a company that knows a little bit about marketing. That's why we invited Ashlee Gerow, Senior Manager, Employer Brand at HubSpot, to the podcast. From implementing diversity to dicing-up data to creating rich content and much, much more, this Cult Brand series gives hosts Julie Calli, president at RecruitmentMarketing.com and Chad & Cheese plenty to talk about with their guest.
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INTRO (1s):
Hide your kids! Lock the doors! You're listening to HR’s most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheeseman are here to punch the recruiting industry, right where it hurts! Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark, buckle up boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Joel (21s):
Oh yeah. What's up everybody. It's your favorite meathead? AKA the Chad and Cheese podcast. The cult brand series. I'm your co-host Joel Cheeseman joined as always the more recent Robin to my Berry. Chad Sowash and Julie Callie President at Recruitmentmarketing.com. Everybody welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. We are happy to welcome. Holy cow. HubSpot is in the house. Everyone welcome Ashlee Gerow Senior Manager of Employer Brand at HubSpot. Ashlee. Welcome.
Ashlee (57s):
Thanks so much.
Chad (58s):
Just for the record. I wanna be Andy. Okay. Let's just put that out there.
Joel (1m 2s):
That's fine but you know what he did with his life. Right? Anyway.
Chad (1m 6s):
That's fine.
Joel (1m 7s):
So more important things. I know Julie is chomping at the bit in doing my research about you, Ashlee. I see that you went to Appalachian State University.
Ashlee (1m 16s):
I did. This is not how I thought we were gonna get started, but I did.
Joel (1m 19s):
Yes. So more importantly, you were a student there when Appalachian S`tate beat the then number five football team in the country, 2007, you went into Ann Arbor and beat the Wolverines by score of 34 to 32 on September 1st.
Ashlee (1m 40s):
Yeah.
Joel (1m 40s):
So I just wanna get the coolest thing outta the way.
Ashlee (1m 43s):
Oh my God thing. Yes, I was there. That was a big day.
Chad (1m 46s):
I bet it was a big day. Jesus.
Joel (1m 48s):
Did you burn some couches? Did you like what happened?
Ashlee (1m 53s):
I actually, I was at a bar watching it and we just went cuz why not? No one was actually expecting us to win. And then we won and it was just pandemonium cuz everybody was just so shocked and it was a great day.
Joel (2m 8s):
I can tell you that Chad and I, as big Buckeye fans remember that day and we were just as happy as you.
Ashlee (2m 14s):
It might've been a bigger day for you guys to be honest.
Joel (2m 17s):
It might have been cause we still bring it up when we see Wolverine friends.
Ashlee (2m 22s):
I bet you do.
Joel (2m 23s):
Okay. Sorry about that. All right. Ashlee, for those few listeners that don't know HubSpot. Yeah. Tell us about HubSpot and maybe a little bit about you.
Ashlee (2m 31s):
Sure. Yeah. So for those who don't know HubSpot, HubSpot's a CRM platform. We're the number one CRM platform for scaling businesses. We have about a hundred and what's the latest tally, 150,000 customers across 120 countries. So our goal is really create crafted solutions for our customers that are really driven by their feedback and works for the ways that they need to grow. But yeah, I've been at HubSpot since October prior to that, I guess almost a year. Wow. Prior to that, I led the global employer brand team at a company called Red Hat, which is now owned by IBM. And then prior to that, I spent about 10 plus years in the B2B marketing agency space. So I come from a brand strategy B2B background.
Chad (3m 10s):
So only 150,000 clients. You guys are just getting started I guess. Huh? Okay. That's awesome.
Ashlee (3m 17s):
Baby steps. You know, we're just really taking our time just taking it easy.
Julie (3m 21s):
I'm one of them.
Ashlee (3m 24s):
Awesome.
Joel (3m 24s):
Julie, would you like to do the honor of asking the first question?
