philosophies on hiring and culture w/ ashley hunsberger

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Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it for it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdssent, d-e-s-s-e-y-n. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. I definitely run my mouth. Ashley. Taylor. If the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Well, I am Ashley Hunsberger. I am the director of our developer advocacy and velocity lab at anthology.

So I work at Blackboard. We recently merged with an amazing company called anthology. I said, you're at Blackboard. You did not know, no. I'm still with the same company. Just merged under a broader umbrella of amazing products to offer and enable learning across the world, which, you know, it's always been what drives me. I feel like I've been there for. I don't feel like it's because I have been there for almost 17 years, but, you know, I think it's so rare and software to find a company with missions as noble as that. as that, right? And how can I bring learning to people around the world?

So it's been an amazing time. And my team that I'm building were very small, very organic within the organization. And we looked to help understand and discover and amplify and improve, you know, our well-being and tech and how we deliver things. And what are those amazing stories that we're finding within our company? It's almost like an internal dev rel of sorts while also bringing in the data, the quantitative and the qualitative information to understand that and what are the areas that we need to go after. I mean, we all say we love data-driven decision making. My team is going to help you do that, not just look at productivity, but other areas that are so important and a holistic view in tech that we need.

I love that. I love that. So Ashley and I basically had many podcasts and for those of you who are tuning in, I Dominic, what's going on? Aaron, so you see people talking about this award. I won Influence of the Year award last night for Nashville. Very blessed, very excited. So Ashley is the first guest, is a celebration guest, I like to say. Dad, it's good to see you. Good morning. So Ashley, you know, you sent me some great thoughts, right? So I always email my guests beforehand and Ashley got back with a bunch of great thoughts. So I wanna go and dive in. I wanna talk about one thing you talk about first, people first, right?

So, so, and again, you and I were having a mini podcast session before this, but I want to rehash some things. But I mean, talk about it because I think in software, I think there's so much of an emphasis to get the product out the door, to burn people out to almost view people as it sounds bad, but just ways to mean something to end, right? We got to get this deployed. We got to get this developed. It doesn't matter if you work 100 hours a week. We just got to go, go, go. Yep. Why do you have the philosophy of people first? Almost like it.

I took a lot of perspective. I used to be that person that was willing to work the ridiculous days, the ridiculous hours in my early 20s. And it took maybe having a child to realize it's probably not the best way, right? Real same. And I started reading a lot, Tom Peters, Laura Hogan, And Tom Peters, he comes from the business school of management rate. And how do we really, truly put people first? There's always gonna be a deliverable at the end of the day. But nobody remembers the data. Nobody remembers the products at the end of your life. So what is that eulogy resume? How did you make people feel?

That is what they remember. And how do I make people feel? If I'm their boss, what is it that they're going to feel by being on my team? If I work with you, what are you going to remember and take away from that? Is it really that we delivered a thing or is it that we had such a really cool connection and collaboration and we're able to just build that relationship and sustain it over time even after the project's done? Right. So, you know, that is kind of where I come from. But how do you, okay, so people always like because I've been challenged with this before, because I think you and I think, I think you and I think very similarly, I think you and I probably very similarly.

How do you push back with the people? It's like, well, that's great and all, but like you need to be a little mean. Like you need to drive your people a little bit. It can't all be hugs and rainbows. How do you combat that? Or how do you get people on board and still push forward quickly and get things done but still maintain that culture? Because that's hard. It is. It's hard. It's very hard. But I think that first you need to learn really early what motivates your team. And I have found, you know, I'm giving them a say in what are their goals, understanding the company goals, let's now develop goals and how we're going to build this with them, especially people that are early in their career.

Unlocking that motivation has been super critical for me. And that's where I like to lead from a place of motivating rather than fear or nope, we have to do this or else. I've had both of those approaches in my own experience and there's one that will kind of almost leave you crippled at the end of the day for months or years. And there's another approach, I feel like the motivating approach that leaves you inspired. And sometimes you are going to have times where you have to work a little extra because yes, there are deadlines sometimes, right? But are you working from a place of fear or because you are motivated to work and do the best for your team and your colleagues and your boss because you've built those relationships and would do anything for them, even though, gosh, if I asked you to do that, slap me on the hand, please.

