Ariana Moon  

I think it's easy to criticise those in positions of authority because they're kind of like out there visible. But in reality, I think being the one with authority like that is a huge responsibility and a weight and it requires, I think, more than ever, a lot of stamina, resilience, social awareness. Emotional intelligence, and just all around hard work.

Nasser Oudjidane 

Hello and welcome to our series of scaling stories, a discussion with talent leaders about their lessons building teams at some of the world's fastest growing companies. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Ariana Moon, the head of talent planning and acquisition at Greenhouse. For those of you who are unfamiliar, greenhouse is the leader in applicant tracking systems and widely considered to be the gold standard in recruiting software. I'm excited for this one. Ariana, a huge welcome and thank you for joining us.

Ariana Moon

Wonderful, thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Nasser Oudjidane  

I'd love to start if you could with an introduction about you and your background.

Ariana Moon  

Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I lead our talent planning and acquisition team at Green House. And that is an incredible team of recruiters and coordinators, sorcerers and operations specialists who partner across all of our departments to deliver on our company's hiring needs. A little bit about me, I am born and raised New Yorker. So I'm very proud of that. And I'm a recent Las Vegas transplant which is a decision my husband and I made to be closer to the beautiful red rock mountains. For me it was really about being further from the East Coast winters because I'm not very fun to be around when I'm cold. But that's a little bit about me kind of professionally and a little bit personally as well.

Nasser Oudjidane  

And you've seen Greenhouse grow from 50 to what it is today around 800. I think what's it been like getting in at the ground floor to where you are today?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, so it's been very much very much a journey. So I've been at greenhouse for over seven and a half years. And when I started, I wasn't a people team of only five people that included an office manager a head of people, a manager of recruiting who was my manager, one recruiter and myself as the most junior person on the team. And so like you mentioned, Greenhouse was about, I would say 60 to 70 people at that time, and we all nearly knew each other on the first name basis. So I actually look pretty fondly back on this time. It was really like the startup experience that you might you might think, think it might be of sitting, you know, on an open office floor, working in scrappy ways. We used to make announcements simply by like standing up at our desk and shouting and doing things like just, you know, organically spending evenings after work hanging out around their desks, usually over snacks from Trader Joe's. So, it kind of has like, you know, like I said, I think fondly back on this time. Now, as you mentioned also greenhouses, more than 10x that size. So we just surpassed 800 people, which is really exciting. And I lead a global team of 40 folks who, you know, work really hard every day towards the mission of delivering on a global and scalable hiring strategy, with an emphasis on attracting and inspiring talents from diverse walks of life and I can if I can, I'll take just a moment to explain kind of how we think about our team. So we recently rebranded our team from the talent acquisition team to the talent planning and acquisition team. The Talent Acquisition part of the team is kind of what you would expect it consists of our many wonderful recruiters who we call at Greenhouse talent acquisition managers, and our coordinators when we call a greenhouse candidate experience specialists. The talent planning part is probably a little bit more unusual. That represents our operations and talent intelligence teams, which we're working on building right now. And the vision here is to tackle more strategic work around workforce planning and forecasting. Similar to how like an FPNA function on the finance side has a sophisticated planning and forecasting component. And the reason we think this is important is because now we live in a world that's more physically distributed, but also digitally connected and more culturally intersectional than ever. So some of the questions our planning team will be tackling are things like, you know, how does that change who, where and how we hire? How can we analyze global market conditions to plan effective candidate sourcing strategies and services business goals? So I know that was a little bit long, but I just want to add some color on you know, how we think about our team today.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, that's thank you for that was very succinct summary and fascinating last part, especially regarding planning and intelligence. Could we just double click on that? What are what are some of the inputs that are going into those discussions and the development of those questions?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, that's a really good question. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is kind of the intersection of a few things when it comes to a sourcing strategy. So for example, location is a big component because in the sense that because a lot of companies aren't grounded in where their physical offices located. When it comes to where you target your sourcing strategy. You kind of have bigger breadth of what you can experiment with. So like, what locations do you focus on because you can't focus on everything? We have this phrase, you know that I really like to say we can do anything but we can't do everything. And so that focus component becomes really important when you have such a big broad talent pool to source from so location is one really big piece. You know, as with you know, any any maturing business costs is obviously a consideration as well. So when we think about things like where are our compensation vans competitive, what are the compensation bands, expectations in certain locations? That's a very quickly evolving world right now. So that's, that's a really big piece of what we consider when we when we say cost. We also think about, you know, cost of benefits like you know, depending on what geo you're sourcing from the expectations around what sort of benefits package you have, might be different. And then the third component for me, that's really important is diversity, right? Like when you think about, again, which talent pools to target the demographics might look very different depending on whether you're, you know, let's say, sourcing from Las Vegas, if you will, versus Colorado. What does it mean to, for example, recruit in Canada, that's something that we started doing recently because the time zones are very favorable. They're very matched to the US at the same time, we're starting to get more data on what demographics exist there to support our workforce diversity goals. So when I think about, you know, an effective sourcing strategy, I really think about those three things like location, cost, diversity, how those all intersect with each other. And I think, you know, one of the things we're excited about is building a team that can focus a little bit more brainpower in this area, so that our sourcing plans aren't just a row by row basis, it can be a little bit more informed on larger market trends.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. It's if I understand this correctly, it's almost like some parts of the team within ta are in planning which are giving the resources information to enable the acquisition team to be fishing in the right pools and be properly equipped.

