Whispered Hiring

Whispered Hiring with Sanjay Kini, CCO @ 6sense

In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Josh Hanewinkel speaks with Sanjay Kini, Chief Customer Strategy Officer at 6sense, about scaling a customer organization from 5 to 300+ people during 6sense's growth from $5M to $200M in revenue. Sanjay's approach challenges conventional hiring wisdom at every turn, from giving hiring managers final authority even when other interviewers disagree, to deliberately spending more time vetting "will" than "skill" because he believes drive and curiosity matter more than current capabilities. The results speak for themselves: 40 of his 58 managers were promoted from within, creating a self-sustaining leadership pipeline that freed him to focus on strategic transformation rather than constant external recruiting.
Topics discussed:
The "Who" framework for defining exact organizational structure and role attributes before considering candidates, eliminating the chaos of building org charts around available talent.
Why assessing "will" (curiosity, work ethic, ability to figure things out) deserves more interview time than validating "skill," since capability gaps close quickly when drive is present.
The deliberate over-hiring strategy for senior leaders before immediate need, allowing them to build teams proactively as growth arrives rather than scrambling to backfill during hypergrowth phases.
Giving hiring managers final decision authority instead of defaulting to consensus voting, creating clear accountability since they'll be judged on results regardless of committee opinions.
Why sales leaders require the most rigorous vetting process because they excel at interviews and know exactly what you want to hear, making data-driven validation essential.
Avoiding public job postings for VP+ roles to eliminate the 1,000-1,500 application flood of unqualified candidates, relying instead on board networks and systematic back-channeling for vetted referrals.
The counterintuitive reference check approach: using candidate-provided contacts not to make hiring decisions, but to extract onboarding intelligence about strengths, weaknesses, and optimal working conditions after you've already committed.
How promoting 40 of 58 managers internally (37 of them women) created a leadership bench that could scale customer success operations without external dependency.

Whispered Hiring with Nick Mehta @ Gainsight

Over 13 years at Gainsight, Nick Mehta cycled through more CMOs than any other executive role. Not because the marketers weren't talented, but because he failed to define what was actually achievable before hiring them. That realization reshaped how he approaches executive hiring.
Nick breaks down the self-awareness framework that filters executive candidates, why he back-channels before meeting people, and how Gainsight's culture was designed to repel money-focused candidates who'd never thrive there. His tactical approach reveals the mistakes CEOs make when defining roles, the specific question sequence that surfaces how candidates handle detractors, and why executives who don't generate "wow" reactions from their teams within the first week rarely succeed.
From Mike Mannheimer drawing a circle proving they'd saturated their addressable market (which Nick ignored, leading to more failed CMO hires) to Chuck Ganapathi leading deep AI strategy discussions by day two of his first week, Nick shares the hard-won patterns from building leadership teams through hypergrowth and a Vista Private Equity acquisition. His frameworks include the three-round vulnerability exercise that transforms team alignment, the "org chart without names" forcing function, and the 25-company targeted networking protocol that actually generates opportunities.
Topics discussed:
Culture design that actively repels wrong-fit candidates
Three-round "if you really knew me" vulnerability exercise
Why CEOs create their own CMO hiring disasters
The "org chart without names" forcing function
Week-one impact as executive performance predictor
Back-channeling candidates before meeting them
The detractor disclosure self-awareness assessment
Why "seat at the table" signals wrong priorities
25-company hyper-targeted networking protocol
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search 

Whispered Hiring with Kristi Faltorusso, Chief Customer Officer @ ClientSuccess

Building a 57,000+ LinkedIn following eliminated Kristi Faltorusso's recruiter dependency. One post now generates hundreds of qualified CS applicants while her network delivers pre-vetted referrals through direct outreach. But the deeper insight is how she completely rewired her hiring methodology after repeatedly failing to replicate playbooks across companies. Customer success roles are never portable. What worked at Series A fails at Series C. Leaders who scaled at Salesforce often can't operate in startups. She now evaluates candidates against 24-36 month company trajectories, filtering for grittiness before considering experience or quota achievement.
Her interview process rejects stage gates and prescribed frameworks. She asks candidates to recall times they were "in over their head" and requests "a failure you're really proud of," separating those who own mistakes from those who point fingers. Before any offer, she dedicates a full session where candidates ask her anything. Their questions expose business acumen, reveal what broke at previous companies, and eliminate the assumption gaps that derail new hires within weeks. Post-hire, she meets daily with direct reports for the first 14 days, not for status updates, but to build trust and surface friction before it calcifies.
Topics discussed:
Building a 57,000-follower LinkedIn presence that replaced external recruiters through one-post sourcing and network referrals
Why customer success playbooks and hiring profiles can't transfer between Series A and Series C stage companies
Using marathon completions and multi-year personal commitments to assess grittiness independent of professional achievements
The "tell me about a time you were in over your head" question that reveals self-awareness and problem-solving under ambiguity
How "what's a failure you're really proud of" separates candidates who own outcomes from those who deflect responsibility
Allocating a full interview session for candidate questions to surface concerns and eliminate misaligned expectations before offers
Meeting daily with new direct reports for two weeks to establish trust rather than relying on structured 30-60-90 plans
Conducting backchannel references with unprepared cross-functional colleagues instead of candidate-selected contacts
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Ghazi Masood, CRO @ Replit