Julie (3m 27s):
Oh, well I will say I have been a huge fan of HubSpot for so long in my career. I can barely remember when it was not an influence and that's cuz it's always put out such great content for marketers, marketers in general. How to create great landing pages, how to turn them into conversion and then how to work them into, you know, a CRM and then give them relevant content. There's always been such great material out there to learn, but this is such a great topic because these same practices that HubSpot is so great at or everything that people in recruitment are hungry for. So that's why I was like so excited to talk with you today.
Julie (4m 7s):
Did you see that same opportunity and get excited by that the same way? Like coming over to HubSpot?
Ashlee (4m 13s):
Oh absolutely. You know, HubSpot, especially if we're talking in the employer brand space, if you look at tech companies that are doing employer brand really well, HubSpot has always been a little bit of a pioneer in a lot of ways, in employer brand and as somebody who was working at a different tech company, kind of the gold standard in a lot of ways. And so for me, it was a really exciting opportunity to come in to really see what are the practices that we were using that were pulled from our traditional marketing at HubSpot. What are the opportunities, especially as the recruiting landscape has changed, how do we kind of evolve, not only as a company, what we're doing kind of in the brand space, but also as an employer brand and how those things are connected. It's a really interesting challenge and it's really interesting time to be at a company like HubSpot.
Julie (4m 55s):
Yeah. I can imagine because you know, HubSpot is so great at the marketing component for, and being flexible for so many different types of businesses, but recruitment is a very different animal. So the potential there is huge. Yeah. And then here you are working at the company that has such strong competency in marketing. Now you just need to apply to employer brand and recruitment.
Joel (5m 15s):
Yeah. So what, what specifics can you give us? I mean, as a marketing company, you get to kind of cheat a little bit, right? You get to put embed code on the career site, you have drip campaigns, your social media advertising. Like give us the top two or three things that a lot of companies don't do because they're not a marketing software provider that you would recommend sort of using that's worked really well for you.
Ashlee (5m 40s):
Yeah. That's a great question. I think the number one thing that has worked really well for Housebot from an employer brand perspective is that we run our team as a content marketing machine. We don't run our team as a recruiting function. That is our number one stakeholder, but we run it as a traditional content marketing machine and partnership with teams like our brand marketing teams who live in a different part of the company. But that allows us to really lean on traditional marketing principles to drive our work forward. So it's all about right content to the right audience over the right channel at the right time. And that's just, that's a pure marketing principle, no matter what audience audience you're talking to. And so we lean into that and that's why you see us pump out so much content through our social media channels, our career sites, through our media teams, we're constantly pumping out new and relevant content.
Ashlee (6m 28s):
And that is absolutely in line with who we are as a company and what we talk about with our customers.
Chad (6m 32s):
Well, that's awesome. The big question is who do you report to? Do you report to marketing or do you report to HR?
Ashlee (6m 38s):
Yeah, that is the million dollar question and no matter who you ask, the answer's probably different. So we are in the HR function at HubSpot. I don't report in through recruiting. I actually report directly into our Chief People Officer as a separate function. But our number one stakeholder is recruiting and I work, our whole team has deep partnerships with recruiting leadership because if you're not aligned to those goals, then you're not impactful as an EV team.
Chad (7m 1s):
Obviously working very closely with marketing, I would assume?
Ashlee (7m 5s):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially, you know, there's kind of two ways we work with marketing. Number one is just, Hey, from a company brand perspective, like we did a brand relaunch earlier this year, we wanted to make sure we knew what was going on there strategically where they're headed in terms of how they're promoting HubSpot as a brand. Cause we wanna make sure that from an employer brand perspective, that it's authentic, right? When we're talking about the company and the experience, but then also just from a tactical delivery perspective, we really lean on our brand and marketing teams to help us create templates, make sure things are branded. And that team is really wonderful in terms of getting us what we need so we can work pretty autonomously. We use Canva, which is like the dream machine. And so for us, our marketing teams, they get us the messaging, the templates, the assets that we need and then we're able to pump out stuff and move really quickly and autonomously, which is key in employer brand, especially in a market right now where you have to move fast.
