208. 80% of VP Roles Are Never Posted. Here’s How to Find Them ft. Andy Mowat (Whispered)

You’re getting three seconds. And so if you are not the absolute perfect fit, you are going to struggle. And even if you are a perfect fit, AI may weed you out in some way. So Backdoor is critical, right? And so then you’re.

Andy Mowat:
Then it comes down to you’re listening

Josh Schachter [Host]:
to Unchurned, brought to you by the Gainsight Podcast network. If you’re a senior leader looking for your next role, here’s the best advice you’ll hear all Stop applying through the front door. The more senior the job, the less likely it was ever posted. And when one does go public, 5,000 people apply. Andy Mowat built Whispered around that reality, a network where executives help each other find the roles. Nobody advertises today how senior CS leaders actually land their next role. Josh I’m Josh Schachter. This is Unchurned.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Subscribe to our substack@ Unchurned.Gainsight.com where we go deep on every episode. Like how one post sales team at cloudbeds built over 150 AI agents. That story and more at unchurned.gainsight.com welcome, everybody, to this week’s episode of Unchurned. I’m your host, Josh Schachter, senior vice president of strategy and go to market development at Gainsight, and I am here this week with Andy Mowat. Andy is the founder and CEO of Whispered, which is a platform to help business leaders help other business leaders find jobs. Very senior stuff, executive stuff, exclusive stuff. He’s going to explain it better than I can. Prior to that, I was a big fan of some of Andy’s other work.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
He had a company called Gated, which had a really novel way of getting in somebody’s inbox for goodwill, as well for charitable purposes. And he’s ran revops at several unicorns. So, Andy, excited about this conversation? We’re going to talk about job search, free agency, job hunting, all those things, because it’s something that, you know, for better or worse, more for worse is on a lot of people’s minds these days.

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, it’s great to be here, Josh. I’ve loved our conversations and excited to talk about this topic. Plus just how the nature of CS is evolving too.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. Okay, so I like pseudo explained your last two startups, your current one and the previous one. Maybe you can course correct me a little bit here as initial context layer and then we can get into the meat of the conversation about Whisper. Negated.

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, I’d say for me I guess I’ve run as we talked rev ops slash the post sale infrastructure at 4 unicorns. But periodically between those I go do something crazy like start a company. And when you have to navigate back in to these places or when you pop your head up as a senior exec, it’s still hard, right? The roles above VP and up are not posted in most cases. And we can talk about why um, your network oftentimes is in that company and you have not, you’ve neglected your network. And then the other one that really is changing fast is like which companies should you bet your next career on? And so before I, when I left Culture Amp, I did my startup and then I was like great, how do I navigate back into the corporate world? And so I just started collaborating with other execs on how can we help each other through that process. And I said to everybody, hey, if you see an unposted role like let me know and if you interviewed a company, I want to learn everything you know about that company. And so that became whispered.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And even, even though they themselves are in the interview cycle, the recruitment cycle,

Andy Mowat:
that’s one of the most powerful things. We’re not really competing against each other, right? I say this to everybody and a person had a quote which was no,

Josh Schachter [Host]:
literally you are, are you not literally competing as each other.

Andy Mowat:
Well this is a fun topic. So you have who you are, what your style is, where you live, what your superpowers are, all of this. So at any given time we’ll have like 25 rev ops 15 to 20 like CS people, a bunch of sales leaders and a bunch of marketers in there, they aren’t competing with each other, right? So if you’re going after a role and you’ve self sourced it, you don’t have to share that one. But if you’ve passed on something because it didn’t fit you, you’re just throwing that away and, or they passed on

Josh Schachter [Host]:
you for, for whatever reason, you just didn’t were the perfect slipper for them.

Andy Mowat:
Bingo. Exactly. So imagine if you’re sitting there saying if you could tap into the ones that don’t fit your best friend. So you’re a cco, you have your requirements. You see, one is like, oh, that one requires Three days in office and I’m a little bit further out. Doesn’t fit for me. Boom. Somebody else can see that one and do that.

Andy Mowat:
Right. So that’s what we’ve really built, is this machine where top execs can contribute roles and leverage that. I think the other thing we’ve learned is cool. There’s knowing where the roles are, and we know where most unposted roles are. Now in go to market, the next part is how do you open those doors? And so we spent a lot of time thinking through how do we let executives collaborate with each other to open those doors as well.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah.

Andy Mowat:
But back to your point on.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Oh, sure, please keep going.

Andy Mowat:
Yeah. There’s one other thing that’s interesting, like how many times you interview for a role and they’re like, oh, yes, that other candidate. Da, da, da, da, da. You don’t know who that other candidate is. Many times in Whispered, you know who that other candidate is. We just put you in a slack channel with them. And wouldn’t you. I would much prefer to be like, oh, Andy, you’re competing against Josh.

