Whispered Hiring

Whispered.com & Frontlines.io
  • 5.0 (4)
  • CAREERS

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.

  1. Whispered Hiring with Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO @ Rocketlane

    1D AGO

    Whispered Hiring with Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO @ Rocketlane

    A year ago, Srikrishnan Ganesan says, asking candidates to prove their AI fluency was too soon. Now, he says, it's table stakes and the answers candidates give are creating a sharp divide between those who will thrive and those who won't. In this episode, Andy and Sri get into how Sri screens for genuine AI adoption, why he thinks the pre-sale to post-sale handoff is collapsing faster than most GTM leaders realize, and the specific signals he uses to decide whether a leader is actually built to operate in a fast-moving company. Topics discussed: Why "I use it for emails and meeting summaries" is now a red flag in interviews Pushing customers to feel 40% implemented before the sales cycle ends How candidates use AI to prep for interviews  and what it reveals The specific question Sri asks before ever calling a reference Why being out of a role matters less than what the leader learned from it Using exec partners from VC firms as a selective lens on certain hires Curated customer call playlists as the foundation of exec onboarding 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

    42 min
  2. Whispered Hiring with Peter Grant, CRO @ You.com

    APR 28

    Whispered Hiring with Peter Grant, CRO @ You.com

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Peter Grant, CRO at You.com, about what it actually takes to hire technical enterprise AI sellers who can build, demo, and sell at the same time. Peter has spent 20+ years scaling GTM at Siebel, Salesforce UK, C3.AI, and OakNorth, and drove 40x revenue growth at You.com in 2024. He shares the exact frameworks, tests, and reference approaches he uses to find sellers who combine genuine technical fluency with commercial instinct. Topics discussed: Why AI sellers need technical fluency, not product familiarity alone The Lovable/Replit live demo test: filtering real builders from claimants Why early-stage CROs should carry a bag before building the team Write a specific JD before launching any senior search How AI is changing sales enablement cadence and certification The biggest hiring mistake: choosing people you want to drink with Force-ranking 5 sales stages to surface a candidate's real edge The best candidates treat the interview as a sales campaign Customer references over manager references: what to actually ask Good hires are visible on day one: booking meetings, everywhere Steve Garnett's 10-point hiring framework for technical GTM talent 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

    49 min
  3. Whispered Hiring with Vikas Bhambri, CRO @ Rasa

    APR 21

    Whispered Hiring with Vikas Bhambri, CRO @ Rasa

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Vikas Bhambri, CRO at Rasa, about the hiring frameworks he has built across some of the most demanding AI-native go-to-market environments. Drawing from his experience at Kustomer, Regal, and Yellow.ai, Vikas brings a people-first philosophy that runs from the moment you inherit a team all the way through panel discipline and decision ownership. His approach challenges how most GTM leaders think about assessments, sourcing, structured interviews, and what coachability actually looks like under pressure. Topics discussed: Inheriting a team you did not recruit or onboard Why holding people to unmet standards is bullying, not management Setting expectations when your team already knows change is coming Why CROs cannot throw talent sourcing over the fence to recruiting LinkedIn as a deliberate sourcing network, not a rolodex Standardized interview questions as the foundation of fair evaluation The opening question Vikas asks every single candidate Why hijacking an interview is a non-starter Exercises as a coachability test, not a credential showcase Why AI does not kill the exercise Hiring panels as a privilege, not a checkbox 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

    45 min
  4. Whispered Hiring with Varun Puri, CEO @ Yoodli

    APR 14

    Whispered Hiring with Varun Puri, CEO @ Yoodli

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Varun Puri, CEO and Cofounder of Yoodli, about what hiring looks like when you are a first-time founder building a leadership team from scratch. Varun previously reported directly to Sergey Brin at Google and incubated Yoodli at the Allen AI Institute. His approach cuts through credential theater with radical transparency, product obsession as a live screen, and a values-driven process built around trusting your gut. Topics discussed: Why trusting intuition is the most underrated hiring signal for first-time founders, and what it costs to override it. Varun describes bringing people on despite a clear Spidey Sense, each time watching it unravel within three months. How Yoodli uses its own AI roleplay portal to pre-qualify candidates before any human conversation. Candidates practice with AI personas of the founders so the real interview can skip the basics and go straight into substantive territory. Using live platform data as a screen for genuine product obsession. When a candidate says they love Yoodli but has logged in twice, Varun pulls the dashboard mid-interview and the conversation goes in a very specific direction. The one question Varun asks every candidate: if Yoodli fails in six months, what would have to be true for you to say this was the best professional experience of your life? It bypasses upside-dependent motivation and reveals what candidates actually value. Full cap table transparency as a negotiation philosophy, including sharing what Varun and his co-founder make. This reframes the conversation from if to how, and routinely unlocks creative compensation structures. The 500-item mutual expectations document that turned a board advisor introduction into a co-founder-level Head of Sales hire. Varun and Josh built it together before any offer was signed. Why the founder-to-founder reference is the highest-signal off-sheet channel. Varun uses VC connections to reach founders directly, not just the CRO, because that conversation surfaces what standard references never do. 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

