Whispered Hiring with Jessica Chiew, Head of GTM Strategy & Operations @ Canva

I will say, though, and my team is sometimes frustrated with me. I'm constantly re-evaluating how we structure the team and what goes where. How do you go about VP+ type level role? Is there someone that I've worked with before that I love and want to get into process? Who's coming as strongly as a strong referral from people that I trust and respect as well? That's obviously the first port of call. And that may be another way to test for builders, right? It's just like managers are going to stay at that level and high level. And builders are going to be able to tell you everything about the project. We expect impact pretty quickly. We're not one of those companies or it's like, "Oh, you know, you're going to take six months to get settled in and then maybe by then. " No, like, I'm looking for impact in your first three months. Kind of put that in our case study guidance, which is if you're going to interview with a PLG company, you'd damn well better use their product. Welcome to How I Hire, the podcast where we talk with senior leaders about how they find that attract and grow go-to-market talent. I'm Andy founder of Whisper today. I'm joined by Jessica Chew. Jessica is the global head of go-to-market strategy in Ops at Canva, where she leads B2B sales strategy and a lot more. I'm sure she's thinking about growing the B2B business. Jessica also worked at Asana, where she led revenue strategy analytics. So if there's somebody that knows PLG and how to grow a great PLG company, it's Jessica. Jessica's also from Melbourne, which I figured out as soon as I heard her accent, I spent a lot of time there when I was at Culture Amp, a beautiful, amazing city. Jessica, great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me, Andy, and I work at a great Australian company right now, so it's fun that you worked at another great one as well at Culture Amp. There are some amazing ones and they keep popping out because they've got this isolated area to experiment with things. I think it's always interesting when Australian companies decide to take that step to the US as well too, which maybe we won't talk too much about today, but it's fun. So maybe, you know, first question, you know PLG really well. I'm curious how you think about building out teams or if there are specific things you're trying to assess, whether it's data fluency or other characteristics like that. Yeah, PLGs are a really unique and interesting space. I think if you, I've definitely tried to do this, but I love hiring people with PLG experience and some patent recognition, but it's hard because I think you could kind of count the number of successful PLG companies on maybe one, maybe two hands, and so it's a limited pool. I don't think you can hire exclusively from there. So I love to have a few folks on the team who have that, and I do, you know, on my team, I've got some assana, some freaks and Grammily as well. But I think the most important thing to hiring people who will thrive in an environment where you've got almost two businesses in one, right? So also an enterprise is you have to have people who are good first problem, first, first principles problem solvers, it kind of goes without say. But I also think people who understand the customer journey as a concept, and it's kind of an overuse that term and concept, but I think really people who are obsessed with focusing on what's the experience for the customer? How do they seamlessly move from one to the other and like zoom out outside of just the no more traditional enterprise funnel, which is, you know, you find an executive contact. They buy top down. It's a bit more nuanced and it's more elongated than that. So that's what we kind of test for. I couldn't agree more every time I shop at a company, I've been at a number of like low ACV. They haven't all been full PLG, but box definitely was. Yeah. And Cardo was, I wouldn't really describe his PLG, but it was happening like low ACV. Yeah. And you get there and everyone comes to you and says, and either are eight to nine email systems. And we're tripping over each other and it's a total mess. And so I think very, very, people can be a little bit isolated sometimes in terms of their thing. But I think your point on like understanding the customer journey, being able to talk about that is really critical. How do you assess for that like customer journey fluency when you're interviewing? I think versus like, for whatever company they've come from, you asked them to describe it, right? And so if it's something they've not spoken to before, it comes kind of obvious. If they start talking about MQLs and SQLs, that's very like us like ops or sales team led language. And so if they can speak to the language and the customer that's helpful. And then I think you can start to problem solve, which is like, even if they haven't come from a PLG company, you kind of describe for us at Canva, you know, I make a sub-someone at Nike, you know, they might be in a sales cycle now, but some point three, four, five years ago, the first person at Nike crapped swipe to credit card and created the Canva, you know, Nike domain on Canva. And so you kind of play back that's what it looks like. How do you modify your approach knowing that, right? Like if you've got this, we've got to at this point, 260 million MAUs, like, this is an incredible asset for you that you might not have had other companies that you've been at, like, how would you tap into that? What do you think the opportunity is and see how flexible their mind is, I think, to, um, to, yeah, to, to adapting their approach where really they do, we do have this incredible end user brand awareness that they may not have had in more traditional top-down enterprise settings. I like that a lot. What does, what does the GTM leadership team look like? And how is it structured at a PLG company by Canva versus, and I know you've probably lived most of your career at these, but I'm eventually structured differently, right? Because product means to have a role and a discussion in that, but how is yours structured and maybe it's your son? Great question. So I kind of think about, um, if I think about the team, the leadership team that I sit on, it, it looks like a traditional sales all that I would say. So, um, May and my, my boss, our chief commercial officer really sit in two teams at Canva. So one is our core sales and success, go to market leadership team. We've got regional sales leaders, vertical sales leaders, a global customer success leader, um, and a channel business, right? So that's, that's our core team. The other team that we sit on though, it looks a little different, I think, then folks who haven't been in a PLG setting, is a team with the broader set of leaders that, um, span our product org, our growth team, which, um, is a product monetization organization and a