Andy Mowat:
I was like, man, if I’m going for a rev Ops role, all day long, I beat Josh. If I’m going for a CS leadership role, Josh beats me. And so you start to really understand who you’re competing with. And I would love to have that type of scenario. So in many cases, Whispered will have the top two or three candidates. Here’s the other powerful piece on this one is what if five or six people in Whispered have gone at a role and learned, oh, that’s a disaster. That’s a total train wreck. You could save yourself a month of interview process prep style on going down the road on the wrong ones as well, too.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. Yeah. Who’s the best? The person who does this the best outside of Whispered, who have you observed that is somehow as a candidate, as somebody who’s a free agent that has somehow just had the Midas touch of knowing where all the roles are, getting all the interviews. And I don’t want you obviously, to mention their name or identify them, but I want you to. But what I’m trying to do is elicit, like, what do folks do naturally? How can they mimic some of these behaviors that the. That this person or these people who are best at it do?

Andy Mowat:
Yeah. So there’s a couple different answers to this question. Um, I can go down the strategies and talk about that. I think there’s a big difference between how an A plus candidate and a B plus candidate search, which is definitely. So if you’re an A plus candidate at the right time, you’ll just Simply say to 7 to 10 talent partners and a couple different recruiters. And there’s fun ways to play that scenario. You’ll mention your searching and all of the roles that are in market will rain on you. Most of them.

Andy Mowat:
Now if you’re in a seat, that’s hard to do. Like I know an absolute rock star person right now CRO that every recruiter is always like hey, when that person’s available, please let me know. They’re quietly looking. But they, but they, you know, you put yourself into that world and whispers start happening really fast. Right.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So I think because in that, at that level the CRO tells the, tells the recruiter the firm and then they, they happen to know the board member. So now all of a sudden the board knows and the CEO.

Andy Mowat:
Yeah. I mean for me, Carta, I wasn’t looking to leave for anything else. But I whisper got me so excited. But half the Valley is invested in Carta. Right. So it’s like if you talk to one talent partner, everybody will know very, very quickly. There is a Google group of 340 talent partners that all communicate with each other. And so you know, you have to understand how these whispers work and how these hidden connections work.

Andy Mowat:
Right.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So if you infiltrated that group.

Andy Mowat:
No, that group is locked solid. But I, we are, we pop up on it very often. I know how it works. I, I talk to most of the talent teams every couple weeks around hey, we’ve seen these interesting roles in your portfolio or here’s a really interesting candidate. I know these are, we’ve actually written a whole piece on if you are at the right level, how do you work with talent partners on your search. And so some of, there’s fascinating things to say. How do they work? What are they looking for?

Josh Schachter [Host]:
By the way, when you say talent partner, you’re talking about like an executive search firm.

Andy Mowat:
I break it into. There are executive search firms like Cole Group, Heidrick, all of Those, those are third party recruiters. To me, talent partners work at the VCs and the PEs.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And the PEs.

Andy Mowat:
And so they, those people’s job is less to actually run the search and more to make connections between their portfolio companies and the right recruiters. Right. So every one of these talent people, if you’re, if you’re really good and you know there’s, there’s re. We always think they’re different strategies for different types of people. And I can, I’ll go through a couple of these strategies in the conversation. But if you’re just excellent and you can get to these talent partners and we can include our link to the talent partner article, how to get to them, how to do it, you should get on their radars fast. They will. If they really enjoy you, they’ll actually send your profile to the Google group.

Andy Mowat:
And so all the other talent partners may reach out to you and say, wow, hey, I want to meet you as well too. But when you go public on those, you really go public fast.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
You go public. So, so like as a gainsite person, right, Anybody like you reach out to a company that’s, that’s, that’s owned by tpg, you know, that’s definitely getting back to the Vista talent partner, which is getting back to your board, et cetera.

Andy Mowat:
It may, I mean I think they have a lot of discretion and they know, you know, they all come from this world and they know that you shouldn’t blow people up. I mean, that being said, and I don’t know which firm but I hear frequently of people that are in seat that you know, there’s, we can talk a lot about how do you go about the search process when you’re in seat. My big belief is you should have that mature conversation with your CEO or your, your, your manager if you have that relationship. If you don’t, then it gets a little bit harder. But you know, I hear of many, many stories of, and this isn’t like talent partner related where a back channel will get back to somebody and then their CEO will say, hey, like I heard you’re on the market. That creates a very tense, challenging situation, right? So yeah, you know, part of what we’ve done is try to build a platform where you can start to listen to the flow without having to stick your head up, which is really powerful. But back to the town partners, you know those, those talent partners know every top recruiter, right? So if you’re smart, you call the talent partner you, you need to be very clear and crisp in how you’re talking to them, right? If you’re like, hey, I want an interesting role, anything operational, they’d be like, I don’t know how to help you. But if you’re like, hey, I am a CCO that does it from this scale to this scale.