Right. Right. Well, and I think to, I think, I think it's a new way of thinking. So I've had this conversation with a lot of people, right? And in Vaco too, there's this, I mean, at the end of the day, the millennial generation and is kind of this in-between of like, we're not Gen Z, like we don't have this whole like, oh, like I'm just gonna like total nomad, side hustle, self-sneakers, like NFTs, you know, crypto, DeFi, whatever, like that's, that's the younger generation, still some of our generation. And then there's like the older generation where it's very much top down mentality, top down management.

And I feel like our age group is kind of in this place where we're trying to think differently, like we're trying to bring a different thought process to the workplace and it's going to take time to shift. Yes, it is. I feel like I sometimes I'm on, and I'm still unlearning a lot of this, right? like I grew up and started in a world that is very top down. And you do internalize that to a degree, right? But it takes a lot of creative thinking, a lot of unlearning. And I feel like I'm like unraveling this ball and tangle of yarn sometimes to get after, right?

What is it that we're actually trying to do? And do we really need to use what we've learned over the last 50 years in business to go about solving this? Or is there another way? And usually there is that I'm finding. So do you feel like COVID? So I asked this question and I said, I've asked this in a few times few guests, but I'll be interested to really hear your take. Do you think COVID put the spot like back on people? Like, oh yeah. Okay. Do you know what I'm saying? That was kind of a vague question. I could have phrased it better, but like, because I just- I can't do it.

Okay. All right, go ahead. sure I ask correctly. I mean, even though I've always come from a people approach, I feel like COVID made it even more acute. So the attention that I've had to put into making sure that my team has what they need, that they feel supported, that they don't feel like that we can help balance this idea of self care, especially during this pandemic, while also getting things done and and staying motivated for each other and finding this balance. We closed offices straight up because we found, oh, this is really working, this remote work. I've always been remote. We've always had this kind of mixture of people that are in an office, people that aren't.

We still have those offices. Obviously we're trying to get back to a safer place to be able to go back and visit. But we're like, huh, I've seen people change their minds about the way in which we work, which has been so exciting to me for people that I didn't know could change their minds about it. So it's been really nice to see that focus on people and especially our leaders in the company being able to shift the conversations, not always about what do we need to get done, but I all sit in status meetings and we're talking about wellbeing. And I was like, how do you think that is?

Why do you think that is? Because we have to speak, we have to come to our, we come every day as ourselves in the pandemic especially. We are coming with all of the stress, all of the anxiety, all of, you know, even the joys of having my kid at home, it's stressful. And when we are now all in this remote world and constantly on video and working, we're all getting glimpses of each other's lives that can sometimes be very isolated and separate from the office. That's where I was hoping you would go. Okay. Yeah, perfect. But in being able to see all of these glimpses of lives now, we're able to now talk to that and represent our people and say, look, our team is so stressed.

What can we do and have those conversations as a leadership team now and not feel so isolated and like, hmm, what are other people doing? I don't know, right? Yeah, because we're so happy to hear that product. Right. You're in my home right now. I'm in your home. As weird as that sounds. But like, yeah, like that's, I think that's what COVID has done. It is taken down the veil of work and home life because pre COVID, we will go to the office. We would be at the office from eight to five. By the way, I was highly inefficient pre COVID. I don't know how I got anything done pre COVID to look at it.

with traveling two hours a day. Yeah, all that being said, like we're in each other's homes now and I feel like there is like, and also too, I feel like COVID, hear me out. No one jumped on me here. I feel like COVID has united us in a way, in a sense that we're all in it together. Everybody has to deal with it. Yes. In some way, shape or form. And so I feel like if you, from a leadership perspective, We're all dealing with the same shit. Oh yeah. Yeah, and I'm glad he said that. We are and I'm sad it took a pandemic to get there.

Right? Like why can't we approach like pre-pandemic like this? Hey listen, hey. I know. But again, I personally think it's because we're in each other's homes. Like I'm a mother-in-law right now here watching my kid because my wife's on a photo shoot, but like I'm typically at the kitchen table with my daughter running around, right? And it's like, that's life now and people see that. And people don't have to apologize. Pre-COVID, I mean, it started COVID, oh my gosh, we're so sorry, so sorry. Now it's like, ah, it's fine. No, don't worry about it. I don't really care. Oh, we had to start, even for myself, I make chronic apologizer.