Joel (7m 51s):
Some of the things that speaking of content, some things that stood out to me as I was visiting your career site is you have things like, you know, what is it like to work here? Which wow, how revolutionary that that should happen. But I think a lot of companies don't do it. You have an actual page dedicated to what it's like to work there. You talk about the importance of diversity on your careers page and have documentation on that. And then some, you know, things around ESG and, and you know, I don't think with you that they're just sort of topics du jour, it sounds like it's stuff that you guys really lean on with your recruitment and maybe even as well as your retention. Why were those things sort of targeted? And what was the thought around actually providing content around these three areas?
Ashlee (8m 34s):
Yeah. And this is the type of stuff that we partner really closely with our communications teams on. We have a separate ESG team. We have a hybrid team, we have a culture team. All of those teams come together. We are a highly collaborative function by just the nature of what we do. But you know, for us, the number one, the most important thing for everything that we push out is authenticity. Because we've all been in situations where we have interacted with content from a company and then we get into an interview process and we kind of realize it's a little bit of a bait and switch. We wanted to make sure that we weren't doing that and the easiest way for us to do that is to operate with what I call like radical transparency. And everything's out there for you to see.
Joel (9m 10s):
Including salaries.
Ashlee (9m 11s):
Including salaries now, which that is something that is relatively new too, we wanna show the compounds of every us role right now. Yeah. And just so it's not only about what works for us at HubSpot, it's what works for you as a candidate and is this the right fit for both of us, but you know, things like our diversity report that we put out every year. That report is not always shiny and it's not meant to be this big, shiny thing. It's meant to be very authentic and transparent about what we're doing and the needles that we have moved and where we have work to do. And we're very upfront about that. And that's something that resonates with candidates when they're looking for the next step in their journey that honesty, that transparency and kinda that values driven approach tends to work best for us.
Chad (9m 51s):
So I see that you guys use video pretty much all over the place, which is awesome, but, but you have like a video embedded I'm just on this inbound growth specialist, job posting, and there is a video right beside it. I would assume this is the hiring manager at this point. Is this the hiring manager that you guys actually put on the job descriptions themselves?
Ashlee (10m 15s):
Sometimes it depends, honestly depends on the hiring manager and you know, how involved it they want to be, but that's all done through iCIMS video suite. We wanna get technical about the tools, but we have a huge library behind the scenes of Hub Spotters across the org, whether they're hiring managers or they're doing that role themselves, or they're part of the team, some of that is unique to the role. You know, we'll hit a hiring manager and say, Hey, let's put you on this other times. It's we have a repository of people who are doing that job and talking about that experience that we can use. So it really just depends on what we have, but yeah, we try really hard to lean on video and to lean on the real experiences of people who are doing the job again, pulling all the way, pulling that all back through to this idea of authenticity.
Chad (10m 56s):
So when it comes to video and using video, do you see that you actually get more engagement and more applications when you use that content or does it really matter?
Ashlee (11m 9s):
Yeah, it matters now, does it matter that it's video? I don't know, but it certainly matters when we're putting content out that is specific to the experience of the role, whether that is the video on the page, or it is a careers blog that we put up about that specific role. Anytime we can make it as specific as possible, it makes a big difference. And we continue to invest in things like iCIMS Video Suite and video tools, because we do see an uptick in engagement when we're able to serve that type of content.
Joel (11m 35s):
I will highlight as well. I actually apply to a job in research for this call. After you apply to a job, you get an automated email, which has a video. It looks like from the founders or executives at the company and talking about the company. So yes, Chad is right. You guys use video, but you use it through the entire funnel of the process of applying to a job, which I think, is great. Yeah,
Julie (11m 57s):
No, I saw the video and the job descriptions and I was really curious, are you seeing down funnel improvements? Like, are you getting better quality?
Ashlee (12m 7s):
Yeah, absolutely. I think whenever we can put upfront and be very, very transparent and open about what the job actually is and what the experience is, we tend to get better quality down funnel than when we just kind of when we're just sourcing in general, because typically the people who are applying have a good sense of what they're applying to. I think when you look at a job description, we've all been there. It sounds good. It sounds nebulous enough to think that I'm qual. I think it could be cool. Like you don't sometimes you don't really know, but when someone's sitting there kind of telling you exactly, this is what my day's like, and this is what is a good fit for our team. It does kind of shuffle some out who can acknowledge that I'm not a good fit for this or this isn't a good fit for me.