Andy Mowat:
I’ve gone from here to here. And this is the type of motion that I’m really good at and I work really closely with dev tool type of companies to do retention. That’s going to be, they’ll be like amazing. I know exactly the companies that can help you. And so the clearer you are is great. And then when you talk to those talent teams, a great thing at the end is like, hey, do you know any other great recruiters I should talk to? Of course they do. They love every and every recruiter takes every talent team’s call because that’s where they get on average 50% of their business. Because the talent teams are saying I have a portco looking for a role.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And I suppose that’s also a way to, to validate that they actually like you as a candidate.

Andy Mowat:
You mean if the talent teams will introduce you to the recruiter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s a lot to on just we have a whole section before you even start looking. Just get, you need to get dialed in on your clarity of what you want. And if, and so if you show up to recruiters and you just do that generic thing, it’s going to be really hard for them to help you. And so they’re like, you know, and so we’ve written a whole piece, actually sat down with some of the best talent partners and recruiters in the business and said, what are they looking for? What is an A candidate for them? What’s a B candidate? And so I think a lot of people just dive right in the search without really getting nailed and tight on what they’re looking for. And so we’ve got a whole section on our site with like 20 playbooks around career clarity and how do you get to it? And it’s. And so I think that’s a whole misfortune.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But if it’s, but if it’s too tight, if it’s, hey, you know, I see in your portcode you’ve got this, you know, executive vice president of Revenue operations role available or the CCO role available at Ex Acme company. But it’s almost too late, right? Because you haven’t built the relationship with them as a precursor to then going after that ask is that, is that correct? Like don’t you have to start at a certain distance to, to, to warm up the bus a little bit?

Andy Mowat:
Maybe I’m not fully understanding your question, but I think if I maybe take it in an interesting direction, which is I think a lot of people believe that if they are broad and open to lots of things that makes they will see more. The irony of ironies is the more specific you are, the easier it is to help people.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
This is the specific type of role.

Andy Mowat:
Not.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But it’s not. This is the role That I would like. Can I talk to you about finding my way into that company? It’s. This is the specific type of role and title and company type that I would like to work at next. Can we start the conversation now and get on your radar?

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, you need to, you want to. You’re going to these. Take a general third party recruiter. They’ll do like 10 searches a year, right. And so it’s not like you need to be memorable to them. So you’ll pop up and you’re looking for hooks, right? So I get people all the time, like, Andy, I’m looking for something interesting. Da, da, da, da. Like, I can’t help you.

Andy Mowat:
But like in my last search, if I went in as like, hey, I’m Revops, I’m pretty good at it, you know, what do you have? That’d be one thing. But I went in with a much tighter one, which is, listen, like I’ve run RevOps at 3 unicorns. I’m really, really good at high velocity, low ACV businesses building out the infrastructure to be able to do that. And some of the companies I’m talking to are like a zapier or this or that be like amazing, I know how I can help you. And they start looking at those hooks and they start doing that. If you can get.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I really like the last thing that you said there, which was making it very vivid for them of like the, the analogous companies. So they can, I think that association,

Andy Mowat:
few people are good at that. But target lists are huge, right? So if you show up to me, Josh, and you’re like, hey, I’m looking for my next role, here’s what I am. I’m like, ah, nothing comes to mind. And then if you’re like, here’s the 40 companies I’m interested in and you’ve done that work, I’m going through my head like, I know somebody here, I know somebody here, I know somebody here. So when I was doing my last search, I gave that speech and it was like, like Zapier. And he and I literally would send out, here are the 20 or 30 companies that I’m interested in. And a gentleman that I’ve never met again was like, I know Wade CEO Zapier. So he introduced me to Wade at Wade CRO.

Andy Mowat:
We had a whole conversation. That’s actually how I got into CS operations in the beginning. Like I was trying to navigate into interesting companies and I had box on the list and I had a really interesting story around how csops was emerging and how I could do it. And I met John Hurstein, who’s, you know, one of the most impressive CS leaders out there. And John’s like. And. But I met him through a random. I was literally put the name of the company on a list and someone’s like, I know John.

Andy Mowat:
I’ve never met that person knew John again. But. But it’s the power of those loose connections and being able to be. Yeah, John’s amazing. Hi, John. Good to see you again. And so it’s the power of those loose connections and being specific and helping people help you that I don’t think a lot of people fully understand. And so out of all that, I met John and he’s like, amazing.

Andy Mowat:
Let’s build a. We’ve just bought Gainsight. We’re building out this entire CS operations function. You would be perfect. And boom. That’s how I got into the world of Gainsight, the world of Nick. And I’m sure how partially the reason you and I are talking today. And so that is versus if you just run around being generic and say, hey, do you know anything interesting? Like, it ain’t going to work.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, yeah. I’ll be honest. You and I started talking because Nick talking about Nick Mehta, our. Our founder, CEO for so many years, was like, I don’t know how Nick does. I don’t know how Nick does anything that he does. It’s just superhuman. But he is the ultimate connector. Remembers everybody’s name, knows, knows all the details about them, actually cares about them.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And everybody would come to him looking for jobs, and everybody would come to him looking for talent. And he had it all stored upstairs. And Gainsight is still a central node of that. You know, we get a lot of people that are reaching out to us, and I’ve got some connectivity, I’ll admit, but not, you know, like one iota of what Nick had. So this is where I was like, okay, great. Maybe it could relieve a little bit of pressure from me and I can start to share with people what they can work out with Andy because he’s got this, you know, this. I don’t want to say exclusive, right. And I don’t want to say elevated, because I hate that word, but he’s got this executive level connectivity there that.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That he’s working on.