very, very strong set of partners on the data side as well. And so that broader team is the one that's really bringing to life, the journey for all of our B2B customers, whether they are still on the online phase of their journey, or whether they are, you know, on a multi-year ELA with us. And so I think balancing those two teams are more immediate day-to-day, you know, we're still a sales org that has quarterly rhythm and quarterly targets, but um, we sit in this other, uh, yeah, bigger team and more expansive team within campers as well. I certainly need to always say, like, what's the team of the tribe you feel like you're on in a company? And then I heard somebody say the other day, it's like, everyone, where the sweatshirt with the logo of the swag of the team, you feel like you're on. Yeah. And you'll really find out what team people feel like. So those are interesting. Um, one kind of interesting observation I've had around ops teams at PLG companies is they tend to be lower staff than I would expect given how important data is. And I also understand it, right? Because you have less commission, less routing type of issues typically. And so I'm curious, like, how do you think about your team? It's remit and like, I don't know exactly how to ask, but like, I know a number of a hundred million dollar plus PLG companies where I'm shocked that they'll have like ops teams of two or one. And some curious how your teams designed and how you think about that. Great question. I mean, I feel like Canva and our company leadership really gets the vision of, you know, the role of sales and the potential of sales. So we are a well-staffed team. I don't think we're in that zone of, you know, but we were when I joined, I would say we had a couple analysts. Um, the way that we've structured the team is I kind of have the core office pillars and this is your work to Andy, but we've got a systems team, a sales ox team, an enablement team. And then I have some other teams that I think help us. It might, you know, might be specific to PLG that really help us bridge into the rest of the company and across that broader customer journey talking about. So I have a sales strategy team that really is about not only the standard stuff of building the annual plan, but really thinking about what is the coordinated plan across every function at Canva to drive, you know, bit to bit growth. So let's field, field facing and more thinking about the bigger plan. I've got a, um, the growth leader as well. And so while there was a very large growth organization sitting in Sydney, we also have a dedicated person who is embedded within sales and success bridging. Um, we have an AI Lee, which I'm happy to speak to as well, but we made the change earlier this year to have a dedicated team built out and, you know, in support of our AI efforts. Um, and yeah, so I think some of those like extra teams, which might be a team of one, to be frank, we're not doing trying to be efficient with resources too. Really are quite unique and make sure that we've got people solely focused on connecting with, with Porta Canva and, and the bigger picture outside of just commission, quota, territories, and all that stuff that we live in for you, there's all. I'm a big fan of AI being aligned with the ops and strategy functions versus being a separate, I think it's so easy to show quick wins on AI, but to have those things embedded into the overall motion, you need to have the systems and product pieces as well too. Yeah, agree. It's very easy to get things live and have cool experimentation, but for things to transform workflows and transform roles, it's kind of finale stuff to me. So, um, we've benefited a lot from having that dedicated focus and then, obviously benefit a lot from Canva as a company big, very invested overall, it empowering the entire, you know, employee base with AI and whatever tool we need as well. I love that. Maybe shifting over to how do you design like you took over the team? How do you figure out what are the rules you need and then kind of getting everybody aligned and how do you, how do you prepare before you start recruiting? I think enjoying any company and taking on a team, it starts with, all right, what are the business objectives? Okay, what are the team we need in place? And for us, that looked pretty stock standard, we didn't have an ops team, so we had to build that out. We had an emerging enablement team, but, you know, as the team scales and out seller based scales, we really needed to invest there. So business priorities mapping to the team, I will say though, and my team is sometimes frustrated with me. I'm constantly re-evaluating how we structure the team and what goes where and if we need to combine scope or shift scope around, I think that's just the nature of being in a fast growth, fast moving environment. And I actually have to ask my leadership team to be a little bit flexible and dynamic with me as well. It's all done in service of kind of the company and hitting our goals, but I'm always keeping them top of mind in their career growth as well, but I'm mixing things up all the time to be free, Andy. And yeah, it's something I have to ask them to come along for the ride on, because there's no one size fits all in when you're growing as fast as we are. You know, the business is different every six months, and so as a team, there's an opportunity for us to shift and adapt to that too. I like that. I mean, I hear there are a lot of, I tend to try to give that stability for my people, but I'm also, when I'm running a team, trying to move people around. And so if you've got a mobs person, they may just be limited to mobs, and so let's move them to software. I did it. I did it. It's your own experience and you know, building out the experience that, you know, maybe it's permanent, maybe it's an interim thing, but I think, yeah, it's good for individuals as well. Yeah, you meant you kind of, it's cool that you're self-aware that you are kind of mixing it up. What's driving that mixing up of the team? Is that a constant realignment with the business itself? Is that a pushing people harder to do that, or is that like trying to try and to maybe like reduce silos? Or how do you think about that? All of the above. I also think it is playing to people's strengths as well, right? So as newly as come and forward and we get to know them, there's, you know, because we are not a traditional, just like pure enterprise sales business, and there's a clear blueprint for how we support from an Ox perspective, there's different areas that we're always like leaning into and stretching into as well. And so I try to give you some examples, but, you know, we just launched a new, a new, a new SKU, our amorous recent big, big product announcement. And, you know, there's, there's a central pricing and packaging team in Sydney, but they're really focused on the online piece. And so we realize