Joel (12m 49s):
A lot of companies sort of shy away from, I guess, branding that might be considered a little bit political or one side or the other, but you guys seem to be fairly open around, you know, there there's photos of you guys at a gay pride parade. On your job descriptions I believe, I mean, you're very upfront around disability statement. Talk about the impact of that. Whether it be pro or negative in some cases what that's meant to your recruitment, but also maybe more importantly, your retention at HubSpot.
Ashlee (13m 22s):
Yeah. I mean, we prioritize being a great place to work for all, and that is not something that we say that is something that is built into the DNA of who we are as a company, you know, from a personal perspective, I'm a member of the LGBTQ plus community and it was really important for me when I was making a move to find a company where that didn't feel performative. And I would say HubSpot more than any other company I've ever worked at how we support different diversity mentions. And the idea of inclusivity is paramount to everything we do in a way I've never experienced anywhere else. And so it's really important to us that we show that in ways that we show it and we don't just say it. And so that's why you do see us at things like Boston pride.
Ashlee (14m 3s):
For example, Boston is our US headquarters. You see our global initiatives around things like disability pride month that was in July and the employer brand team. We are the external marketing team for all things DEIB. And so that is absolutely paramount to how we present ourselves as a company, because that's absolutely paramount to how we operate.
Joel (14m 18s):
And I have to point this out, Chad, because we talk about this a lot on the show, their executive team actually walks the walk. They are a very diverse executive team. So applause for HubSpot on that one. Julie?
Julie (14m 32s):
No,I, you know, love hearing and showing it too, but a lot of work, you mentioned having culture teams and CSR teams are these all part of the employer brand team? Because I know employer brand can support attracting candidates, but it also has a lot to do with the employee's experience. So where does that live in the organization?
Ashlee (14m 55s):
Yeah. So at HubSpot, we have a separate culture team and that is led by an amazing group of individuals whose entire charge is to really enhance and grow and sustain our really award-winning employee experience. But we have to work really closely with that team to make sure that what we are pushing out from an employer brand perspective matches the experience that someone's gonna have when they come, because otherwise it you've essentially just bait and switched people and people will leave, especially in this market right now, where they have options. So it's really important that we work with our culture team, our communications teams, our hybrid work teams to really make sure that everything we're talking about is as specific as it can be because everybody's talking about things like hybrid work and what that means for culture right now, but the experience of that and how it shows up at HubSpot, I do think is unique.
Ashlee (15m 43s):
But how do you show that is the real challenge that we have as an employer brand team.
Chad (15m 49s):
Okay. So real quick, we, I just digging into the diversity report. I mean, one thing that we're seeing is all of these companies are saying that, you know, they're obviously talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk like HubSpot is actually demonstrating good, bad indifferent transparency around the actual demographics of your workforce composition. So question, when you got there, was it, was this already done? Was this something that they had already embraced? If so awesome. But I mean, how did that come to fruition? Because most companies, they like to back away from the table, there's way too much risk there for them.
Ashlee (16m 30s):
Yeah. So this is, I believe are fourth annual diversity report. Someone's gonna fact check me on that, that might not be right. But that's something that we've, we've been doing for years. And so that was well underway when I joined and something that we have really tried hard to have baseline data and grow from and every year we're adding new data. So the report from 2022 has even more data than the year before. And there's certainly parts of that we're super proud of. You know, we are at near gender parody, you know, 50.50 company wide. I think it's like 53% men, 50 or 47% women or something like that, which is great. In the tech sector that's amazing. And we break that down even further by what we call pillars.