In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Ghazi Masood, CRO at Replit, about building GTM organizations in product-led growth environments. With experience scaling Auth0 through hypergrowth and acquisition, plus leading revenue at Retool, Ghazi breaks down how PLG hiring differs by role, why he rarely posts senior positions, and the back-channel timing that saves months of wasted interviews. His frameworks reveal how to spot enterprise readiness in a PLG funnel and the specific red flag that predicts sales leader failure.
Topics discussed:
The three roles where PLG experience actually matters when hiring: RevOps (must understand PQL/MQL interplay and marketing alignment), Head of Sales Development (needs experience transitioning inbound to outbound), and segment sales leaders building hybrid inbound/outbound machines for enterprise.
How to evaluate whether a PLG company can successfully add SLG: look for enterprise employees already signing up individually. If someone at JP Morgan is using your product on a small team, that's your signal to swarm them and build intentional outbound around those product signals.
Why BDR-to-AE progression works as an internal flywheel for SMB and mid-market, but strategic accounts (selling to Amazon, Netflix, Coinbase) typically require external hires. The gap is multi-threading, procurement navigation, and business value selling. Most internal candidates need more time before making that jump.
Auth0's enablement approach during hypergrowth: role-based onboarding curriculum with pitch certifications where new hires had to get certified before hitting the field. This predicted who would perform and prevented the org from "missing a beat" while scaling 10x.
Ghazi's senior hiring philosophy: work with people you've worked with before, or people one layer removed through trusted networks. If timing doesn't work with your first choice, ask them for referrals and back-channel those names. He also leverages VC talent teams, noting they maintain deep relationships with hundreds of CROs and conduct thorough vetting most companies underutilize.
Why he back-channels senior candidates immediately rather than at final rounds. Early diligence saves time, but requires going to previous companies when candidates are still employed. If a bad reference surfaces, get the context. Everyone has one difficult peer or subordinate in their past.
The interview approach that reveals sales readiness: ask candidates to walk through specific deals they've closed. Who was the decision maker? How did they navigate procurement? Strong candidates rattle this off instantly. He also prioritizes relationship and presence over paper credentials, noting he's hired people with less experience who outperformed because of how they'd present in front of customers.
The red flag that signals a sales leader won't survive: when AEs stop inviting them to customer calls. Ghazi shares a specific example of a leader who couldn't grasp pricing methodology. The field team lost trust and started excluding them from deals. Once that credibility gap opens, it rarely closes.
His approach to developing direct reports: dedicate one monthly 1:1 exclusively to career growth with zero business discussion. Ask where they want exposure (board meetings, new functions, specific skills) and actively create those opportunities. His stated philosophy: "You're only as successful as the team you build."
 