that we need to lean in there. So I've got one fantastically on my team who I'm like, go and work on those things. And now if that's going to be a more regular fixture of the work that we do, I want to flex that person in that direction. And so it's kind of a bit of everything, flexing and. There's a question. I'm never asked anybody on this podcast, but I'm curious. I think if you move people around and you shift them around, but you give them psychological safety, it's okay, right? Like if I'm like, I know Jessica's got my back and I know she's also going to shift me around. That's good. I think sometimes like you look at an Elon Musk type company, like no psychological safety. And so I'm curious, like, how do you make people comfortable with that constant movement on your side? Yeah. Well, I think it helps when I'm pretty upfront where I'm like, I need you to do this because the business has needs. And I'm asking for a favor, but I think you have to build that trust and get to know people and have people understand you and your motivations as a leader. It doesn't just happen in a moment. It has to be something that you kind of live and breathe all the time. And so I've been on a journey personally. I think earlier in my career, because I grew up from a very formal environment of consulting, it took me a while to be a very open and vulnerable leader. But that's who I am today. And I share with my team how I'm feeling and where I feel like we're not providing the right support to the business, where I think that we're doing a great job. And so, yeah, being open with them, I think they kind of know me. And so when I ask them to, hey, I need you to stretch in this direction or I need you to flex in that direction, hopefully they understand my core motivations, which is always us being the best team we can be. And I'm very competitive. I want us to hit our goals and be great. So I love that. My best leaders that I've worked for have been incredibly vulnerable. And it helps, I think that actually creates the comfort. I'm like, if I know Jessica, I think there's a bounce, right? Like if you go off the deep end and you're really struggling for multiple months, and you're struggling with your boss, then if you're vulnerable, you can actually spiral down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think if you're comfortable with your boss and your boss is vulnerable, and then you can also be vulnerable to your team below them, it creates a really great positive environment for sure. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've been there too. And it's a fine balance that you don't want to overshare, and you want to give the teams some protection and shield them from, you know, everything that's going on as well. But, you know, I don't think there's any harm in being an open book too. No, I always give the speech to people like, I am going to be transparent with you until I realize you can't be. I can't be. And if I realize I can't be, like we will have a conversation and we will adjust. And, and so I think that's always a fun one to figure out. We were talking before we hit record on experience versus builders, which I think is just a fascinating topic, right? Like it's the classic debate right now. If I need people to get their hands dirty, but I also need patterned recognition, I'd love to hear how you think about that. Yeah, it's something. So we've, you know, as I said when I joined Canberra only two years ago, we didn't have much in place. I've been on a leadership hiring frenzy. So this is top of mind. It's tough. In some ways, I love experience and I love pattern recognition because we're moving fast. And I'm thinking about the systems leader. We built out like we just hired and we've got work. We need to implement CPQ like I can't I can't take a first principles problems that like we need someone who's been there done that before. And I also really want to for where we are in our journey. I want to bring on people with like great and surprise experience. I think the problem that Andy maybe you you've got a great network is like people who have been in large enterprise organizations for a long time as well. Sometimes they are, you know, they've been in their box and they've been in large-scaled environments, very structured environments. They not be also a great fit for like the fast-moving high-growth environment that we find ourselves in now. So it's a hard balance. You want some of that experience, but also not it's always a great fit. So first is like I've taken a bit of a portfolio approach to my team. I want I'm happy to have some pure enterprise, you know, scaled experience with some athletes as well built out. So as a team, we can have a good portfolio. But I really think that even for the people who come in with lots of large company experience, I need to look for folks who are builders. And if they've been at a startup or a couple startups in and amongst their career journey, that gives me some comfort. But I think it's something you really have to test for so you can get a bit of the best of a best of both worlds. How do you I agree? How do you test if somebody is a builder? It's really I mean it's really hard because you ask anybody, do you like building? I mean they know where they're into them. They get to say, yeah, I love building and I'm a builder and that's what's frustrating me about my current role. But I think it's hard to test. But the analogy I use is, you know, if you are building is like, you know, being in a room and there's like a ton of rocks and boulders everywhere. If you ask someone, do you like building which really means do you like picking up on those rocks and getting your hands dirty and doing the hard work and lifting it and clearing it out of the room? Everyone's going to say yes. I think real builders though are like, I've been in rooms where there's rocks and rocks and rubble and pebbles and it doesn't overwhelm me. It energizes me that I've got all this work ahead to go one by one, pick up those rocks and clear them out of the room. So I think it's like, you ask questions like, hey, can you tell me, like give me an example of where things weren't going well. And I'd be concerned if they're like, oh, there's one quarter, you know, where we're a back to miss target. No, I want to hear like, hey, there was a quarter, we're a back to miss target. We had a product launch coming up. I had to, I was, you know, being held accountable to doubling my team. We were running out of office space, like, and that was a fun, exciting experience for me. You know, so I think it's just figuring out a little bit what building looks and feels like for them and finding those examples to give you comfort that you can get the experience plus the great, kind of great mindset that you need. I like that. The other thing I maybe use that I've been curious to use is I've always used this, like, can you pull your own