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, I mean, Nick’s got some great podcasts where he talks about people always come to him and ask for help. And he is like, if you aren’t specific and clear, it just makes it harder. So he. He and I have a very similar philosophy on Some of that. I think he’s quoted throughout a lot of the playbooks on our site as well, too. So he’s a great guy.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
What else. What else do people do to really give themselves the best odds at finding their next role?

Andy Mowat:
I’ll just run through some other strategies and feel free to take it in whatever direction you want. I think a powerful one is. We’ve termed it drafting. Right? It’s like, so for me, when I popped my head up with my last search, I called all the people that had the role that I wanted. And you were like, well, why would you call them? They’re in seat. They’re not. They’re not hired. You don’t want to work for them.

Andy Mowat:
You want their role. My ask is really simple. Hey, if a recruiter hits you up, send it to me, right? And so I think the power of, you know, finding people that are doing that role, building relationships with them is powerful. So I believe deeply in those communities. I run a community of the top 150 RevOps people, that is, you know, and so every one of those people is like, hey, I got hit up for role. I’m not looking right now. And so where do you go? So I think it’s ironic, a lot of people like, hey, if I’m a cco, let me go build. I got to go meet CROs.

Andy Mowat:
No, go build relationships with your peer group. Get to know them, and, you know, they’ll. They’ll just be. And then the final thing is like, hey, I know if you get hit up for C from a recruiter, send it to me. We’re actually building a sister community for leaders on exactly that same philosophy where, you know, people that are thinking deeply about AI and CS and how it’s changing it. Like, let’s put those people together in a group and let them share ideas. But, like, getting into groups like that, small communities, building relationships is really powerful for sure.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
How much does timing matter? Timing of hitting that person up to draft off them, timing of. Of reaching out to the talent partner, the frequency with which you should do that. Because, you know, I get approached quite often, and there is this huge recency bias that I have. If I just spoke with somebody yesterday and then somebody else, I see an opportunity, two days later, it’ll be top of mind, and I’ll think of that person. And I try to keep a spreadsheet. I do. We keep a. I keep a little black book type of thing.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But like, but still, the recency thing is real for me. And I can imagine that that’s something. But then at the same time, if you’re a talent partner, you don’t want that person in your inbox every two weeks. So how do you manage that?

Andy Mowat:
Well, I think this goes back to the conversation we had on the importance of being clear in your niche and being memorable. Right. So timing matters, but I’m sure there are people in your thing that you haven’t talked to in two, three months. But if the right thing comes up, you’re going to think of. Because they’ve made an impression upon you. And so I think there is. Or.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Or because. Or because honestly, it goes back to, you know, my goal here is every time now to. To somehow plug my book. Right. Or it goes back to. To relationship building because I actually have a relationship with them. It wasn’t just a one and done.

Andy Mowat:
Bingo. Yeah. So, like, look at it this way. Like, I. Every couple weeks I meet with the head of strategy and DTM ops at Databricks. He’s a great friend. We, we’ve actually built a relationship and, you know, and he’ll, he’ll, he’ll say, like, hey, you know, here we, we help each other out in lots of ways. So you have to actually focus on building real relationships versus being transactional.

Andy Mowat:
So I think that goes to the heart of what you and I both believe. I also think you have to help people. Like, every conversation I’m having with somebody, it’s about, like, when I’m talking to you, I’m like, hey, Josh, like, who can I introduce you to? Who can I help? Similar with talent partners and recruiters, a lot of people ask me, how do I stay in touch with those people? I’ve had one convo, but then I’m not sure when to reach out to them next. I don’t have anything new. Try asking them, hey, are there any interesting roles that you’re looking for that I can help with my network? If they hit you up for a role, don’t say, hey, thanks, that’s not a fit. Say, start thinking, oh, is there anybody in my network I can bring back to them? Like, be helpful to them. And so I think a lot of people just approach, you know, hey, Andy, do you have any roles, you know, and move on? But, like, start the conversation with, how can I help you? Let me get to know you. Let me understand how you tick.

Andy Mowat:
And I think a lot of people forget that. Right. It’s about building real relationships and real networks as well, too.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
You mentioned up front that the more senior roles are not posted publicly. Is it I mean maybe it’s an obvious why. It’s because usually there’s a leader that’s in seat and at the board level it’s just not working out. But you can’t make that a public type of announcement. There’ll be more shockwaves for the organization. Is that. Is it as simple as that or is there more to it?