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

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

In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Jessica Chiew, Head of GTM Strategy & Operations at Canva, about her rigorous approach to hiring builders in product-led growth environments. Drawing from her experience scaling GTM operations at Asana and Canva, Jessica shares tactical frameworks for testing whether candidates can truly execute versus simply tell polished stories, structuring ops teams that span product and enterprise motions, and designing onboarding that delivers impact in the first 90 days. Her insights reveal how calculated vulnerability and continuous team evolution drive both individual performance and organizational velocity.
Topics discussed:
How to test for customer journey fluency in PLG environments by asking candidates to describe the journey at their previous company, then present a live scenario where 260 million MAUs already exist in your domain and watching whether they shift from MQL/SQL language to customer-centric thinking.
The "rocks and rubble" test for builder mentality. True builders describe scenarios where multiple crises hit simultaneously (missing quarterly target, product launch, doubling headcount, losing office space) and frame it as energizing rather than overwhelming, versus managers who cite isolated quarterly challenges.
Jessica's signature 30-minute interview structure starting with "I've read your professional background, can you quickly talk me through your story and path to today's conversation" where failure states include reading their resume back for 20 minutes or lacking intentionality about how to use limited time.
The four to five layer questioning depth that reveals hands-on leadership. Starting with "what does the future of customer success look like?" then drilling through implementation details, measurement approaches, and roadblocks encountered until candidates either demonstrate project-level ownership or reveal they're reciting refined talking points.
Why making yourself available during case study prep is a conversion predictor. Jessica offers her cell phone number for 30-minute prep calls, 20% of all candidates take her up on it, but 50% of successful hires do, simulating their actual working style and investment level before they join.
The continuous team restructuring philosophy where Jessica constantly reevaluates scope and structure every six months as the business evolves, maintaining team trust through upfront vulnerability about business gaps, personal motivations, and explicitly asking for flexibility while keeping career growth top of mind.
The four-element onboarding pack that drives first-90-day impact. A written narrative of business state and their role in it (not just verbal), explicit 30/60/90 expectations including quick wins, full repository of QBRs and dashboards for self-service, and a sequenced listening tour spreadsheet with every stakeholder meeting pre-planned by week.
The portfolio staffing approach for balancing pattern recognition with execution capability. Mixing enterprise veterans with startup athletes across the team while testing experienced hires for builder traits through SQL proficiency as a proxy for hands-on work and ensuring they have startup experience somewhere in their background to prove they can operate without massive resources.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Heather Doshay - Founder @ Waypoint Works

In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Heather Doshay, Founder of Waypoint Works and former VP of People at Webflow and Head of Talent at SignalFire, about identifying and developing high-slope talent. Heather introduces her PEAKS framework for spotting individuals whose growth rate matches or exceeds company trajectory, and challenges conventional hiring wisdom on everything from why charisma can be a trap to how pairing up-and-comers with advisors often outperforms hiring proven executives.
Topics discussed:
The PEAKS framework for identifying high-slope talent: Persistence, Emotional grounding, Action orientation, Knowledge orientation, and Systems thinking. Candidates spiking in three can be high potential, but truly high-slope individuals demonstrate all five.
Why "shiny object syndrome" derails executive hiring. Companies interview candidates and form roles around them rather than first defining what the role needs to solve over the next 24 months.
The case for pairing up-and-coming executives with experienced advisors through equity arrangements rather than defaulting to "seen-the-movie-three-times" hires who may be tired and less immersed in new capabilities like AI.
How to detect candidates who have lost their fire. Listen for verbal signals like "looking for a change of pace," watch response times, and ask directly: "Tell me the last time you faced burnout. What was happening?"
Why charisma is deliberately excluded from the high-slope framework. Sales candidates especially can wow interviewers while lacking actual capabilities. Structured competency-based questions with a clear rubric prevent likability bias from overriding signal.
The two bookend questions that reveal everything. Open with "Why this role? Why this company? Why now?" to assess intent and build your closing script. End with "What questions do you have?" If they have none or ask something from the homepage, Heather's done.
Why high-slope talent requires organizational readiness. These individuals push boundaries, beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, and surface problems constantly. Without cultural values that honor this behavior, the org will reject them.
The rigidity reframe on ageism. It's not age that creates hiring risk. It's rigidity. A 25-year-old can be just as set in their ways as a veteran executive. Name flexibility as a competency and design questions to assess it directly.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Melissa Rosenthal, Co-Founder @ Outlever