data as a proxy or like if you, if you can pull your own data, that means you don't have a problem getting your hands dirty, learning the architecture and doing that. And so I kind of started to get to a point when SQL, I remember at box, they have this course and the head of analytics would teach it every quarter. And anybody could get nominated by their manager and they could take the course and they would learn how to write SQL. And then they could help their department do this stuff. I would always hire those people. The top grads of those classes, like I've seen go on to run, like the analytics is tripe, working at last in all these different places. And so for me, the ability to pull data maybe defines it a little bit. And then I think obviously as you and I talked before the recording, if you've only been at big, you're probably playing a political game, but I need need to be comfortable not having all of the resources and getting getting into smaller teams as well. Yeah. I love that SQL example. The other thing I do, and I think this is an approach a lot of people take, but in every interview, I mean, I interview almost explicitly for going to market roles, right? So I was a marketing professional who are great salespeople and I'm going to tell you a great story. But I have a discipline where I almost ask like the fourth or fifth layer question below the headline question, right? So I'll give you an example. You're hiring for a CS leader. Okay. First question is like, tell me about like, what is the future of customer success look like? Okay, they're going to say, I think it's a modern journey that's largely digital and you know, get scared. Cool. Talk to me about an example of what what does it actually look like at your current role of previous or what did you roll out in service? Oh, okay. We rolled out a tech touch digital journey and okay, what were the points of that journey, right? Like across the first year before you head into a renewal, like, what were the points? Okay. How did you what were the how did you measure the impact of that? What was the impact? What were the what was hard about getting that project live? And I think you can quit pretty quickly. Like everyone can answer the first level, probably the second level question, but I think when you're looking for leaders who lead from the front and are comfortable being in the detail and knocking down the roadblocks, like you can pretty much tell by the third or fourth layer whether they know their stuff or they're just telling a story they've told, you know, refined over three, four, five interviews. I use similar one other thing I've layered on the top is I give them a false choice. So basically, I find that if you if you just start going deep, they can kind of feel like, oh, they went deep on an area I didn't know. So I'll simply say like, I'm going to name three topics. Yeah. You you pick one. Oh, and then I'll go at deepest possible. So I had one person gives him a bit of a bit of a bit of options. So yeah, yeah, I was interviewing a mobs person. I said, so ROI, um, attribution or like routing and the person picked ROI. I was like, cool, give me a numerator, denominator, uh, and that person struggled and and it was like, I think they could see that I was just going to keep going down until we ended the interview there, right? It was like, I knew that they didn't actually know their stuff and that may be another way to test for builders, right? But it's just like managers are going to stay at that level and high level and builders are going to be able to tell you everything about the project. But I think I mean, I use this even when I'm interviewing for like senior kind of VP or exec roles as well, because I think the modern leaders, especially with AI, like you have to be in the data, we can't just come and roll out playbooks, you know, it's things are changing. And so I think unless you can show that you have stronger perspectives below just the priority level or he is what, you know, I think it's kind of critical as things are shifting. So how do you assess for AI? I think that we that one's really interesting for me. It's kind of like, are you a builder? Now are you a builder in AI? And I think we've all gone on this journey, right? Which is let's just use it. And then that mostly doesn't work. Yeah. But how what are you looking for on your teams or across the go to market in terms of AI fluency to that? Yeah. Well, I look for curiosity across everyone. That's a no no brainer. And then I'm also looking for some experience. And I wouldn't say that the point where I need people to have a track record, but I need you to not only be curious, but I've actually tried to implement stuff and to have some understanding or awareness about what is or isn't hard with AI right now. So I just asked for once I say, Hey, how are you approaching AI in your own personal and day-to-day work clothes at work? Everyone's got great answers. Everyone's experimenting. Okay, what projects have you driven or been involved in with AI? Do they work or do they not? Because I think not not everything's working, right? And so I want some of that. I want them, I'm happy with them to say, Hey, we tried this and it didn't didn't quite pan out. But I need them to have not only been curious, but I've actually gone in and tried things. I agree. Yeah, it's I think the idea that you're just doing text in there is is is not sufficient right now. Exactly. Okay, so say you say you decide to hire a rule like senior level rules. Like how do you go about like sourcing for those looking for those like a VP plus type level role? Love it. Well, we actually I know you know, we've talked other guests on this podcast about it. And we actually do post every role eventually, I will say so there's some nuance behind that. But I'm not opposed to broadcasting to the world that we're looking because you know, I've only got so many hours in the day. I can reach my network and let them know. But there's, you know, people in my network and the networks of my colleagues as well for them to know that it rolls out there. It does it does help even with the more private referrals that come in. But it doesn't typically start there. I was as soon as I think there's a need on the team. I will start recruiting so I'll chat with you Andy. I'll chat with I'll reach out to my network. And then tap into the network of my colleagues and my peers, my team as well. And so I'm always looking for is there someone that I've worked with before that I love and want to get into process? Who's coming, who's coming as strongly, you know, as a strong referral from people that I trust and respect as well? And then I do, we do source as well, right? So I will build a list. I'll work with my recruiting partner and we really hone in on the ICP. We look for companies that we want to hire for. We really, I think that's some of the discipline too about working with