But we all had to start setting a rule, to stop apologizing everybody. And it's like, please tell me to stop apologizing for my kids bursting in, it's fine. Yes. So 15 minutes started going by, I wanna make sure that we, I can talk about it. I knew this would happen. We're already going to have to have a part two. I can already tell. So we'll get that set up afterwards. But four day work week. So me and James Buckleloo, I think that's I pronounced the last name, talked about this Tuesday. Let's touch on it briefly. You brought this up. This wasn't in your show notes beforehand, but we talked about it all fair before we went live.

What have you all done with the four day were weak and give me some just high level thoughts? And again, for those of you who have questions with, you know, Alonda, thank you for tuning. Chris, Daniel, Elliot, Yoda, unlearn what you have learned, absolutely. If you all have questions for Ashley, please ask them. So again, definitely questions, but Ashley, whatever y'all done with the four-day work week. So this is just part of our typical, so Blackboard as our anthology now has offered flexible schedules. Not necessarily, it just depends on what you are. So we take everything for the individual. So if you have a need and you need a flex schedule, let's work with your manager, we'll establish that.

So I'm trying something new for me. Some people do like nine hour days and every other Friday off, I started grad school in January. I was working my typical five days a week and realized very quickly that this was not sustainable. Yeah. So I worked with my boss and we decided, well, let's try the four day work week. And let's see if having that Friday for mental space and being able to complete assignments helps me feel a little less pressure over the weekend where I was losing time with my kids and my family. And it wasn't something I wanted to wait another year or six months to try out.

So, you know, I said, can we just come from a place to try, see if it's working, let's see if I'm missing things that I'm supposed to be providing value on at work. And we talk about this every week. So in my one online, how's it going? What do I feel I missed or didn't have time for this week? And I haven't felt like I missed time, to be honest. I do, my actual structure is 10 hour days, which I won't lie is hard. It's like eight to six. Yes, but I was kind of doing it anyway when I was thinking about it. And I was like, why am I not giving myself back that day?

And, and by the way, when you're on a walk and you're thinking about work, that's work. That's processing time. If you're don't let my wife hear that. I don't know if my boss should hear that. No, my boss is really, really cool. But I think, you know, we're constantly working. Our brain is processing. Our brain is making connections from the things that we learned for that day. And I've also had to retrain myself to think is it really that I'm at my desk and working for 10 hours a day? Or am I thinking and trying to solve a problem while I'm outside in nature and getting fresh air with my dog.

And so it makes it a little more sustainable when I reframe it that way. Oh, there goes my ear pad. So, you know, I think it's finding that balance. It's relearning ways of working that, even though I've felt like I've always been creative, being a remote worker for 15 years now. Oh, wow, you were doing remote before remote was cool. I was doing remote before remote was cool I think I was one of the first employees at my company to go home full-time Wow as an experiment I'm I love experiments. Well, that's why like having people on that try to buck the system right? Yeah, too much the same thing going on in tech and it seems like you're always trying to not challenge But try I love what you said I'm always trying.

Come from a place to try. And so I think that's incredibly important with what you just said too, because I'm struggling with it. Part of the reason why I have this show is just to talk about my issue too. But I'm in a weird spot because I drive all of my business now through social media. And so my wife and I have had multiple conversations. She's like, you're on Twitter. And I was like, yeah, it's fine. It's just Twitter. She goes, you use Twitter for work, right? And I was like, I mean, yeah, but I also look at Gamecock football stuff. And we talked about Instagram, right?

And it's like, for me, I am learning, just to be totally honest, I am learning as a husband and a father to like, I have to start putting my phone down. Like, it's getting to that point and I'm not doing a good job yet. And I'm speaking this into the ether right now, so my community can hold me accountable. But you're right. If you if you're on a walk and thinking about work, your brain is still in work mode. And if I think about that, I am working 24 hours a day. I mean, I'm sure I put in more than my 10. So yeah, and I'm on weekends too, right?

Like I'm always and I don't think it's it's unhealthy necessarily. So you have to be careful because I love it because I love it. But you got to love what you do. you still have to have time for, you know, family first. They are who matter, right? That is what matters at the end of the day. But what really stuck out to me like a week, two weeks into grad school, and my kids came to me like, you don't have time for us. And that broke my heart and I broke down. And I was like, I have to have a serious call with my boss.

Cause you know, it was hard that first week learning how to be a student again. Oh my gosh. My husband was like, you cried every night this week. It's what did I do? I remember it. It was honesty. But, you know, we're trying things, right? And I think when I can model that as a director and then my staff sees, oh, that's it. She's taking a four day work week to build boundaries for herself and build space for herself. I can do that too, right? And, you know, I think it comes from a place of, I don't have to be tied to my desk five days a week to be able to provide value for my company.