In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Melissa Rosenthal, Co-Founder at Outlever and former CRO at Cheddar and Chief Creative Officer at ClickUp, about her approach to vetting executive talent. Drawing from her transition from BuzzFeed creative leadership to sales leadership, Melissa shares how she vibe-coded a Lovable app that filtered 1,000 applicants to 20 candidates, why she requires minimum 10 back-channels before offers, and her view on growth leader tenure at scaling stages.
Topics discussed:
Why hiring VPs from ServiceNow-scale companies for startups consistently underperforms, and the profile with "really good success": candidates who've worked at enterprises but chose Series B/C startups, showing they grasp both corporate infrastructure and startup pace.
The 15-minute "biggest project" question covering what the candidate did, team composition, individual roles, and outcomes, designed to expose ego when candidates position themselves as "the center and the hero" while gathering names for back-channeling.
How Melissa and her co-founder vibe-coded a Lovable app in two days requiring candidates to answer two questions without previewing or redoing them, filtering 1,000 submissions down to 20 completions and three successful hires.
The controversial growth marketing reality: "there's a tenure that exists within that role...you can probably get the most out of them for two years" before needing someone who's scaled your next stage, as finding leaders who've scaled 0 to 500M "is probably not really realistic."
The minimum 10-person back-channel protocol for VP roles: five who worked adjacent, two superiors, and two peripheral colleagues, with "no offer until the back channel is complete" after learning from having to rescind previous offers.
Why she will "never hire a fractional person" for VP roles at high-growth companies where she's "barely sleeping," as fractional means "they're not all in," though agencies work for tactical gaps once solid leadership exists.
The "hardest thing you've gone through" question designed to "open up a world of like this person's gonna bare their soul," revealing resilience and EQ critical for all go-to-market roles she hires.
Why most founder hires didn't work out: candidates aren't transparent despite clear "work life imbalance" warnings, "rotten leaders" who treat teams poorly, people "always in the car" suggesting outsourced work, requiring her "trust and respect" leadership approach.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Eric Gilpin, President GTM @ G2

In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Eric Gilpin, President GTM at G2, about his systematic approach to executive hiring built on 22 years of sales leadership at companies like Upwork and CareerBuilder. Eric shares his contrarian philosophy on recruiting directly from your customer base, his specific four-stage VP+ interview process that treats candidates as collaborators rather than supplicants, and why he maintains relationships with his next three hires before roles even open. His insights reveal how leveraging conversation intelligence tools and transparent back-channeling can transform executive hiring outcomes.
Topics discussed:
Why recruiting from your customer base provides a competitive moat. Eric actively evaluates every customer CRO and CMO he meets for potential fit, and uses Gong as a "cheat code" to review two years of recorded customer calls before initial conversations.
The role design framework that prioritizes team capability gaps over individual credentials. Eric audits his entire leadership team for gaps in AI literacy, data-driven thinking, or emotional intelligence before defining what each new executive hire must bring to raise the bar across the organization.
How Eric maintains an "always on" executive pipeline by knowing his next three VP+ hires right now despite all roles being filled. This eliminates reactive recruiting and prevents managers from hoarding talent due to lack of pipeline.
The four-stage interview process for VP+ hires: 30-minute relationship call, context deck deep dive with 15 slides of non-public data, panel of no more than three people, then collaborative working session on real business problems where output gets used in actual kickoffs or strategy.
Why executive search agencies are non-negotiable for senior hires despite cost. Agencies handle initial vetting so conversations focus on co-authoring roles, plus they maintain year-round relationships with passive candidates and access to unlisted opportunities in the private market.
The outbound gap revealing selection bias in funnels. Despite 20 open roles generating thousands of monthly applicants, Eric receives only one quality outbound per month, yet he forwards every single one because the effort signals exactly what GTM roles require.
The transparent back-channel approach where Eric tells candidates upfront "I'm going to poke around, you should too" and asks what's off limits. He never outsources this to recruiters to control market noise and hear context firsthand.
Why cross-functional customer journey reviews must precede GTM hiring. Eric runs weekly reviews covering the entire funnel with every function present, tracking 90 days forward given G2's 66-day sales cycle plus 28-day speed to lead, ensuring aligned input metrics before making hires.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Wade Foster, CEO @ Zapier