the recruiting partners, like writing the JD actually being very clear on what you're optimizing for. And so, and what your target kind of person looks like. And so I do that. And then we source an eye, even though we have great sourcing support, I do a lot of the reach out myself, right? So I'll either find, yeah, I'll either find people that I know to get me connected with people. I want to have a conversation with all do call outreach. I think it's much more effective and powerful coming from the hiring manager or leader in the company, then, you know, having someone a recruiting team reach out. And I would say 95% of our, you know, the people I've hired and and senior leader with, we've brought on have come from know those two routes, just direct network referral. But in the, sometimes that's why we post roles. I'm like totally open to it as seeing who comes in inbound and who kind of finds out through more traditional channels. It can get really noisy. I think that's what scares people off from putting these senior roles out and ether. It gets very noisy. But, you know, we've got a great recruiting team. So I'm not screening those. And so every now and then we do get a good cold applicant. I've got one on my team. It's worked out great. And so 99% it's not, it's not where we get out more senior, senior leaders from. But I'm certainly not closed up to the idea. I agree. I hired a director of Red Obstet, Carter, who was terrific, who was a cold, cold applicant. I wouldn't have never have had. But for whatever reason, they're not on your network. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think if you've got a great recruiting team and a great recruiting partner, they can, you can get them. What are the questions to ask and folks really? Okay. So obviously, Canvas, an attractive company to work at, you post it. You're going to get a lot. How do you, and I'm imagining people are trying to network into you, figuring out how to, how to meet you, how to do all that stuff. How do you, how do you handle that? And are there effective ways where people can break the noise to get to you? I love it. So I think, so when people, so, first and foremost, you have to network your way in. And so, so people are reaching out to people I know, appreciate it, reach out to people in the company. You can kind of tell from the nature of that outreach, though, who is like a, oh, my goodness, they, they don't know you, but they're trying to get in and they are a strong referral versus someone who's just passing on a name. And so I think you have to slip that out because, yeah, you do get a lot of people reaching out. I try my best. And I try my best to reach out to everyone in my LinkedIn inbox. But I, I fail. There's just, as you said, Canvas are really attractive companies that we get a lot, a lot of people. But I try to reach out, you know, at least get back to folks at some point, even if it's after, after we fill the role. So I try to clear that out, but I'm not the best. It's impossible when you post something big. I find it's the recruiter bunch over and over and over again. I'll send every one of the recruiter and the recruiter can screen him. I remember I had this one person I posted and they sent me four people and I'm like, I knew they weren't good, but I sent them a recruiter and the person got angry. They're like, they're for you. And I'm like, no, these ones were. We triage, you know, we have to triage. So, yeah, yeah. Shifting over to interview process. You know, how do you approach the interview? Do you have any like philosophies on interview process? I can die deep into specifics, but I'd be curious just to unbounded for a minute. So one thing I will say is most of my interviews, so we do, oh, I can speak about this as well, but we do a challenge presentation in Canvas, kind of the second to final step in most cases. And so they're for that for our top two, three candidates, we spend a lot of time together. In the earlier process, I do 30 minute interviews. I don't have time to do anything more. And so that is much time. And so I have had to design what a 30 minute interview looks like for me because the last thing you want to do is walk out of an interview and not get a clear signal, yeah, you have to be definitive. Yes, or no. So I always prep because I think I want to keep myself honest to how I want to run it to make sure it's the highest impact of time. So I always review resumes and experience for my own perspectives and have it build my question list because you have to be very, very targeted, I think with such a short amount of time. And then I always open my interviews in the same way. Andy, the question I ask is, hey, I've read your professional background, can you, I'd love for you to just quickly talk me through your story and path to today's conversation. It's very open-ended, and I make sure I use the word quickly, but I don't expect that. Your story and what was the last part of that? Your path to today's conversation. I like that. And so if you think I've said I've got your professional background and then I've asked you to cover it quickly. And so it's always very interesting how people approach that question. I think it gives you a really, people are typically caught off guard because they're not necessarily expecting, you know, very broad question like that, but I think it's interesting what people share with you. And whether they cover the, like whether they give you a good sense of why they're there, why they're applying, whether you get a good sense of who they are and what motivates them. And how much they kind of follow the brief and they too are intentional with how they want to spend 30 minutes. So failure state is someone who comes in and reads you get professional background. Talks at you for 20 minutes of the 30 minutes you've got allocated. Yeah, so I think it's been, it's been a good and effective one. I think you can kind of figure out very quickly if they are in control of the time. And they also have an agenda of what they want to convey and get out of the short amount of time you have together. I hear you're completely, I think you can also, yeah, that if you can't, if you, if we are still talking 15 to 20 minutes after that question gets asked around quickly, like I know that R1 ones are going to be inefficient. They can't be, I think you can also sense like the level of desperation. I was like, how much confidence they bring to the interviews as well too. I like that. I think that open-ended question is, is one I will use, I use as well too. The other one I always ask is just the, I'm, I always use the, I'm happy to spend as much time as you want on your, on your questions. And I literally am like, I could use the whole thing for that because if they don't come prepared, understand my business and do that, that's the other one. Okay, so after your first standard question, assuming it doesn't take 20 minutes, do