Yeah. You know, I still think there's always a debate. That's why we, I still target 40 hours for the four days. Right. Just from, I'll leave my opinion out of what I think about the 40 hour week, work week, but that's okay. But am I still providing value? Am I meeting my goals? If I'm having trouble meeting my goals, each week I'm evaluating is it because I took Friday or is it because it's a really hard goal to untangle and that's a very different question right. And so how can I model that for my team to let them know it's okay to also put yourself first.

You have to or I'll turn over and out. And I don't know if my dad is still watching. I quote this all the time. My dad told me when I was really young pre-blonde basically he said no boss is going to come up to tell you that you're working too hard. So you have to take the time off and be your own champion. And I will. I say what? I will. Yeah. That's why Ashley's great. So so we had a few questions and kind of comments come in. So I definitely want to get to those Matt, Matt goes, I feel like there needs to be more personal teamies with coworkers periodically, not project related in order to preserve this question.

So I've had to switch to this. I actually saw us on TikTok, a third, a third, a third for one on one, a third is just hanging out with the person, asking them personally, what's going on, a third of the meeting is what's currently going on. And a third of the meeting is what they want to do. That I also think there's another reframing that I learned from Laura Hogan as well. Like I have obviously build the relationship sometimes. That's just what they need for the day. And that's okay in my one on one. I had one instance where we just talked about personal things because they are going through such a hard week personally and they just needed to talk to somebody.

So that was just what our one on one was, right? I try very hard to not do project updates in my one on ones unless it's just I need a little bit of context to know what challenge you're facing. So, so you have one on ones and then you have project. Well, we have. So we're an agile shop, so we do our daily check-ins. Because we're such a small team, I'm also product owner, Scrum Master, or about to be. If I'm doing a terrible job at being a Scrum Master, but I'm also there just working with them on Slack. There's constant information flow about the work being done.

So I really like to focus my one-on-ones on the relationship building. How can I coach or mentor you and support you in your goals? And then how can I help sponsor you? How can I help elevate you, especially when it's time, like, and how can I help find those opportunities for you or make connections. So my one on ones are less about like the, how is this project going? What are you doing? Like, what, it's not a status report for me. I can read that I can get that in Slack. Great. Yeah. What I can't get in Slack is that relationship building and how to coach you and mentor you and help you develop your career on my team.

I love that. I love that. That's a really great call out Matt. I love that. Preserve those connections with people, especially in this time. Yeah. And then, yeah, faith, faith being open and honest. I'm always in work mode, been working on spending time. I love that faith. I love that. Dominic comes in. Thank you, Ashley, for her time. Question for her. Are you finding companies are trying to be better, allowing their employees more tools and opportunities to balance their time between their work and personal time? That's a tough question for me. because I have only been with the one company. Um, I mean, have you talked to others though?

Um, yeah, I mean, I've got friends that have moved on. We talk constantly about that. And I think so. I mean, especially during the great resignation, if you're a company and you're not looking at this, as well as for opportunities and tooling and ways for employees to balance their time. You're going to lose some people. I'm going to take them. You are team is going to take them. are absolutely. It's so competitive out there. It is a job seekers market. And if you are not, if you are not showing how you offer this life balance, I don't see how you're going to attract people to be honest.

I also want to bring this thought up to, and if my boss is watching, I'm going to be a little late to our 10 boss. But basically, also, I had somebody messes me the other day. They're like, Hey, Taylor, I'm seeing some crazy salaries out there right now. I said, I know it's crazy. This person just landed a job probably less than a year ago. And he was like, do I need to bounce? I said, I need to ask you something. Because this person runs a nonprofit, a big nonprofit. I said, do you want to bounce and maybe lose the work life balance you you have with running this huge nonprofit that you're building to just go get money.

I said, if you, if your goal is to go get bread, go, go get that bread, go get that money, go get the bag, right? But and, and I had another developer reach out to me the same month about the same situation, another nonprofit individual. They thought their, their salary they got offered was relatively low, but that person goes, you know what? I can also stop working at three o'clock and go work on my nonprofit for the next two, hours. Listen, people have to tell you when it comes to work-life balance, it's not just about money. Right? So if you're looking, always looking for the next thing, let's take a moment.