Ashlee (17m 11s):
So by our product and engineering group, by our sales group, and there's certainly work to do depending on kind of how you wanna slice and dice that data. And to your point, we're really upfront about that. Like here's where we've really seen an uptick and here's where we have more work to do. And then here's what we're going to do to do that, which I think is the missing piece that we see a lot with other companies is, you may have companies that acknowledge, this is the work we have to do, but we put a stake in the ground to what we're actually gonna do. And then we measure ourselves on that in the next report in a very transparent way.
Chad (17m 38s):
So this is what drew you there really is that they were so upfront and I mean out front and transparent about how they felt about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Ashlee (17m 51s):
Yeah, certainly that was part of it for me. I mean, there were, there were several different factors, but yeah, I mean, like I said, for me as part of, of the LGBTQ plus community, I mean, I wanted to make sure that, that it was a company who was, who was walking the walk and who was, who not only believed in that idea of inclusivity, but, but that it was, and it wasn't just one team doing that work. I mean, at HubSpot, but it's connected into everything that we do. It's part of our listed goals as teams. How are we leaning into DIE&B and what are we doing to help the organization move forward in that way? And that's a really powerful thing for a lot of people that you just don't see everywhere, especially I would say in the tech sector.
Joel (18m 25s):
Yeah. That's fantastic. You talk a lot about teams. How big is the team exactly?
Ashlee (18m 29s):
My team right now is.
Joel (18m 30s):
The marketing team. Yeah. Cuz I'm sure a lot of companies are listening to this going, like we don't have this kind resource at our fingertips. How big is the team real quick?
Ashlee (18m 38s):
So the employer brand team, we are six strong including myself and we are a global team. So we have four people in the US and two people India, one in Dublin and one in Berlin. And then we are part of the larger kind of HR. Yeah. We're six person team, which is relatively large. The team. I, yeah, the team I led at Red Hat was about that size as well. But yeah, I mean, I talked to a lot of people in EB who are like, one man strong, and they're just trying to figure out how to get it started because employer brand is still a relatively new space. If you look in the grand scheme of things and I would say it's really kinda taken off in the past year or two with the changes in the talent market. But yeah, we have a fairly large team by most comparisons.
Joel (19m 20s):
I also think the thing that really pushed that even, you know, going further back was employee review sites and you guys have really sort of gone all in on, you know, Glassdoor. It's on your homepage, on the career site. You know, you're pretty visible about different awards that you've got from Glassdoor. Talk about that strategy and its importance. And additionally, and to Glassdoor, I mean, you guys are on InHerSight, which is for those who don't know an employee review site for women, almost 900 reviews, which most people don't even know what InHerSight is. So for you guys to have that kind of penetration, was that a strategy, is that by accident? And then also talk about your opinion on the future of employee reviews.
Joel (20m 2s):
Is it gonna be Glassdoor for the next decade or do you see things like TikTok becoming more influential?
Ashlee (20m 8s):
Those are two really great questions. I think, you know, from the review site perspective, we are really fortunate to have an associate population. We call them Hub Spotters who are brand champions and not just brand champions from like a tool perspective and just the company, but also champions of loving working at HubSpot. We don't have to do too much to get them to write reviews. We remind them, we do a couple pushes for Glassdoor and Comparably, for example, to make it as easy as we can. We do widgets and Slack for them where they just click a few buttons and it's done. So we do have a strategy for how can we make it easy? How can we make it consistent? But we're also fortunate enough that it's not something, it's kind of a self sustaining thing in a lot of ways, because we are fortunate enough to have associates who wanna talk about working at HubSpot.
Ashlee (20m 57s):
Now, how do I think review sites are going to work in the future? You know, I think Glassdoor's always gonna be a biggie. It's still where most people go, but I also think there's Comparably as popping up as well. There's also to your point, TikTok, there's Blind, there's all of these different sites where people are starting to chatter about the experience of working at companies outside of what I would call more formal review sites. And I think that's the stuff that we're keeping our eye on right now to really think, okay, what is the chatter like by people who wanna work here? And they're talking about a recruiting process? People who have left people who wanna have kind of more private conversations? And we wanna make sure that when those conversations are being had, that they match what people are doing more formerly in review and that they match kind what we're hearing from our associates.