you then shift into question mode on your site? Yes, I do. Again, I prep because I think with any, any role, you know, you're really probably looking to optimize with three or four characteristics, right, in a candidate. I'll give you some examples. So hiring, just hired an, an enablement leader. And so I was probably looking for, it's, it's a team we need to build up as tons of hiring and culture settings to be done. So team and talent building, I'm looking for it in particular with this role, very like clear prioritization framework and moving out of like order taking mode. I'm looking for something specific to camera, which is that building or a lot of your sleeves. And I'm looking for very strong craft, right? Like, it'd be a great enablement season season, season leader. And I think if you've only got 30 minutes, you kind of have to pick the two, like maybe you know, from a previous, you know, screen or from a recommendation that they're good at two of those. And you really have to figure out like, all right, I really want to go deep in this 30 minute time on the other two. So I will write questions and prepare questions again to make sure that I'm building my own confidence around those. And then it's that like four, five layer, four, five layer question structure. But I really love what you said, which is if you pick the wrong question that they may, may not be, you know, you don't want to ding them as well. So I like the idea of giving us a modularity of how we can the topic or the example that they might want to speak to. Yeah, they can't accuse me of being unfair. And you know, it's like the, oh, they are. So at, for instance, I got a McKinsey case study, it was around makeup and by two women. And I, I, I felt it, right? Because I feel like women sometimes like, oh, you get the guy sexist cases. I failed it miserably because I just didn't know the topic. And I feel like letting people pick that topic, you know, you may have guys that love makeup. You may have women that love basketball. It's like the, the two mix and match and it doesn't matter. But it was clearly one where I was just shaken and, and, and not ready. And so I feel like you give somebody a choice of like, what do you want it to be about? Is, is, you mentioned the, the challenge presentation? What is that? And is it different than a case study? It's simple. I would say it's similar to case studies. It's just kind of in Canva language, but yeah, we do, for every role, like I, I did one, my, even after the C suite, we have folks do, do this challenge. And, and really what it is, it's, it's a 45 minute, 60 minute group presentation. So we have a panel on our side and folks get time to prepare a presentation. We, we really start by posing like a lofty question for the candidates. That is grounded in a real life business problem that we are trying to solve for. And so we talk a lot at Canva about, you know, we set, set crazy big goals and make them happen. So we really set it at that level of ambition, but make sure, yeah, again, it's a real life example. So maybe on the go to market side, we talk about if we're hiring for a partnerships leader, we'll say, hey, you know, this is the, we give them a ton of business context and we say, why don't you craft for us your roadmap for what partnerships you build out, your strategy, like what partnerships you build out in your first year and why. And I think it's really to test like one, you know, can they dream big? And then can they think strategically and methodologically about the problem that we've posed? And then when you get into the challenge, it's like, first and foremost, you kind of test for their executive presence and how well they visually communicate. Do they use Canva the product as part of it too? That's like a very important piece for us, because we don't really give them a guide, any guidelines or what it should look like. So we want to see them live and breathe our values too, which is great virtual presentation. And then I think it's just like the perfect way that cases, it's just the perfect way to simulate like a real life problem that we're solving together. That gets below the stories and anecdotes as well. So I wouldn't say it's easy because I think if you're driven and really want to work at Canva, you're going to invest a ton of time to have a great conversation. But, you know, if you're a leader at Canva, you're going to be leading conversations and helping groups make big decisions. And it's a perfect way to kind of do that before you've stepped through the door. I liked your point on using Canva. I think I've kind of put that in our case study guidance, which is if you're going to interview with a PLG company, you'd damn well better use their product. You don't specifically say it, but if they don't, is it a good judgment? It's a good kind of test for their judgment, I would say. Is it 100% no if they don't use Canva? I've made one exception. And it's worked out. But generally, I would say I don't want to give too much of it, because I don't want to put it out in the ether that affects who otherwise not. But yes, I would say it's pretty much a deal breaker. Yeah, it's, I mean, geez, you got to use, you got to use this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. What percentage of people don't do it? We're pretty lucky. I would say, I would say five to 10%. We get one every now and then. And it's very jarring for us on the other side. We're in this product every day. You say you want to work here. It's, it's a pretty jarring experience. Someone comes in and they open up a powerpoint. That's right. Oh yeah, definitely little powerpoint. Yes. That is, that's really fascinating. I, I, I just, we're always beating these, like dumb things into people, right? Like if you're going, canva makes it so easy to build a beautiful presentation. Why wouldn't you? You know, it's not like there's a huge barrier to entry. So I think a lot of people that haven't been in B2B design market, like I use it every day. Like every time we create a new unposted role, we use it to create a little thing. I've got my design team. But like, there's a good chunk of people maybe on the GTM op side that haven't used it before. But at the same time, you should, you should, like, you should understand, like, do I want to work at this company? I remember before box. I had used box a ton and been using it. And so it made sense. Where is going to be the drop box? Like, I mean, there's no way that you're going to join a company that you way you haven't tried the product, right? And there's kind of no excuses when it comes to Canva. So we had a fun one with Wade, the CEO of Zapier. We talked about like, there's the flip side of do you overuse and overdrink your own team's cool aid within a company, right? Which I won't go do deep on that one, but it's a fun one. Okay. So maybe like later on in the interview process, we talked about interview