Andy Mowat:
There’s a lot more to it. So that would be one. I think you start to get to a senior level. You know, maybe someone’s leveling somebody else so they’re bringing them in. A lot of people may not want to release job descriptions because they give insight to competitors. I think at a senior level they want to kind of more target shoot versus like if you post a. Like we have. You and I were talking of like we’re aware of a.

Andy Mowat:
At a top 10 AI company ahead of CS role right now within whispered. If that get. If that was posted online, there would be 5,000 applications for it. 95% would be unqualified. So the recruiting team instead of.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
By the way, Andy, I think it is posted now.

Andy Mowat:
I don’t think the one I have is.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But is yours anthropic?

Andy Mowat:
I cannot comment.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Okay, well I’ve, I still have four anthropic head of CS roles posted, so. But yeah, okay, but anyways, I can

Andy Mowat:
never, I can never comment. But. But well, so here’s the other thing. There’s all these things, right? Like OpenAI and Anthropic are required by federal contracts to post rules. They post them for three days and then they take them down, right? So I have so many people be like, I get pinged daily from a whisper member like hey, so and so got posted@OpenAI. Can you connect me? I’m like, cool, send me the JD and then they won’t send it. So I called up some friends. OpenAI is like, walk me through this.

Andy Mowat:
There are federal government contracting rules that say if you contract with the federal government, you must post roles. So they all post them for three days and they pull them down, right? So if you’re smart, you’ll build a scraper and you’ll be able to do that. But you still need to be able. We’ll talk in a minute about backdoor and relationships because I think that’s a fascinating one. So you know, yes, the anthropic is one. It wasn’t the one I was thinking of. But when those posts they will get thousands of unqualified people. Like everyone thinks they’re qualified, right? But, but come on.

Andy Mowat:
And so the. That’s a whole nother reason where now with AI, it’s one click to apply. You can make your resume and your cover letter look perfect. It’s really hard to tell who’s good. And so I think a lot of people that you get VP and C level, they just aren’t posted in most cases. Now, for legal reasons, there are requirements that certain companies will post clearly Anthropic unless the government does something, unless they declare them somebody that nobody can use. They have a contract with the government, so they’re going to have to post. But I bet you go back next week, that role won’t be posted.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I just did. I went back as you were talking. I went back and still posted. But that’s. And it’s been about a week. But that’s okay, man. I’m not trying to blow up your spot here in person. Uh, by the time this episode airs, that role will definitely be taken.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So this is all old news anyways.

Andy Mowat:
Absolutely. Um, I think it’s just also recruiting team bandwidth. Do you want your recruiting team spending all their time on replying to unqualified people, or do you want your recruiting team spending time proactively reaching out to the best people? Um, also think about it from a brand perspective. Like, if Anthropic says no, you’re not qualified to 5, 4997 people, those people are going to be very, very. They may go use OpenAI and they may. That company didn’t like me. And so I think AI is fundamentally, it’s making it harder and harder by virtue of making more information available. It’s also making it harder.

Andy Mowat:
Right. And so there are a lot of reasons why roles are not posted. Also, if a company hires a recruiter, recruiters don’t want to be circumvented. So they’re not going. We train all of our people like, hey, if it’s a recruited role, don’t go straight to the company. It’s not going to do you any good. But recruiters, if you hire a Cole Group for your CCO search, Cole Group’s not going to post that role because then everyone’s just going to be networking into the company and banging everybody. And so at Anthropic, like all these people that work there, I mean, imagine when that head of CS role goes up at Anthropic.

Andy Mowat:
Every single person works there is getting hit up by all their people saying, hey, could you refer me in for that role? So it creates an absolute shit show. Right. So you wonder why companies don’t post. There are a whole bunch of reasons why they don’t post.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, that makes sense.

Andy Mowat:
That being said, like, you should still monitor for posted roles. I estimate that at the director level, 75 to 80% are posted, but you flip that to 20% posted at the VP level and at the C level, virtually nothing is posted, but you should still monitor. And, you know, there’s a lot. We’ve just wrote an article on all the ways to use AI to monitor for posted rules.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Oh, what’s the most effective?

Andy Mowat:
Well, there’s a thousand ways, I’d say you can build. There’s off the shelf tools, there’s scrapers. And so we kind of built it, which is, we’re seeing now most people, when they do their job search, they have a little extra time and so they will AI code up a lot of their own search. And so we wrote a whole one of how to do it. Right. So I use, I have a scraper that scrapes LinkedIn. There’s another one that’s. You can, if you’re in a community, you can now scrape those communities.

Andy Mowat:
And so you can do lots of those things like that. We don’t focus on the posted ones, but we try to teach every whispered member how to. You should have the monitoring of the posted roles. And then I think the key thing that people just don’t get is do not apply through the front door. Um, it just doesn’t work.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I was just gonna ask you, is it worth applying in LinkedIn at all?