Ariana Moon  

That's right, yeah, we have a small and budding team. And traditionally, their work has looked more similar to what you might expect a traditional Sorcerer to do. But we're having you know, some pretty fun conversations around what does it mean to think big think beyond and just an existing job search but more about like when it comes to a greater strategy for an entire departments hiring plan, like what does that look like?

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, absolutely. I I'm really excited to hear that because usually sources are instructed to figure it out themselves. 

Ariana Moon  

Right.

Nasser Oudjidane  

And it's, it's, yeah, it's really great that you're thinking it that way. When you are looking at the talent landscape right now, what are some of the top priorities with regards to like the, you know, the large component of the TA specialists within your team? What are you seeing at the moment?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, I would say one of the biggest challenges slash opportunities right now is around how we think about compensation. I think that was an extremely hot topic throughout most of the past year, because again, when you have a workforce that becomes fluid. And historically, you've grounded your compensation philosophy based on the cost of labor in a certain location, that it becomes very complicated very fast. I would say, you know, I'm probably a good example where I used to live in New York that came with certain compounds. Now I'm in Nevada, it looks very different here. And so what does the compensation philosophy from a company look like? When talent suddenly becomes fluid and it's harder and harder to track where people are? I mean, I think one of the cool things we're seeing is we're seeing more of a, we're seeing something like digital digital nomads. As a concept where people actually don't have a place that they're grounded in but you know, live a lifestyle where they move around quite a bit. And again, like when it comes to things like compensation, taxes, tracking employees, like that becomes very complex. So because of that trend, I think a lot of candidates have a growing expectation for companies to  be able to be more flexible or allow them to be more flexible. So one of the things I've been talking a lot about with my leadership team is what does that look like for Greenhouse in terms of how we can allow employees to be flexible, and focus less on like, tracking where they are, but again, focus more on, you know, how do we enable them to really do the best work? And so our distributed philosophy currently at Greenhouses, we want people to work where it best works for them, meaning, if it best works for you to work at home like we want to be able to enable that because the emphasis here is around doing really great work.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, a lot of moving objects. You touched upon Greenhouses mission. I mean, could you perhaps tell us a little bit more about Greenhouse, its mission and its vision?

Ariana Moon  

Absolutely. How long do you have so I'll try to keep this the same. But Greenhouse, we started in 2012. Around a really simple idea, and that idea is hiring is one of the most important and strategic things that a company does. That said, I think if you asked that to most CEOs, they would not agree. But the reality is that most companies hiring as a real struggle on it often is very reactive. And so we think that our software, and our approach, which is rooted in structured hiring, improves how companies hire and when we help companies do that, we create a huge amount of value not just for the customers who are looking to hire but for job seekers alike on the market. And so, the way that we like to think about Greenhouses that we are the hiring operating system for what we call our people, first companies, companies that really think about business strategy through a people lens. And very frankly, we believe that we built the best applicant tracking system in the industry. And our technology, as well as philosophy again, around structured hiring, reduces bias within the hiring within the hiring process by making that process fair and more equitable for folks. So we have a whole ecosystem around their product that that's full of experts from greenhouse focused on things like providing data and guidance on the things that companies need to improve things that companies need to do to improve their overall hiring performance. So in a nutshell, hopefully, you know, that was a that was a good description there.