question, AI fluency, right? All the background references and that side. Like, what's your approach to those? Anything unique? I like to do them. If someone hasn't come through, again, as I said, one of those like referrals to my network or folks that I've worked with, I still like to do them. I think we've got to be really careful and respectful with candidates at how you approach it. So yeah, I typically like to do it. I try to, you know, look for a friendly and do it in a, you know, yeah, a taxful way, but I think you're important. But I think you also have to listen out again for nobody's going to want to say, people are generally around the side of being polite. And so I think you have to look as well for the nuance in what they're saying behind, you know, they had blind or the sound bite too. So, but I think they're important. I would agree. How about how do you onboard a candidate? You were saying before we hit record, like you're passionate about that side of things. So I think so. I'm passionate about this because, you know, there are two things going on with every new new person who joins a company at this, you know, the stage that camp is at. One, we expect impact pretty quickly. We're not one of those companies or it's like, oh, you know, you're going to take six months to get settled in and then maybe by then you know, like I'm looking for impact in your first three months and I'm going to throw you into every meeting with every document, you know, take on your team very, very quickly. That can be a very overwhelming experience as well. So on the other side, it's like how do you do that and you set them up well, but then also acknowledge that that it's like everything is noise when you're new, right? You don't know what's important and what's irrelevant or what's irrelevant right now. And so I invest a lot of time in building what I think are pretty beautiful onboarding packs for all my new new hires. And so in those, I cover really, I mean, there's like kind of four elements if I break it down. One is, you know, if you onboard a new candidate, you kind of have your first meeting in the voiceover, I write down my voice over. I'm like, hey, here's where the business is at, zooming out like this is a story of like where we've come from, where we're at, what we're working on and where you fit in. I write all of that down because I think it's like it's one thing to deliver in a one-on-one. It's another thing to have it and be able to look back on it. I also put in like, I'm very clear about your goals for the first, we do the 3690 framework, but like what are your expectations, right? In your first 30 days, I do expect you to take on your team, take on the cadence, I expect you to plug into this and I expect you to deliver this quick win. I'm very, very specific, so people can kind of track where they're at and we can, they can weed through, you know, in all the listening tour that they're doing and all the meetings that they're joining. Like, what are the things we're really going to measure success on? Key documents, like, you know, full repository of like QBRs, dashboards, everything they need to know, so they can, they can self serve those. And then we build out a very specific listening tour. It's a spreadsheet. So we list at every single person that we want you to meet with. And then we recommend between week one and four, like the sequencing of when you do it. And we're not a strong EA or ABP culture. So every leader at Canva goes in and kind of books, books, those themselves. But, you know, we're really specific with who you should talk to and in what sequence. So we try to manage that risk of overwhelm as well. But I spend a lot of time working on these. So I think they just set people up for success, to be honest. I could, I could not agree more. When do you send them to people? Do you send, so, you know, always get the over eager person, right? Which always ask for it, you know, a couple. Yeah, yeah. Well, I send them on day one because, yeah, I don't, I want to respect it because time between roles and I think it's just easier and safer. And I don't, I need you to be fully doubting as soon as you're a real full-time employee. But people always ask, I'd love to read it, you know, and if you've got anything you want to send me, I think I think people should take the break and, and, yeah, I do the same. And I always give people that break if they, if they ask, I can I take two weeks and slip into the next hiring cycle because I'm like, I'm going to expect that you're going to do the same for us when you leave. And so that's, that's sort of important. I love that. Okay, so if somebody's not a good hire, how do you spot it? Oh, it's dreaded. I mean, look, when someone's not a good hire, it's, it's very painful, right? Like, I think down to the IC level, at the leadership level, when you've made a bad hire, realistically, I think Andy, it kind of, it can take, it can cost you like a year or more, right? In public, if they're a leader, they're probably hired people who are not a players, you've got to work through changements. It's very, very costly. How do I spot it? I think you kind of know pretty, pretty quickly. It's either, I think it's one of two things. It's one how they're showing up in the organization. Everyone, everyone that we screen and everyone that we consider for the role has probably got good experience. I think where it doesn't go right is probably the culture mismatch. And so I said, I think you can kind of like either first hand see it or you hear it from others about how they're showing up or navigate in the organization. And I think the second one is like, you know, what their experience is when they show up for one and one's in their first few weeks and months, like how are they, are they energized? How, you know, does the role match kind of their expectations, you know, in that great warm-up period when you were recruiting them? I think they're the true things that you kind of get a quick signal of quickly. I really like how you verbalized the how they're showing up. The energized, the other one I look for is I can generally tell them two to three one on ones. If they're, if they're showing up and they're, even if they don't know much, they're still able to frame their discussions, manage up, I need people that can manage up to me and can leverage me. And so I've always said, like I know, I think the the culture one is interesting because you, because you may not see that for a while. People come, I'm just hide that pretty well. But I feel like the what I've tried to do is take that one, and I heard a really good podcast here where basically he's like in our case study, I don't want you to take something away and just present to the team. I'm here just like I would be your boss. Like you can text me, you can call me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, wow, maybe I can get rid of that mistaken