Whispered Hiring

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

Whispered Hiring is a business podcast hosted by Whispered.com & Frontlines.io, with 54 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Whispered.com & Frontlines.io hosts Whispered Hiring, a business show with 54 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Whispered Hiring

  Whispered Hiring with Jean-Marc Chanoine, CSO @ Templafy

  Aug 11, 202632 min

  How do you spot a great hire in 30 days? Jean-Marc Chanoine , Chief Sales Officer & GM Americas at Templafy , watches for one signal: what they do without being asked. After growing from AE to CSO, he has built a sharp lens for the traits that predict success in enterprise sales. Jean-Marc shares with Andy why hires from similar-size startups outperform those from hyperscalers, his 40/60 interview method, and why great discovery instincts are nearly uncoachable. Topics discussed: Hiring from similar-size startups over hyperscalers and large orgs Evaluating intellectual horsepower through educational background and curiosity Letting candidates lead 60% of the interview conversation Calibrating question expectations by role seniority level Empowering reports to own hiring decisions without overruling Watching for unrequested initiative in the first 30 days Building trusted relationships with back pocket recruiting firms Distinguishing native knowledge from AI-rehearsed interview answers 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

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  Whispered Hiring

  Whispered Hiring with Ashley Stepien, VP of Marketing @ Hex

  Jul 28, 202642 min

  In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Ashley Brucker Stepien, who leads Marketing and Growth at Hex, about how AI is flattening marketing organizations and reshaping who gets hired and why. Drawing on senior marketing leadership roles at Ramp, Amplitude, Webflow, and Pendo, Ashley shares why she now hires almost entirely for curiosity, how she builds generalist teams instead of specialist silos, and how she vets senior candidates with backdoor references before the formal interview process even begins. Topics discussed: Cutting the middle management layer as AI flattens marketing orgs Building generalist teams: give people a problem, not a job Brand as the new differentiator once AI makes marketing sound the same Hiring for curiosity over background and pedigree Nurturing a network for years before a role even exists Running backdoor references at the start of the process, not the end The dialogue test: does this become a conversation or an interrogation Replacing take home presentations with live, unscripted workshops 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

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  Whispered Hiring

  Whispered Hiring with JD Peterson, CMO @ Perceptyx

  Jul 14, 202646 min

  In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with JD Peterson, Chief Marketing Officer at Perceptyx, about how he rebuilds and tests a team the moment he inherits it. JD has led marketing and growth at Culture Amp, Zendesk, Trello, and Marketo, scaling Culture Amp from 8 million to 100 million in ARR as Chief Growth Officer. He shares why he thinks the CMO is the hardest senior GTM hire to make, and why he has stopped giving candidates take home assignments. Topics discussed: Running a day two survey on an inherited team Judging potential over current output when inheriting talent Setting team level values distinct from company values A two lens framework for evaluating AI inside marketing Why the CMO is the hardest GTM hire to make A sourcing hierarchy that puts recruiters last Testing for stage fit by asking what candidates would cut Replacing take home tests with a 30 60 90 plan 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

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  Whispered Hiring

  Whispered Hiring with Kenny Scannell, CRO @ Otter.ai

  Jun 30, 202641 min

  Kenny Scannell joined Otter.ai as CRO three months ago and immediately started rebuilding the revenue org while onboarding four senior leaders at once. Instead of leaning on an enablement team or a structured checklist, he built his entire hiring and onboarding process around Otter plus Claude, and what he describes makes most current approaches look slow. The part worth paying attention to: Kenny's team built a custom 30-point discovery call scoring model that automatically pushes AI-generated scores into Slack the moment a call ends. That, combined with how he sourced and hired four senior leaders in 90 days largely on his own, makes this one of the more operationally specific conversations we've had on how AI is changing the way CROs build and run teams. Topics discussed: A 30-point discovery call scoring model built on a four-box value selling framework Real-time Slack alerts with AI-generated call scores after every discovery call Using Otter plus Claude MCP to generate fully contextual onboarding docs in under three minutes Crawling past Otter conversations to surface inherited context for new hires on day one Why AI-generated onboarding frees the manager to invest more time in direct relationship-building Using Claude and Cowork to crawl LinkedIn, rank candidates by parameters, and draft outreach Taking full ownership of senior sourcing while TA focuses on AE, SDR, and engineering roles Deploying an AI interviewing agent as the first screening step for high-volume roles Why candidates need experience at both a scaled company and a scrappy one to succeed at growth-stage The open-ended failure question that reveals adaptability, honesty, and how someone processes setbacks

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  Whispered Hiring

  Whispered Hiring with Sriharsha Guduguntla CEO @ Hyperbound

  Jun 16, 202643 min

  Sai built Hyperbound from a two-person YC startup to 35 people and a Series A in under two and a half years, after pivoting through 17 different ideas. He's a first-time founder and engineer by background who has had to figure out GTM hiring entirely from scratch. In this episode, Andy and Sai get into the specific frameworks he's developed for vetting startup fit, using his own product inside the hiring process, and what he sees coming for the sales manager role. It's a rare look at how a fast-moving founder actually thinks about building a team, not how they wish they had. Topics discussed: The opt-out move Sai runs in the first interview to self-select for startup fit before wasting anyone's time Why he weights hunger over experience 70% of the time, and how he actually tests for it beyond just asking The rule that either Sai or his co-founder must have done a role themselves before hiring for it Parking a truck with a live coding problem on an LED screen around San Francisco to source engineers Requiring every AE and BDR candidate to complete a Hyperbound AI roleplay as a screener, then watching whether they act on the coaching feedback Handing AE candidates a real recorded discovery call and asking them to build a month-by-month account plan, specifically to catch whether they can reality-check the timeline Telling candidates upfront to use AI on take-home assessments, then pressure-testing their reasoning to separate people who prompted well from people who just copy-pasted Why Sai thinks the sales manager conversation is focused on the wrong thing, and what a 1:20 or 1:30 manager-to-rep ratio actually requires of the people in those seats 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

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