Ashlee (21m 43s):
And I think that's an area that we have maybe like just started to dip a toe in because it is kind of, these sites are kind of popping up left and right.
Chad (21m 53s):
Amazing. So let's get into the process a little bit, but on the candidate side, the actual people who are interacting with your brand now, Joel went ahead and he applied for a job. Definitely gonna get hired by the way.
Ashlee (22m 4s):
I'll put in a good word for you.
Joel (22m 5s):
Thanks Ashlee.
Ashlee (22m 5s):
You should have come to me. I've given you referral link. We could have figured it out.
Chad (22m 11s):
Please do that. That would be great. So data demonstrates that over 90% of applicants on most career sites that are out there today, actually eject before completing the application. Just because the application process sucks for the most part. And then if they do complete, they find themselves in a black hole. Now they might have gotten an email or something like that to say, thank you for applying, but they still find themselves in a black hole and they don't know where they are in the process. And this is all about experience, right? And this is really impacting many companies brands' out there. How do you at HubSpot actually focus on the application process and the non-black hole process?
Ashlee (22m 58s):
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think for me, employer brand has happened in a silo. It has to happen in conjunction as part of a larger candidate journey, which to me, the candidate journey is like an infinity loop, right? Like you have candidates we are trying to attract. If all goes well, they're in the interview process, they convert they're onboarded. At some point they're gonna leave the company become alumni and maybe hopefully circle back around maybe back infinity loop. When I'm thinking about what we're doing from a brand perspective, if that's not pulled through by a positive candidate experience through things like the communications you get or the application is, you know, 50 pages long, and you're just having to upload a resume and then retype everything like that type of stuff. Like if we're getting fall off there, then I can do top of funnel, talent attraction stuff all day long.
Ashlee (23m 43s):
But if 90% of people aren't converting because the process is difficult or that part of the journey is off, then we're wasting a lot of time and resources that aren't impactful. And so that's where we really work with teams like our recruiting ops team to understand, okay, what is our candidate journey? What are the communications that they're getting? What is the cadence of that? What is the messaging? What are the assets that you need to make sure that all of that is pulled through? Like I said, we have separate teams who really own and run that, but if we don't work with that team, we have no idea if we're even, if our efforts are even impactful because measurement of employer brand is really tricky too, because we measure our content through traditional marketing metrics really it's very top of funnel. Likes, clicks, shares, engagements.
Ashlee (24m 23s):
But to equate that, to kind of butts in seats at the end of that journey is dotted at best. We'll say it's correlated, not causal. So we have to make sure that we're aware of what that journey is and if there's a breakdown in that journey, or if there's an opportunity to enhance that, we have to make sure that we're able to call that out and pull that through.
Julie (24m 40s):
Do you have specific metrics that you look at or are there specific metrics the company brings to you and say, we wanna approve these?
Ashlee (24m 49s):
I kinda look at two separate groups of metrics. First. I just look at what I would call traditional marketing metrics to see if our content is effective. Are we getting the engagement we want? Are the channels we are using effective? All the same ways of really a traditional brand marketing campaign. And then there's recruiting data that I wanna look at. Not because I can make some solid line connections, but that's the data that has to inform our strategy overall. So for example, if I'm looking at conversion rates and I see I'm gonna make this up, for the sake of conversation, but I see that we are converting engineers, mid to senior engineers in the bay area we just can't convert them, for whatever reason, whether that's opportunity or comp or whatever, but we're doing a really great job converting on the east coast.
Ashlee (25m 35s):
I'm gonna put my time and my money and my resource as an EB strategist on the east coast, cuz that's what the data's telling me we can convert. And so when we're looking at data, that's how we tend to use data, but we really have to do a lot of internal communication, particularly to leaders who are unaware of the difference between employer brand and recruiting to say, Hey, this video rollout that we're gonna do, we are not gonna be able to say this video hired five people. That's just not how this works. And so there's a lot of figuring out what data can actually be connected versus what do we use strategically?