Nasser Oudjidane  

That was great. And you believe that it's important to own your own growth. You've mentioned that pointing fingers at management when everyone is working through ambiguity is obviously difficult, problematic. Why do you think self advocacy is the right thing to do?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, yeah. And like I think this is a really important topic to me, because, you know, in my own personal reflections of being a manager for the past two years, I think, and not just being a manager, but also nurturing new managers or new senior folks on my team to step into management and like inviting them along on this journey with me. I actually don't think that you know, you always understand how hard it is to be a manager until you've had the experience of being one. And I think it's never more the case than now. Because in this day and age, life has at work has trained changed so drastically. And what I mean by that is, there's been so much talk in the past two or so years, because of COVID of how managers now need to step up and adapt in new ways in ways that they haven't had to before. Because we have the rise of remote work. We touched upon that a little bit already. We have a really fast growing emphasis on interpersonal skills. Now that we're working virtually so often. I just, you know, I just read an article recently about how the most coveted skills for C suite hires tend to be interpersonal now. There's also a lot of attention on things like how do you create inclusive environments, and also navigate tough conversations around you know, our different situations, because, you know, there's that phrase that we're all the same storm, but we're experiencing it through different ships, and that's very much the case. And so managers need to be really attuned to how one person's experience of something on their team might be very different from someone sitting right next to them. And just to top it all off, there's a lot of pressure to make decisions right now in a time where there is a lot of economic ambiguity. So again, like I think my point is, I think it's easy to criticize those in positions of authority because they're kind of like out there visible. But in reality, in reality, I think being the one with authority like that, that is a huge responsibility and a weight and it requires, I think, more than ever, a lot of stamina, resilience, social awareness. Emotional intelligence, and just all around hard work. And so, because of all these pressures, I think it's more important than ever for the folks for everyone to take charge of how you want to grow because your manager can't read your mind and I remind my team about this you know, very often, I can be thinking about your growth as your manager, but if you have a different idea of how you want to grow, but that's not even that's not articulated or expressed, you might miss each other in terms of being aligned on a growth path for you and I think, you know, I have I have some pretty awesome stories on my team of people that really took charge of their own role. I'm thinking about, you know, my manager on my team that heads up our talent planning function. She back in the day, a few years ago was like, Hey, I think at this point, we need a recruiting operations person. And she literally wrote her own job description and made it a conversation between her and her manager at that time, and basically created that role for herself. And I'm thinking about another person on the team. This is a more recent example, this just happened. One of our senior folks on our sourcing and talent Intelligence Team. He came with, like this whole proposal about reimagining what sourcing could look like, which is a large part of, you know, some of the conversation that I shared with you about how we're thinking about sourcing, and that turned into him moving into that role. And so I think the thing that I would just encourage folks is like, your own growth isn't something to be determined only by your manager. You should help your manager by telling them how you want to grow and asking for opportunities. To be exposed to things because, you know, I think I've said this to you before in a previous conversation, but the, the power that you think that you don't have as a power that you give up. And so that's kind of the mentality that I would encourage anyone to have around their own growth.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah. And kudos to the folks within Greenhouse for taking charge.Are there any patterns or can you perhaps such share any concrete actions that folks can take away from this to actually apply in their own environments what what has worked for you or what have you seen work for others for self advocacy to work?