Andy Mowat:
I mean, if you are a absolute best fit candidate, yes. Hopefully you will make it through. But I think if people don’t know this, there are internal referral systems at any company. You can see all the roles and you can submit somebody yourself. And so you should. And this because we literally were talking to a whisper number today in CS who’s applied to 200 roles but not using the backdoor. And so we’re like, no, you need. You’re.

Andy Mowat:
He’s like, I’m not having much success. And I was like, of course you’re not, because it doesn’t work. I mean, if you sat on the other side and you’re these recruiters, they’re like, yes, no, yes, no, you’re getting three seconds. And so if you are not the absolute perfect fit, if you are going to struggle and even if you are a perfect fit, AI may weed you out in some way.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
You might be buried. Yeah, you might not even be.

Andy Mowat:
So backdoor is critical. Right. And so then you’re. Then it comes down to do you have a network? Can you reach out to them? Can you make the ask? And I think what we’ve then focused on is everyone’s network is limited. And so we’ve put all of the execs in Whisper together, sharing their networks. And so you can ask any other exec to open that door for you. And I think what I realized is whether it is a unposted role where you know it but you don’t have an in, or it’s a posted role, you are going to need that network. So just knowing where the unposted roles is is not enough.

Andy Mowat:
No, you need to be able to have the network to get you to those roles.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Right, right. I’ve taken a lot of advice.

Andy Mowat:
If you have a talent partner relationship and they’re invested, boom, call them. If you, if you have somebody that’s been there, well, like oftentimes they’ll be like, ah, yeah, I’m connected to them on LinkedIn, but I don’t really know them. Right. So how do you figure that out? And we spend a lot of time working to solve that problem as well too. And we’ve written some great stuff just on how you use backdoors for a lot of that stuff. And you know, it’s like, I learned that a long time ago, which is just don’t apply to the front door.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
When I was applying for jobs like years ago, I, I, I felt like I did it pretty well using the backdoor technique there. I would never apply to, you know, the front door, the, the actual submission online job bite or whatever it was. And in fact, I would, I would intentionally not, you could say, well, you apply and then ask somebody, you know, to, to, to, you know, to ref, you know, that you’ve applied and to refer you to the hiring manager. And I’d intentionally not apply or tell people not to do this because I wanted the folks that I was reaching out to, to be incentivized to refer me. I wanted them to get the referral fee.

Andy Mowat:
There are no more referral fees in this market though.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Really?

Andy Mowat:
Oh, yeah. I mean, that was the case in 2020, 2021. There is no, there are no more referral fees like this.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Oh, okay. Well, that was it. I was, I would go to like the junior people. If it was a director role, I’d go to like the senior manager and I’d say, hey, I’d love for you to refer me for this role because then there’s 2,000 bucks in your pocket. Okay. But that doesn’t exist. Anymore.

Andy Mowat:
So good that doesn’t exist. But I think you touched on another interesting point, which is everyone always thinks I got to enter, I got to like network to backdoor to the CEO or whoever’s the hiring manager. But you know, like I’ve had wonderful success backdoor. Like I, I have a, we have a whispered member now who’s running revenue at a billion, multi billion dollar company who’s thinking about his next thing. And we were able to connect him to a mid level person at a very hot AI company. And that person’s like, oh my God, I get to meet this guy. I get to do it. When I was interviewing at Carta, like I, I backdoored to a couple mid level rev ops people and they were insanely helpful in helping me understand the lay of the land, what was going on.

Andy Mowat:
And then they can, every one of them is in slack with the hiring manager. Right? So they can very easily be like, hey Bob, you know, I know we haven’t walked by or been in a meeting in a couple weeks, but here’s this amazing profile I saw. Boom, done right. Like it does. You can get backdoor. I think people are like, I always need to backdoor to the hiring manager. No, you can backdoor to anybody at the company and be able to get in as well too.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I feel like, especially now, especially for the newer companies, the more AI native companies, there’s less hierarchy in that sense.

Andy Mowat:
Very good point. Good point.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, you know, I mean, you know, OpenAI Anthropic, like everybody’s just like, you know, go to market, like who’s the lead, who’s the senior, who’s the director? It doesn’t exist. It’s like, you know, go to market at anthropic. Right? So yeah, so to that extent I think that they have more of a voice than folks maybe in the past would have. The other thing that I’ve suggested to folks in the past few years is to treat, and I’d like your feedback on this is to treat your job search as if you were an outbound SDR or AE just to outbound like. And so literally like the tools, I would give people the toolkit. I’d say this is what I used for update AI. I used smart lead AI for my outbound sequencing because then there was no unsubscribe link. But I was still able to put in a mass number of emails and I was still able to then personalize each one and create a sequence that was personalized.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I would then go and you know, whether you Wanted to use Zoom info or, you know, my guy Avi in India and like get all of the email addresses for all of the ICPs. For me, ICPs being the hiring managers or that orbit of the influential folks at the roles that I was looking for, I would recommend people look for and then just do that, just outbound them, but in a very intentional way. Right. And the same thing with LinkedIn. Use Dripify and create the LinkedIn connection and then comment on their, on their posts and like, just treat it like you’re the world’s best ae.