    43 min
  5. Whispered Hiring with Nicole Baer, CMO @ Carta

    APR 7

    Whispered Hiring with Nicole Baer, CMO @ Carta

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Nicole Baer, Chief Marketing Officer at Carta, about how she designs, sources, and evaluates senior marketing talent. Drawing from leadership roles at Logitech, Zendesk, and Aon, and having founded two marketing consultancies, Nicole brings a practitioner's perspective to the full hiring lifecycle. Her frameworks for using fractional engagements strategically, structured interviewing, and deliberate onboarding challenge several assumptions about how senior leaders should approach talent decisions. Topics discussed: Before posting any senior role, ask whether you actually need a full-time exec. When business strategy is still in flux, Nicole defaults to a fractional engagement to scope the role and clarify the remit before committing to a permanent hire. Fractional experience on a resume is a signal of adaptability, not instability. Nicole values candidates who have worked fractionally because they have proven they can ramp without a long runway, absorb complexity fast, and deliver under pressure. The only question worth asking: are they ready for full-time now? AI is reshaping marketing org design along two distinct tracks simultaneously: specialized content and go-to-market engineers who work within defined marketing functions, and generalist AI innovation roles where people apply domain expertise to solve problems that cut across the org. Nicole is actively building for both. Nicole's signature interview opener, which she has used for the past ten years, is: "Tell me about your professional journey in a way I can't read from your resume." Candidates who immediately recite their resume fail the assignment. She is looking for authenticity, self-awareness, and the ability to synthesize a narrative under pressure, skills she sees as especially non-negotiable for marketing leaders. For the middle portion of every interview, Nicole prompts ChatGPT with the role scenario to generate 25 questions, then selects five she finds genuinely interesting. It functions as a thinking partner that keeps her question set fresh and surfaces angles she might not have considered. Nicole backchannels references mid to late stage, never early. Her principle: she does not want to be biased until she is ready to be biased. Going too early contaminates her own read on the candidate before she has formed an independent view. Candidate questions that disqualify: asking about office attendance before receiving an offer, and asking too many strategic questions without demonstrating an ability to execute. At Carta, strategic thinking and strong execution are not optional. Onboarding for senior hires is intentionally uncomfortable. Nicole provides an intensive context transfer in the first few days, including resources, key internal introductions, and reading, and then steps back. She treats the ability to navigate ambiguity and figure things out without hand-holding as the real signal of whether a senior hire will stick. 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

    41 min
  6. Whispered Hiring with Adam Kuznia, SVP of Client Services @ Invisible

    MAR 31

    Whispered Hiring with Adam Kuznia, SVP of Client Services @ Invisible

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Adam Kuznia, SVP of Client Services at Invisible, about the habits and frameworks behind his approach to GTM hiring. Adam has led teams across customer success, sales, marketing, and revenue operations at companies including DataCamp, Opal, and Sales Impact Academy. His philosophy on network maintenance, candidate evaluation, and psychological safety challenges nearly every default in how senior leaders think about hiring. Topics discussed: If you write the JD and go to market, you are ten years too late. The actual work of hiring happens long before a seat opens, through relationships built continuously over time. Adam holds monthly 1:1s with most of his former direct reports, maintaining a live talent map so when a role opens he already knows who is ready, who can refer, and who is heading somewhere relevant. The gift in July principle: do not reach out only when you need something. Send value year-round. He takes recruiter calls even when not looking because that investment compounds both ways. He does not help people. He helps people help themselves. Whether career advice or a job ask, his move is to ask questions until they can think through their own problem. His interview method centers on productive disagreement. He creates space for fun, probes for strong opinions, and will argue a position he does not hold just to see whether a candidate pushes back and whether that disagreement makes forward progress. The attribute he screens hardest for: unwillingness to let inertia or bureaucracy get in the way. Someone who bends rules thoughtfully and can defend exactly why. High leverage over individual heroics. A CFO once told Adam he would fire him for being too good, because everyone came to him for answers. He now screens for whether candidates make everyone around them better, not just whether they can carry the load. 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 Whispered: www.whispered.com Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search