Ariana Moon  

That's a good question. I think everyone's situation is different depending on your relationship with your peer set, depending on your relationship with your manager, depending on whether you feel safe to speak up. That's a really big thing that I do think is primarily the managers responsibility to create that environment of psychological safety. So the discussion can be invited and it can happen a little bit more organically. I think you know, I think when it comes to career conversations, they can be scary. And I think like that scariness never really goes away whether you're doing it for the first time, whether you're someone maybe very senior in your role, and you've done that a bunch of times like it, that's self advocacy for many of us it will always come with, you know, some sense of nervousness. And I think I think part of the thing, part of the way of overcoming that is like just acknowledging that that is the thing. That is totally okay. And that is totally normal. I think a lot of my experience as a manager, offolks earlier in their career, you know, a few which, which I was managing a few years ago is that a lot of what you can do to help empower folks is just letting them know like, hey, this thing that you're experiencing for the first time, that's totally okay. That's totally normal. And to just kind of guide them along the along the way, and let them know that, you know, they're not alone than what they're experiencing. So I think that that's the first thing that comes to mind in terms of how a manager might help or in terms of what I've seen, you know, be helpful for people and voicing, voicing how they want to grow. I think if I think about, you know, things that you can do, to help yourself understand where you stand. I think some of the things that you know, kind of thinking off the top of my head about are things like be clear on your job description. Because the reality is, you know, at some point you will need to advocate for your own growth and probably your own promotion, and being clear on Hey, am I doing more than the job I was hired to do? Like, I don't think a lot of people ask themselves that question very proactively. So that's probably a really good question for you ask, based on the expectations that you had when you first accepted your job offer. If you're, you know, one or two, three years into the role, and you return to that job description, are you doing more? And is there a way for you to have a conversation with your manager around that? I think the other very simple thing is like if you have an agenda for you know, every time that you meet with your manager, as many of us do, because there's a lot of great tools for that. Make it an agenda item to get feedback from your manager. I know a bunch of folks on my team that do that. Were career growth and making sure that they understand where their manager believes they are in their past to maybe the next step is really important for them to know and so there's like this recurring agenda item which is like hey, check in on career growth. How are how am I doing? Do you have any feedback for me and so building that in into something like an agenda can take kind of a lot of the mental burden of like, okay, this is the day I'm going to talk to my manager about this, because it becomes more of a rhythm and when something becomes more of a rhythm, it becomes more of like a practice muscle. So hopefully that answers your question. Those are the things that first come to mind for me.

Nasser Oudjidane  

That was great. Thank you. And I think you've mentioned this in the past how what we've just spoken about is actually profoundly difficult for the people in the business of supporting other people. Namely, you know, Ta functions, HR people functions. As they have a tendency to deprioritize themselves. I mean, do you have any advice for people out there with regards to how talent practitioners can make sure that that they're not overlooking themselves?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, thank you for asking that question. I love it. You know it is ironic that when it comes to people whose role it is to support people on their employee lifecycle, we often find it easy to advocate but for everyone but ourselves. And you know, I fallen into this, I fall into this pattern in the past as well. So it's a very, very proactive you have to think very practically about not doing this. For many of us, I think, I think one of the things I'm going to repeat something I said earlier, which is you can do anything but you cannot do everything. And as people people sometimes we want to do everything right because like people are reaching out to watch asking for things and it's really hard to say no, because, you know, when you say no, the immediate reaction might be I'm letting this person down. But the reality is, often the kindest and clearest thing that you can do is say, Hey, I can't do this right now. Can you check back in with me? At x time or I can't do this right now. But here's what I can do. Instead of saying yes to everything and delivering a subpar product on everything. And the reason I really liked that phrase, you can do anything but not everything is because there's two parts to it. The first part you can do anything is really empowerment. I do believe that we can do anything if we put our mind to it, but not everything. And that part is about focus, right? So there's an empowerment piece and there's a focus piece. And this is something that I've applied to a lot of how I lead because again going back to management being really complex these days, there's so many different ways that your your attention can be pulled away from what you're doing, but how can you be deliberate about my attention is going to the right things. And there is intention before you give attention away. So I would say that that's like one of the things that you know, come to mind for me, I would also say for and this is a more general, this is a more general recommendation. Like take take recruiter calls every once in a while. Know your worth, you know I think a lot of the times, especially recruiters, you know, we have a really good muscle for being plugged into the market. And I've actually had really candid conversations with my team where they will come to me and say like, Hey, when it comes to competence for a role like ours, like this is what we're seeing, and that's actually a really great conversation to engage in, because at the end of the day, we want to competitively pay top performers. And so, you know, if you've been at a company for a while, like my recommendation is Yeah, you should know your worth on the market to take recruiter calls every once in a while because what happens very often in a lot of companies is for the folks that tend to stay, their compensation doesn't increase as quickly as if you've made a bunch of moves. Same with title, like your titles can often change really quickly if you've bounced around from company to company. So how do you how do you make sure that you don't, in a way pay a tax for tenure? And so that's one of the things that, you know, I would recommend as well.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, two brilliant pieces of advice, then no point of sticking your head in the sand, either either from a company perspective or from a co worker perspective. So yeah

Ariana Moon  

And like one more one more thought there. The you know, I'm not I'm not saying like take recruiter calls because you might be it's not always that you might be getting underpaid. I think the other flip side, great thing about taking recruiter calls is like, you might be reminded how awesome your environment is. Right? I have this experience quite a bit because I've worked with our CEO to run a lot of our executive searches. So I've spoken to hundreds of executives at this point. And I think even though I've been at greenhouse for most of my career, through hearing about the experiences of people that are really experienced in their roles, the thought processes they use to make, you know, job moves. I feel like you know, through those experiences, I've in a way gotten confirmation that Oh, I do think we'd have a really great place to work which is part of the reason that I stay here. It is because I have exposure to different experiences. That I hear about on the market.