Andy Mowat:
Yes. And I think everything you said is exactly right on the top of the funnel. I think the. Sorry, the other thing I would comment on is I see similarly use it as an A in the funnel itself as well too. Right. So qualify out. If you, if you take the mentality of, I’m trying to figure out this is a fit versus God, I gotta beg through to everybody, it’s much better. Right.

Andy Mowat:
And so there, there are obvious points of qualifying out. If somebody’s gonna about to do a major case study, like that’s a potential. They’ll be like, oh, it’s an hour of work. Don’t, don’t spend too much time on it. Of course not. You’re gonna spend 12 hours on that thing. So that’s a great moment to figure out, do you really wanna go deeper with somebody on that side? And so I look at it as, there’s the recruiter call, which is kind of a qualification step. And so you’ve really got to, we’ve got a whole thing there on like, how do you prepare for that? Then there’s like the hiring manager call, which is effectively discovery.

Andy Mowat:
And so you’re, you have to approach that hiring manager. If you engage the hiring manager, they’re going to make sure you get pulled through the process. So that’s like the critical stage of the funnel. And then next up, I’d say there’s like the interview panel, which is like the validation and all the different buyer groups on that side and then executive interviews. Think of them like procurement and Infosec or something like, like that. Right. And so there’s all these, the whole job search is a funnel. And if you kind of treat it that way, mentally, it, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit easier in these processes.

Andy Mowat:
And I think the other thing people need to realize is when you click with a hiring manager, things just move fast. Right. So you’ll see people will take three or four months, they’ll take their time and then boom, like a week later they’ll be starting a new role. And so don’t get discouraged in this process, even if you’re senior. It’s just a tough job market for sure.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, yeah. And write a thank you note. I don’t think I’ve ever hired anybody that has not. I probably have. But like begrudgingly write a freaking thank you note. I, I don’t, I don’t see it more than 50 of the time. And it shocks me.

Andy Mowat:
It shocks me too because like, I can’t tell you the number of times where people are slacking back and forth of. Hey, there was no thank you note on this one. Right? Did you get a thank you note? I didn’t get a thank you note. And they’re like, oh, that person. And they’re like, it will. Maybe 50% of the time it matters, but damn, you don’t want to take the chance that you’re, you’re interviewing with somebody that actually cares about thank you notes. You and I care about them. Some people don’t.

Andy Mowat:
But like, why take the chance?

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. And like an ae, a top notch ae. If you have a panel interview and you know, you could email everybody at once, that’s fine, it’s not so bad. But, but why not just send an individual email to each person and pick out one comment that they made?

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, you’re right. It’s just like the sales funnel, right? Like an ae after the call sends a note of like, hey, amazing talking. Like you’re the next follow up steps to the process. Like, I think if you take that ownership as well too, that just signals well as you as well too. I think it’s absolutely part of the funnel in that sense.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, yeah. Any last golden nuggets, Andy, for all the free agents out there?

Andy Mowat:
Oh man, I could talk forever. I mean, it’s just like, let me just take.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
How’s the C? How’s the C. Anything specific to CS and CCOs? What are you seeing right now?

Andy Mowat:
We had Nick on our podcast, which was awesome and I think, you know, he said it well, which is a lot of these AI. I don’t know if it was Nick or somebody else that said it, but you know, companies churn in year three when you sign them up. Right. The first year you sign them up. Then second year, like, ah, maybe it didn’t work, but we’ll give another shot. It’s that third year that people churn. I think a lot of these AI companies are in year two and they’re about to face it. So I definitely have seen CS market be a little bit more challenging for good folks that is that all these companies are getting funding and hiring CMOs and CROs or not hiring heads of CS.

Andy Mowat:
And so I think that that’s people are about to start to realize that. Right? You know Harvey, every single person has been in market and so everyone’s buying but they haven’t had a chance to like have a bad experience with it and their contracts haven’t run out. And so I’m starting to see churn become a bigger and bigger issue with a lot of these high flying companies. I’d say the other big thing is Nick even talked about this one is you know, I think a lot of people like I have to report to CEO as cco but like even gainsight didn’t have its CCO report dates CEO. And so I think a lot of people over index on what’s the title of the person I report to. I think I would be much more focused on. And so you see people like weed out things for the stupidest fricking reasons. I think I would be much more focused on does the person I’m working for like fundamentally like do they understand the function and can they amp can they give me the air cover at the right times? And then how is decision making made across cs? And there and to some degree having a CRO that’s the decider across GTM is better.