Joel (26m 8s):
I love the point about data and I don't think a lot of companies utilize it as much as possible. Chad and I talk a lot about companies, vendors, new solutions are coming into view that are dedicated to keeping the old candidates fresh. My guess is you guys would do a better job at keeping sort of a constant contact with your past applicants as probably anybody. Can you talk about that strategy of keeping in contact with folks that have applied in the past and maybe moving them into, you know, candidates of the present?
Ashlee (26m 41s):
Yeah. I think the topic of, really we're talking about there is like pipelining and how do you continue to communicate with your pipelines. And I think there's some companies that are, that do that better than others. I think we do a great job at that. And I think a lot of that and I don't wanna speak on behalf of my recruiting partners, but I will, for a moment. I think a lot of that is the expectation at HubSpot is that because we are, you know, a CRM company that is built to communicate regularly, that we pull those same practices into how we recruit and yes, we have templates and we have communications and we have things that are automated, but we also are a high touch recruiting organization. And so we're constantly working with our recruiting teams from an EB perspective, say, okay, Hey, what are you seeing?
Ashlee (27m 26s):
Like what's the boots on the ground conversations you're having? What are candidates caring about? Okay, here's some messaging and content that you can use organically to keep people engaged. Particularly if you find a candidate that is a good fit for the company, but may not be a good fit for the role or the timing wasn't right. Or whatever, our recruiting teams are doing a lot of that organic kind of high touch engagement and it's our job to make sure they have refreshed content that's relevant to do that.
Julie (27m 50s):
You, I imagine that you have many recruiters in your organization trying to hire for many roles. Are they all in line with a number fighting for your attention? Are you trying to feed all of them at once? I mean, how do you even support such a large organization probably has such a great desire for that material?
Ashlee (28m 7s):
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think to be transparent, we're still figuring some of that out. I think, you know, we have scaled as a company in a major way in the past year, one to two years, and that includes our recruiting org. Our recruiting org has grown exponentially. And so we're really focused as a team on moving from one to one solutions to one to many solutions. And a lot of that is creating sustainable and repeatable programs, template work, making sure that recruiters are also armed with guidance and the tools that they need to create their own content when they need to. Because we are so top of funnel when we're talking like team and role-specific content, we are not creating that on a one-to-one basis, but we are looking at how we can create a grab and go solution for recruiter who to the earlier conversation we had wants to send a group of candidates, a video from the hiring manager, how do we create that video?
Ashlee (28m 56s):
How did they do that on their own? So it's really arming them with consistent branded and kind of QA materials to do some of that lifting on their own so we can focus on the larger kind of more enterprise wide, one to many solutions.
Joel (29m 9s):
You touched on how much the world has changed in the past few years. And that's, you know, putting it lightly. A lot of your jobs are labeled as remote. Talk about your work from home company strategy. How does employer branding and how you sort of connect with a work from home or remote workforce change the game. And you also have a lot of global global locations. How does employment branding sort of get customized or does it get standardized regardless of where the office is?
Ashlee (29m 42s):
That's a big question. I'm gonna tackle it in parts.
Joel (29m 44s):
That's what we do on the show, Ashlee, that's what we do.
Ashlee (29m 47s):
I appreciate you for it. You know, I think at the beginning, HubSpot has always had part of our workforce working remotely. It wasn't a new thing when the pandemic hit, but pretty early on in the pandemic and I wasn't even at HubSpot at the time, the company doubled down on the idea of hybrid that we could get our work done and we could really do great work for our customers no matter where we were located. And so we started to move from a hub location format into a more hybrid approach. And so every employee, when they come to work at HubSpot, you have a choice. You can be an in-office employee, which means 90% of your time is spent in an office. You can be a flex employee, which means clearly you can flex between an office and home, or you can be a remote employee.