Nasser Oudjidane  

Yeah, yeah, for sure. You'd like to dig deep into the psychology of people and explore what drives them on your podcast. What's your why can you speak about that a little?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, um, that's a great question. So I think a little bit about me, just so you can maybe understand how my head ticks a little bit. You know, I grew up in a highly structured household household was actually homeschooled from elementary school until college and so college was really my first exposure to Lego people who think differently than the people in my household. You know, I grew up in an environment where we weren't necessarily encouraged to engage in discussion with authority figures like parents. So in fact, like, having an opposing opinion was actually seen as a challenge and we were most rewarded when we kept our heads down and got good grades. So you know, I think when I got more exposure to different ways of thinking that was so fascinating to me, and I think part of the reason why, to this day I you know, even though most of my team, most of my job is to run a large team. I really enjoy those direct conversations with candidates because I'm so interested in people's stories like why are you the way that you are? How do you know, intake information that the world around you is giving? I like this phrase, what is your API? Like how do you how do you process information? And so I think that's part of the reason why I have stayed in talent acquisition throughout my career. I think, hearing stories, learning from others, and through that process, helpi   ng them find the role that is right for them. That is extremely rewarding for me. And so, you know, I think I think one of the things that I've, I've learned throughout my career is how do I learn how to think in different ways, because I learned that often, growth actually starts with unlearning, not learning. And so I had to unlearn a lot in terms of what I thought were rules or the ways that things had to be when I was younger, and I had to reframe things like, quote, “challenging authority can be reframed” to, quote, “having a conversation”. Those are two very different ways of saying potentially the same thing. But it's app very different framework, and you might, you know, do to that framework shift like, react very differently. So I would probably say like that, that's why I like discovering the story behind people and why you think the way that you do and if I can be helpful in your journey of finding a role that you're really excited about that kind of unlocks your potential and sense of fulfilment? Like, how rewarding is that?

Nasser Oudjidane  

That's amazing. I love the “what's your your API?” So in terms of the the people that are speaking with you, the people that you invite to talk to, you mentioned candidates is that candidates from all walks of life from, you know, executives to, you know, just other co workers working in across various industries, or is there any speciality there?

Ariana Moon  

Issue ality that.

Ariana Moon  

yeah, I would say I'm more specifically to meet today I interact mostly with executive candidates just because I partner with our CEO on that. So, more recently it has been that, but I think like it can be applied to anyone that you partner with or work with as well, it doesn't always have to be folks external to your company. Like when I think about how I partner with our finance team versus how I might partner with our engineering team versus how I might partner with our sales team or customer success team, they actually look a little different. In fact, it's funny, you're asking this, because just yesterday I was writing down the different ways that in my perspective at Greenhouse, recruiters have to behave a little bit differently depending on the departments that they're supporting. So the key skills that we might look for, for recruited recruiter doing sales, recruiting might look a little bit different from the key skills that we might look for, for recruiter that will be partnering mostly with our product team, for example. And so it exists, it exists internally to when you do a lot of cross functional work. Like we have all these really smart people kind of working on different things. And I think discovering, you know, what is their why and why they're showing up to work, what is their why and why they're pitching this project. Those are important things to learn to for really effective cross functional collaboration. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna say that we can do a whole other podcast and about that subject. It turns out that you are, so it's great.

Ariana Moon  

Great!