one-on-one. Like I know within three, so I do like a one-on-one a day for the first three weeks. And my thing is like I'm telling me what you're learning, tell me what you're observing, tell me what would tell me what could be better, tell me what you need. And then off of that, I can fill in the holes that I didn't put in my onboarding plan. And if somebody is not making effective use out of that time by the second week, I pull the corner. I love that. I love that. I haven't had to do that many times in my career, but you have to be decisive as well. We strive to hire great people all the time, but it's naturally limited, right? Like the recruiting process. You never know what someone's like until they're in the company, so I like how decisive you are. But I do the same thing. I'm sorry to mention with the Canva Challenge, I am available. So I keep them my cell phone number by email and I say, I'm available, as your prepared, I am available for as many 30-minute prep calls that you want. It's also a really good sign as to people who take you up on that and come to those calls with like a draft and a clear ask. And I wish I had this data or I'm making these assumptions. What do you think? And the people who are, no, I'll just see you at the presentation. I think it's a good simulation of how invested they are and how, you know, what they're working style is as well. So how many? What percentage of people take you up on that? I mean, I could see it being a little intimidating of like, am I going to annoy my new boss? Because like you might not want evening calls and you might be like, I've got kids, I've got family, or you might maybe like, whoa, this person's way too intense, or it could be good. And so I feel like there's a risk there and then people probably hold back on it. But at the same time, I would want exactly that. Like I would be like, how do I build a relationship with this person? How do you simulate, like it's a two, like we're creating process of two way, a two way thing, right? Like you also want to make sure there's a mutual fit inside be good to to spend time and see what that would be like with the other person. I think about, I put, when I put the offer out, I think about 20% of people take you up on it. But maybe 50% of the successful candidates have taken. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, 20% take up. But that is 50%. There you go. And then a high, you know, you're an offsperson, a higher conversion rate, I think, on the people who do. So. Wow. Okay. That's like, that is, yeah, it's like when you get the, we've got that in our thing, which is like if somebody says, Hey, use me and give me time, like you should absolutely do that. Yeah. Okay. I've got a, I've got one or two just fun ones and then we'll wrap with our traditional closing question. Do you know your working style and, you know, your strengths, your weaknesses and how do you communicate that in the interview process? I love that question. I think I do. I've at different points of time invested in like writing, you know, the classic user manual and that type of thing. But I haven't, it takes work to maintain. So I haven't honestly maintained it. I don't send that it to every new hire. I have pretty good self-awareness, I think, about how I show up and my style as a leader and more specifically what motivates me. I don't think I talk, people ask, right? Like, good candidates kind of ask, Hey, what do you like as a leader? But more often than not, I'm also interviewing for a lot of like my peers, other leaders in the company. People aren't asking that of me. I just try to, you know, live and breathe and role model it. I think people can kind of tell through, you know, what I told you, one part of who I am is I'm an open kind of vulnerable leader. I will be very honest during the interview process, what's in all about things that are going well, things that are not going well and try to give them as much as I can over you on the inside as much as possible. And I am a leader who leads from the front, I'm in the details as we talked about earlier. And so I'm happy to go there as well. And if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them down to the level of, you know, the metrics and and all of that good stuff. So I think it's more role modeling than anything. Andy, I don't, I don't speak to it explicitly during the process. I can definitely see how like emotionally aware you are, which is powerful, right? You even said early on like I, I show all my team off and then like some people may not realize that. So that was really neat. Okay, last final closing question. Yeah. Who was the best hire you've ever made? And I knew, I knew, I knew, I'm going to ask these questions. I've listened to your podcasts before. So I tried my best to prepare for it. But it's a tough question and it's like choosing your parent and it's like choosing your favorite child. I mean, the number two would never free know, they're also special to you. Okay, good. All right, I love it. Well, I remember lots of the, it's kind of classic, but I've got a ton of people who I'm, who I hired and super proud of because you hired them as an IC or they let a small team and they gave them more and they got more and then you hired them again. So I have a couple of those folks, I would say one is on my team now, who I hired as an IC and they grew into a manager and they grew into director and they came over with me too. And so that's what I will say, though, that one of the people I am most proud of is someone who's now at OpenAI and the thing I loved about him was he's one of these people who I consider like a force multiplier. Yeah. Not just a good culture ad, but someone who joined the team and you know saw how we were doing things and was like, guys, like we can do this faster, we can do this better. They kind of people who set the pace and ambition and I think you got to have, I learned the impact of kind of those like force multiplier type people from hiring him. And so now I kind of look for it a little bit and I follow that pattern and he's off to great things obviously, but they just bring a different level of intensity and excellence. He's someone I'm really proud of. I love that. Yeah, I've got a couple of those people too. Do they also ruffle a couple of feathers as well? Yeah. How have you been doing things as stupid, guys? You know, not really in those exact words, but they challenge the thinking and they challenge the team and yeah, you come to love it, but yeah. You do. You hope those people keep that passion forever. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for sharing. I've gotten to know you a little bit here and there, but it's the first time we've really sat down to talk and I'm really impressed with how you think about hiring. Thanks, Andy, for having me. It's really, really fun. Have a great day. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]