Andy Mowat:
I think a lot of people over index on like oh, the comp on the role that’s posted is wrong or is not attractive. So I’m not going to pursue it. What I think I find is roughly it’s like 50, 50, 50%. Company’s like that’s all I can pay. But the other 50% of people like of course if it’s a better person I can be flexible. And so I got a whispered member that was just not chasing roles. He’s like oh, the comp’s wrong, the comp’s wrong. Like I had another one of those the other day where he didn’t want to chase it because the comp was wrong.

Andy Mowat:
And I just liked the recruiter. I was like hey, the comp feels a little low. And the recruiter’s like yep, you’re absolutely right. Like they’re totally flexible on this. And so.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But how low are we talking about? 20% low or we’re talking about 50% low?

Andy Mowat:
I mean you can the way you should approach that. We have a whole thing on interviewing and negotiating. Right. Like you should not discuss comp. The right answer is like, hey, I’m comp will not be the deciding factor for me. I’m focused on like the experience this and that and the scope of the role. Of course comp matters, but you do not want to negotiate it until they’ve fallen in love with you. And if the scope is right and they’re, you know, if they’re a C or later company, they’re going to have a total rewards team and they’re not going to screw it up.

Andy Mowat:
Right? Like it’s not going to be that far off. And then it’s a question is, are they, are they focused on finding somebody that’s like, no, we can only pay this and finance has told us and we have no flexibility or for the right person, we budge. You know, I just, most comp numbers are wrong. I had a C level person and I sent to him, I was like, hey, I, you know, a couple of whisper members have declined to go after your roles because this like here’s some benchmarks. It feels off. And he’s like, oh, you’re right, I got to go get to a recruiting team. Like so just don’t worry if the scope is focus on scope and it’s like the scope match your talents versus the comp. And if the scope’s there and they’re way off, like they’re going to learn from a lot of other candidates and they’re just going to get it right.

Andy Mowat:
I mean I can’t tell you the number of times where companies like yeah, we scoped that rule wrong. Right.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Like on the scope piece. Let me ask you a question. Can folks level up now or has is that day over?

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, you can level up. It just, I mean I’d say if comp is negotiable in 50% of the time, I figure scope is like level is probably like a 15, 20%. But again, those are the things to discuss and just are early. Right? Like at Carta when I interviewed, I was like, hey, you know, the way it’s set up, it was like a 20, 30 person team. I said the way it’s set up isn’t quite right. Like I might tweak this and tweak this and like. And so we actually spent like a week just talking about what’s the optimal org structure for it. And so if you’re getting with the right person that understands they and that’s also you’re learning and discovering in the process, well, that might be a little different.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That that’s you, you know, getting A Interviewing for a director. Being a director. I’m not saying this was you personally.

Andy Mowat:
Right.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But that’s somebody being a director, interviewing for a director role, but then saying, hey, you know, I’m really more almost about to be a vp. Can we make this role? Can we talk about configuring this to senior director or VP role? Right. Leveling up once. Like. But. But you started out the same ground. Maybe. But I guess the question is that I was actually thinking, and that’s important too, but if I’m a senior director, can I become a VP right now? If I’m a vp, can I come become a cco?

Andy Mowat:
Yeah, that was the question I was answering. You can absolutely.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That is. I’m sorry.

Andy Mowat:
I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah, you can absolutely level up in a percentage of time. Sometimes similar sometimes comes. I know that’s the level and that’s what we’ve got. Other people are like, of course I want to find the right person for the thing. And so you. It’s hard to know are they fixed mindset or flexible mindset early in that process.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But if they have a. I guess maybe we’re talking about the same thing. They were not if the role is a CCO role. Right. Can a VP apply?

Andy Mowat:
Ah, okay. We were talking about the inverse of that. I was talking about if you’re, if you’re senior interviewing for something and how do you make it bigger?

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Right.

Andy Mowat:
No, in this market. No. Like, be realistic. Like I’m seeing this across the board, right? Like CMOs are interviewing for VP level roles. All that. Like, maybe you can. But no, generally what companies will do is they’ll call things like head of if they want to get mushy rather than, you know, and so then they, in their minds they’re like, this is a director head of. This is a senior director.

Andy Mowat:
This is a VP head of. Or it’s a C level head of, but I just don’t want to call it that. And so when you see head of, I think, you know, it’s probably flexible in terms of what the actual title will be on that. And I often advise people like, yeah, post this head of. And interview. Variety. Variety. And see that.

Andy Mowat:
But I think when people. Yeah. So if you’re trying to. If you’re more junior trying to step up, it’s hard in this market. I mean, you can always be done, but you got to be perfect.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Andy, this was great. Thank you so much. I love what you’re doing with Whispered. Hope that we are able to funnel some folks your way because I think it’s really important right now. Lots of folks are looking, whether they’re in seat or out of seat, and wishing everybody out there listening all the best in their journeys. Thank you so much for being on the program.

Andy Mowat:
I really enjoyed it. Gainsight and Nick and the community shaped a lot of who I am and so it’s great to share and give back.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Thanks a lot.