Nasser Oudjidane

I'd like to intersect two things that I've heard from speaking to you. And one of them is like the the essence of like, take charge. And if you think you don't have the ability, then it's not being done. And then the other is what you've described as impostor syndrome coming from a culturally conservative background. Can you speak about how you developed your voice?  A littel bit more?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, absolutely. I think that requires a little bit of context on where I was before Greenhouse, because I do feel like I found most of my really found my voice here. So before Greenhouse, I was coming from quite a different environment, I was still working in tech, but a very different industry, very different environment I was expected to wear certain things speak in certain ways and I would receive feedback on those things. Which is really funny for me to reflect back on. It was quite a top down environment. hierarchy was very clear. You know, I was in more of a back office function, more traditional HR, if you will. And it did, it was like literally back office, it was like in the back of the office. And, you know, I had a moment. Or when I transitioned to greenhouse, it was actually a really big culture shock for me, because it's this, like, open floor office environment, everyone's gonna sit next to each other. I actually sat next to between the manager that hired me and our CEO, and I was terrified. And I would take calls at my desk because we'd wear these headsets. And I remember being just like, I felt so washed, I was always like, Oh, my God, what am I going to do wrong? But I quickly learned that Greenhouse was an environment where feedback was quick. It wasn't like a really big deal. It wasn't like a come into my office or something serious to talk to you. But it was more like, hey, Arianna, when you hop on the phone with a candidate, why don't you just like warm up to them a little bit instead of jumping straight to business and asking them a bunch of interview questions. So it was actually an invitation to be less scripted. And there was a lot of invitation from my perspective, which was really confusing to me, because I was, again, one of the most junior people on the team. But my head of people would always come to me and say, Arianna, we want your thoughts. What do you think? So, you know, in the past, I was more used to environments where if I came to a manager or a leader with a problem and asking them like, hey, what do I do, I would get a directive. But Greenhouse is very much an environment where if I did the same thing, I would get a question. I never get an invitation for my opinion. And I think that in itself was very empowering. The other thing that I experienced was, you know, we would have these team meetings right early on, in my team and my tenure at Greenhouse, and someone pointed out to me, like, hey, Ariana you're really quiet, like, what do you, you know, we would love to hear more more thoughts from you. And it was it was an interesting moment for me because I didn't even realize it was unnormal to not say anything at that point because again, I'd been in very different work environments. And so I think I credit Greenhouse a lot for creating a culture where we do want to hear voices, and we do want to hear different voices. And I really credit our executive team for of living this value. I think you know what, even though we're very different, over 800 people today, there are a lot of channels for employees to be heard, in ways that that, you know, don't always just advantage extroverts or people that you know, are good at speaking up on the spot. So that's a little bit about my story, that you know, if that can serve as any inspiration to someone who is sitting in the meeting, and a little bit nervous to speak up or provide an opinion, like, I've totally been there. And, you know, the more that you do that, and the more that you practise, the easier it will get,

Nasser Oudjidane 

Right, Or if you're not working in environments, which Daniel and the rest of the team at Greenhouse have cultivated, you know, where you need to start working. Right.

Ariana Moon  

Right.

Nasser Oudjidane

And can you speak a little bit more about how greenhouses, how greenhouse champions, candidates from diverse backgrounds?

Ariana Moon  

Yes. So I'll start with sharing our concept, which is our philosophy of talent makers. Daniel wrote a book, Daniel, and John wrote a book called Talent makers all about this. So talent makers is the philosophy, that hiring is really the shared organizational responsibility. And what that means is like, in order to achieve our hiring goals, we need to involve the networks and the relationships of each employee, not just a recruiting team, but through the lens of how can we cultivate diverse perspectives into our company. So being a talent maker is not just reactively, taking an interview, when one pops up on your calendar, it's about how do you actively participate in the work of attracting underrepresented folks to an open role? How do you do things like as a key for Greenhouses brand in a way that's authentic to you? How do you build an environment that attracts really awesome talent? And not only one specific type of demographic of talent? And how do you do things like you know, get involved with driving diversity in our hiring pipelines, whether you partner with our employee resource groups, you leverage your own network, those are the things that, you know, we really like to prioritize. And so, you know, in terms of what that looks like, today, like some of the things that we're focused on is, we are partnering with our employee resource groups to host things like sourcing parties, and kind of, you know, tap into their networks a little bit more proactively. Another thing that my team is really focused on is how can we create more resources for hiring managers to understand how to best enable more diversity within their pipelines. The reality is we grew really fast. And we have close to 200 managers, at Greenhouse in the in the time of this recording, and a lot of them are actually hiring for the first time, whether our greenhouse or whether ever in their career. And so when you have so many different so many new folks hiring, in a way you have new folks hiring new folks, and so how do you? How can we better push resources and training around how to be an inclusive hiring manager how to have an equitable hiring process as much as possible? So those are the things that you know, are really focusing on right now.