In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Wade Foster, Co-founder & CEO of Zapier, about his counterintuitive discovery that doing 20+ reference calls per executive finalist was the breakthrough that fixed his 50/50 executive hiring hit rate. Wade shares why he returned to approving every offer after watching standards slip, his specific reference questions that reveal culture fit across a decade of companies, and how he shifted from hiring impressive resumes to deliberately assembling executive teams with complementary behavioral traits.His insights reveal how auditing process thoroughness rather than overriding decisions, and treating references as puzzle piece collection rather than validation, can transform executive hiring outcomes.
Topics discussed:
Why Wade shifted from hiring "been there, done that" executives with strong logos to deliberately assembling teams where behavioral traits (bold risk-taking, operational soundness, communication/storytelling) are as intentionally distributed as functional representation, requiring brutal self-awareness about which CEO weaknesses to cover versus double down on strengths.
The CEO offer approval framework with a sub-24-hour SLA that audits "did we probe where we needed to probe?" rather than evaluating the candidate directly, walking the fine line where hiring managers maintain ownership without "licking the cookie" and deflecting decisions upward to Wade.
The 20+ reference methodology per executive finalist, deliberately collecting multiple managers, peers, direct reports, and founder/CEOs across companies spanning a decade, asking "compare to the best person you've worked with, rate them 1-10, and what closes the gap to 10?" to understand skill ceilings.
How asking references "what will this person's biggest fans say and biggest critics say?" creates ammunition for subsequent reference calls where you can test provocative claims, forcing references to either confirm uncomfortable truths or vigorously defend the candidate when critiques don't match their experience.
Why fully green references signal a red flag at the executive level, since effective leaders are necessarily "demanding plus supportive" which creates mixed feedback, and how asking about company culture fit ("what types thrived, what types didn't?") reveals whether your environment will set them up for success or failure.
The mutual evaluation conversation where Wade brings all reference findings back to the finalist, explicitly naming strengths and growth areas, then encourages them to back-channel him as CEO too, framing it as "are we both signing up for each other's beautiful mess?" rather than hoping it works out.
Why frontline managers who hire once yearly lack pattern recognition to spot "tiny yellow flags" worth pulling versus glossing over, and how Wade's high-volume hiring reps let him see threads that easily unravel candidates, justifying his process audit role despite it appearing like micromanagement.
The "Zapier on Zapier" procurement gate requiring teams to attempt building on Zapier before buying point solutions, creating a specific product feedback loop when use cases fail, while maintaining honest judgment on clear exceptions like payroll processing that Zapier will never build.
Using pre-interview automation to compile candidate briefs from application data, prior interview notes, and public internet presence, then post-interview feeding transcripts through rubrics to generate AI assessments that Wade compares against his own scorecard as a "rubber duck" to strengthen his evaluation.
The philosophy that hiring decisions require maximum information surface area since you're "inevitably getting one tiny puzzle piece about this person," and while each piece contains bias and inaccuracy, collecting more pieces in aggregate washes out bias better than rejecting imperfect data sources.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

Whispered Hiring with Robin Daniels, CBO @ Zensai

In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Robin Daniels, Chief Business Officer at Zensai, about his framework for building high-performing go-to-market teams. Drawing from his tenure as CMO at Matterport, WeWork, and leading Talent Solutions marketing at LinkedIn, plus his formative years at Salesforce and Box, Robin shares his three non-negotiable hiring attributes, why CMO hiring fails without archetype clarity, and how open-ended storytelling questions reveal candidate potential better than structured interviews. His insights reveal how elite talent networks compound across companies and why communication mastery separates effective leaders from domain experts.
Topics discussed:
The three non-negotiable attributes Robin tests at all levels: grit (proven resilience through market crashes or setbacks), aptitude (curiosity to solve ambiguous problems without clear answers), and passion (energy that transfers to teams as a force multiplier), and why these override credentials in scale-up environments.
Why most CMO hires fail within nine months due to role clarity gaps between the two distinct archetypes: product marketing background (for competitive positioning and story problems) versus demand gen/revenue marketing background (for conversion and pipeline issues).
Robin's signature interview question "Tell me about the most epic thing you ever did" and how 10-15 minute responses reveal level of thinking, team attribution ("we" versus "me"), self-awareness about failures, and ambition calibration. How one HP candidate's white paper story immediately signaled misaligned performance bars.
The career compounding effect of high talent density nodes like Salesforce and Box. How Robin has hired the same core team members (Indy Send four times, Nicole Rogers three times) across multiple companies, and why every role adds a handful of inner circle relationships that become your long-term network.
Why Robin invested in Stanford acting courses to master attention-holding through body language, voice modulation, and presence rather than following rigid presentation frameworks. How top communicators like Aaron Levie and Marc Benioff succeed by leaning into authentic quirks versus corporate polish.
The "input plus output equals outcome" success formula and why the only controllable variable is how you show up to every interaction, regardless of external circumstances like flight delays or difficult conversations. How this mindset helped Robin navigate being laid off in April 2006 right before his son was born.
How to modulate communication style across stakeholder functions because finance, engineering, sales, and customer-facing teams have fundamentally different worldviews. Why treating cross-functional partners identically guarantees friction in matrix environments and limits executive effectiveness.
Why checklist-style interviews fail at executive levels by treating senior hires like junior candidates. How executive interviews should be bidirectional conversations focused on vision alignment and cultural fit after technical validation happens earlier in the funnel with direct reports.
ABOUT YOUR HOST: 
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search