    40 min
  7. Whispered Hiring with Cody Guymon, President @ Zonos

    MAR 24

    Whispered Hiring with Cody Guymon, President @ Zonos

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Cody Guymon, President at Zonos and former COO at Qualtrics and Workato, about how he built a career from rev ops to the C-suite and what that path taught him about hiring. Cody owns all of revenue at Zonos and has sharply defined views on which traits are irreplaceable now that AI is doing the order-taking. Topics discussed: How Cody made it from rev ops to president by forcing himself into deals. He never carried a quota, but jumping into sales conversations alongside reps gave him the customer context that back-office ops leaders never develop. The two traits he screens for in every senior GTM interview: insane curiosity and a high motor. He asks candidates what they know about Zonos and grades them on depth and follow-up questions, not surface familiarity. Why tell me something about you that is not on your resume is his dual test for curiosity and motor. He wants to hear what you are learning or building right now, not a decade-old accolade. English is the new coding language. Cody redesigned the Zonos website himself using Claude Code with no design or engineering background and submitted a PR to the engineering team for review. If you are just an order-taker, your job is already gone. Claude Code can execute orders. The people who survive are those who proactively form a point of view and use AI to act on it at scale. Take care of your best builders, and if they still leave, download their context into shared repositories before it walks out the door with them. Cody's primary sourcing channel for senior hires is a standing monthly poker night with 10 to 12 operators from his Qualtrics network, where back-channel conversations surface who can actually deliver. When the network runs dry, he stops looking for someone who has already done the job and bets on the up and comer who could step into a bigger role. He landed the Zonos president role exactly that way. Character is the foundation that makes every other trait worth anything. Two conversations ended immediately: a candidate who could not touch the Rubik's cube listed on their resume, and one who admitted to VPN masking their location from their current employer. 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

    42 min
  8. Whispered Hiring with Alla Mezhvinsky, VP of People @ Glean

    MAR 17

    Whispered Hiring with Alla Mezhvinsky, VP of People @ Glean

    In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Alla Mezhvinsky, VP of People at Glean, about the preparation failures that derail executive searches before a single candidate is contacted. With deep experience leading talent acquisition at Instacart, Square, ClassPass, and Zynga, Alla brings a practitioner's view on what separates searches that close fast from searches that spin. Her frameworks are direct, field-tested, and built for the pace of high-growth companies. Topics discussed: Why not having a plan before opening a search is the single biggest hiring failure Alla sees. Without a defined talk track, role scope, value proposition, and at least directional comp, teams fail twice: they attract the wrong candidates, and when the right ones show up, they cannot engage them because they cannot answer basic questions about the role. How roles evolve faster than searches can close, and why scoping for today sets you up to hire the wrong person. In hyper-growth companies, a role that opens in Q1 looks materially different by Q3. Alla recommends thinking explicitly about what the team needs at 6, 12, and 18 months out, which is often a different candidate profile entirely. How AI has flipped the recruiting intake model. Rather than waiting on hiring managers to arrive with a fully formed brief, recruiting teams are now using AI to come to the intake meeting with a proposed job description and interview plan. The hiring manager iterates on a draft instead of starting from a blank canvas, compressing weeks of delay into a single session. The best answer ever given to the question of how long a search will take. An agency recruiter told a CEO: "I can guarantee I will present the right candidate to you within the first couple of weeks. What I can't guarantee is how long it will take you to realize it is the right candidate." Alla cited this as the clearest argument for doing alignment work before the search opens. Why AI has roughly doubled the number of applicants per role in under a year, and why the industry is still figuring out how to handle it. Alla referenced data from a recent talk showing twice as many applicants per role compared to the prior year. The volume is manageable. The challenge is doing it responsibly without rejecting strong candidates or removing the human from the decision. How the AI fluency question has completely inverted in 18 months. A year and a half ago, companies were designing interview processes to detect whether candidates used AI. Today, companies want confirmation that they can. The new test is whether AI is enhancing real expertise or masking a skills gap, and Alla's team runs live, real-time assessments instead of take-home case studies to find out. How Alla uses AI to turn candidate-provided references into targeted conversations. Her team feeds the full interview loop feedback into a prompt that generates reference questions built around exactly what the panel was still uncertain about, replacing generic endorsement calls with structured, context-driven conversations. 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

    40 min
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Whispered.com & Frontlines.io
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    47
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Whispered.com & Frontlines.io
  • Show Website
    Whispered Hiring