Nasser Oudjidane

Okay, got it. Well, you can read talent makers to learn more about it. This is the last one, before the closing questions. What tech? Are you using to do your job? Feel free to shout out any products that are delivering value? Yeah, well, obviously have to start with Greenhouse. You can imagine that everyone on my team basically lives in Greenhouse 24/7. And that's a big part of what makes our jobs easier to do. I'm big fans that from from a sourcing perspective, especially when it comes to sourcing folks from underrepresented backgrounds. I'm a big fan of platforms like Hired and Intello. I also am a huge fan of code signal for things like technical testing. I actually just went to a retreat earlier this month that was hosted by code signal. And that was just such a fantastic experience. Very much the conversation was around having less bias in in the interview process through leveraging technology like code signal. I'm also a big fan of platform platforms like monday.com use that for project management. We also use that to track our hiring plan. And I also want to shadow Intrro as part of our hiring cloud our greenhouse and you know, we have a pretty extensive ecosystem of really cool technologies. So I would say those are the things that come to mind. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Thanks for sharing and for the shout out and moving into closing questions. What's one piece of advice you wish you had when you started and embarked on your career?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, I think one of the things that was really impactful for me to hear in the last year is that, again, in this period of a lot of uncertainty in the world, is that leaders are not the ones who always know the answers. But they are the ones that have a perspective and a view in an ambiguous situation. Right. And so I think being a leader is not always about communicating certainty, because you're not going to be able to do that, like what is certain in this world right now. But it is about coming, communicating clarity, like, given the information you have, acknowledging that the information is limited? How can we be clear on how we're going to act or not act? And that's really your job as leader? How do you communicate clarity, especially in periods of uncertainty? So I would say if I heard that earlier in my career, that probably would have brought me a lot of reassurance. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Yeah, for sure. Is there anything that you're listening to right now? Or reading or watching for inspiration? That perhaps you'd like to share?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, really, really wise. I just not too long ago read, working backwards from Colin Breyer and Bill Carr, their leaders at Amazon and Amazon culturally, I think, you know, is a little bit of a is a little can be, you know, in certain ways, a little bit of a unicorn, but I thought in terms of thinking through how to drive results. It was a really fascinating book and a really great inside look into how a company that's, you know, so well known, and so used and everyone's day to day cooperates. So that's one book that comes to mind. You know, I'm a big fan of fan of podcasts, which is probably why I'm here today. And so some of that more more HR or talent focused podcasts that I really like are things like Josh Burson has a great one. He's a really well known HR analyst. There's also HR leaders with Chris Rainey big fan there. There's redefining HR with Lars Lars Schmidt. Other probably less HR specific ones. I'm a big fan of HB our idea cast, big fan of work life with Adam Grant. I'm a big fan of. I'm a big Adam Grant fan. I have most of his books. I would say one of the most recent conversations I heard, that was really thought provoking for me was the diary of a CEO was Steven Bartlett. He had Malcom Gladwell on his show recently, and I thought that conversation was just so open and vulnerable and thought provoking. So I really appreciated that. 

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome, thank you for sharing that. I'll be definitely putting those into the show notes. And it's funny because I heard the diary of a CEO actually recommended by a friend not even 24 hours ago. So it's, it's really funny that you recommended that. What is one for value or phrase that you live by?

Ariana Moon  

Yeah, this is very relevant to my experience in the last two years, because the last two years has been highly uncomfortable as leader, that the phrase that comes to mind is the struggle that you feel today is the strength that you feel tomorrow. You know, we don't grow in when we're comfortable. And I'm such a believer that it is in the situations where there is that friction there is that discomfort. Those are the ones that you grow the most. So you might hate it in the present moment. But looking back, you'll you'll realize, hey, like that's actually promoted me to become a better person.

Nasser Oudjidane 

And last one, before we before we wrap up, where can we go to learn more?

Ariana Moon  

Yes, we have a fabulous website, greenhouse.io. And you know, if you want to learn more about stories from the field from recruiters, you know, I do I am the host of the What's your why podcasts, also available through our website, and available wherever you find your podcasts that really focuses on the individual stories of different recruiters and practitioners, you know, outside of Greenhouse, and I've gotten a lot of value in hearing those stories. And so those are two areas that I would recommend.

Nasser Oudjidane

Awesome. Ariana, this has been terrific. Thank you for your time.

Ariana Moon  

Yes, thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.