Ashlee (30m 27s):
I'm a hundred percent remote. I'm based in Raleigh, North Carolina. There is not a HubSpot location in Raleigh, North Carolina, but every employee has the power to choose that and to evolve that preference as kind of their location and what they want changes. So from an employer brand perspective, we're talking about hybrid. This is one of the situations where it becomes super important that we are working in lockstep with our culture and employee experience team, because how hybrid shows up at HubSpot has to be led, like how we communicate that has to be led by what it actually looks like. And I think HubSpot has done a phenomenal job of really walking the walk there. And we talked about DI & B diversity, inclusion, and belonging as an area that was important to me right up there was what it meant to work remotely for our company. I had never worked remotely before pre pandemic.
Ashlee (31m 9s):
I never thought I wanted to. I was an in-office soldier. I liked it. I liked that energy. And so for me, going to a company that really prioritized hybrid, not just in a, you can work from wherever you want kind of way, but here are the tools. Here are the programming. Here's how we stay connected. Here's how we embrace our remote employees and our in office employees in a way that's consistent to create culture, no matter where you are. Those things are really important to have as a company, which makes my job easier quite frankly, from how we market it, because it's making, it's just externalizing what we're actually doing.
Julie (31m 42s):
Yeah. I think that's wonderful. What advice would you give to companies that are aspiring to be that?
Ashlee (31m 50s):
Aspiring, to be like a successful hybrid company?
Julie (31m 53s):
Well, it, you know, companies want to do more for diversity equity and inclusion. They see the value in that. Certainly there's many trying to find a way to communicate that, to become more diverse in their recruitment marketing. And they'r wondering like, well, do I just start telling people that in my job descriptions, like how do I actually do that? You know, being someone who made choice and actually works in an organization and employer brand, is there any advice you'd give to companies to really make that message more sincere?
Ashlee (32m 24s):
Yeah, absolutely. I think, the first thing is to really take, take stock in what the experience is for diverse individuals at your company and own that. If you're working at a company where your diversity metrics, aren't great, then you can't shout from the rooftops that they are. So I think you have to really honest about where you are as a company. For us, the way that we find success in telling our story. Yes, we have the diversity report and yes, we have specific things that we do to talk about those efforts. But for me as an employer brand practitioner, I don't have projects and then diversity projects. Every project I have should feel diverse. Every face that we show, every story we tell every message that we're sending should be rooted in what diversity means to the organization.
Ashlee (33m 5s):
And so, you know, I get that question a lot. Like you know, what does HubSpot do to market, you know, diversity and inclusion. And, and I think for us, it's everything that we do should be rooted in that because as a company we're rooted in that and we believe really strongly in that. And so when we're putting together our content strategies for the month, we're looking to make sure that we have representation from all of the groups and also age diversity, by the way, gender diversity. Those are things that we're looking at from a content perspective, to make sure that it feels authentic and that it feels compelling.
Chad (33m 40s):
Those old bastards, like Joel in there.
Ashlee (33m 41s):
We gotta have the Joels, you know, the Joels have to show up too.
Joel (33m 47s):
Hell. Yeah, you do. Hell. Yeah, you do.
Chad (33m 50s):
The part is just the showing up. And then the napping. Anyway is Ashlee Gerow everyone. Ashlee, if listeners wanna find out more about you, I don't know, maybe even take a look at what HubSpot's doing? Where would you send them?
Ashlee (34m 3s):
If you wanna know more about me, go to my LinkedIn, you can find everything about me there. Please reach out. We'd love to connect. For HubSpot connect with our HubSpot life channels. We're on Instagram. We're on Twitter. We're on Facebook. Instagram, I think is the one that serves up the most content. That's probably exciting and relevant to the audience, but please follow us, check out what we're doing. Comment. Send me a note. If you think there's something that you love or something that you think we should be doing, I'd love to hear it.
Joel (34m 30s):
Thanks for your time. Ashlee. Excellent. Julie, Chad, another one in the can. Michigan fans suck it.
Chad and Cheese (34m 38s):
We out, we out.
OUTRO (35m 29s):
Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast with Chad, the Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting. They talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing. Just a lot of Shout Outs of people, you don't even know and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one cheddar, blue, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses and not one word. So weird. Any hoo be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. Is so weird. We out.