Let's do a little self-reflection exercise and see what you're able to do in your current role, which is something you may not be able to do in your next role. Yes, that's such a good point. I remember looking at a startup, you know, it's part of being a leader. Yes, I've been here forever, but I also think it's a good practice to just look around and see what's going on. So I've done interview cycles just because. And you know, there's things I learned about myself that I know I don't want now that I've done that. Like I'm not at a point in my life where I can do a startup.

Yeah. I don't think so. Either the risk or the hours. Hours. Mostly the hours, right? Yeah. Um, it's just not something I have to value my time to and put a price on what I'm willing to deal with personally. And it's really hard. I mean, my kids time, non-negotiable, right? My family time, non-negotiable. Um, and if I don't see it, it's a non-starter. Yeah. I love that Brandon comes in. He did say voice of Texas terrible. So I'll try to get through this. Um, it's usually hard for people to transition from one thing to another. the pre-cell phones, it was easy to think deeply about one thing at a time.

That's why, so there were so many well-written letters back in the day, but now with cell phones, I've mastered the art of transitioning. Now I actually have to, or because of cell phones, what would you say Brandon? I've mastered art transition. Now I have to actually do the work to focus, right? So basically what Brandon's saying and is jumbled from voice text is that pre-cell phones are so much easier to concentrate. Now you actually have to work on transitioning. You have to work on putting the phone down and being present, which is something that. Yes. I struggle with constantly. I also think in this age of like, we've got slack, we've got meetings, we've got work to do, we've got five million projects going, right?

I have, and we, and especially if you are a director or a leader, you've also got a context which can be able to now go support your employees not just think about the goals and the ways and the strategy that you want to do with your department. Right. I have found this idea of defragging my calendar. So I know when I think best in the morning. So I know when I need to do my strategic thinking, it's early morning. I know that I'm most creative around 10 o'clock. So when I need my creative, like actually get down to work time, I need to schedule that.

And I've found I'm just a better listener in the afternoon. So I really try to, I've been trying to reach up with my calendar and I do this every now and then. Like every month I have to defrag it because it's like, all right, what is my critical thinking? What is my creative thinking? what is my listening time? When do I just have to get stuff done? And when am I most effective during the day? And you really need to reflect on when is that? Because that context switching will also kill you. It is so hard to context switch when they're not even your optimal times of how you operate as a human.

So do some reflection and think about that and structure your day around that too. Yeah, that's so big. I've actually had to help when I was recruiting manager, They met previous position. My team was wildly inefficient. And so I literally sat down with them and I was like, what are you doing between eight and nine? What are you doing between nine and 10? What are you doing between 10 and 11? And literally people were like, holy crap. I was completely like all over the place. And so I think be really intentional with your calendar. I'm really big on that. Really big on that. Like, it's like.

I also have a new rule. I'm not going to schedule an hour meeting with you. You get 45 minutes. I need that transition time. I actually send 15 minute zoom calls to strangers to set boundaries in a sense like listen like we got 15 minutes like if we can't cover what we got 15 minutes we got to schedule another fault call you're talking too much. Yeah. And we're at 31. I know I was 31. All right. So we're not going to get we're going to have you on again next month about your recruiting strategy. So I want to talk about I don't think hiring managers do that enough.

I do want to get to the good to the questions here real fast. Absolutely. Yes. Let's do it. Do you try to vet a person's work-life balance and everything else versus just hire somebody and see if it works? So Brandon, I guess I guess do you mean Let's let's take it from how much do you dive into a person's I guess Personal I've did an interview and see if they're gonna be a fit Well, you have to be careful too in the interview right you There's things that you can legally not have Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. But I do sometimes I just like to get creative.

What do you like to do in your spare time? Yeah. I've had people respond. I like to code and dive into open source projects. That's amazing if that is what you have to do with your spare time. Yeah. What people choose to do with their spare time might not be what I choose to do. But if you find you have a balance, I also like this. How do you set boundaries? How do you look at self care? right? You do have to have a semblance of boundaries. And so I think they're great questions to ask. You know, I want people to know that they can bring them their full selves to work, but also set boundaries and know that I will respect them.

You should be interviewing me as much as I'm interviewing you. And so I think it's a great way to judge if you think I'm going to respect your boundaries by saying no, I clock off at five o'clock because it's family time from the that out totally fine, right? So just making sure that you're able to articulate that when you're interviewing. Yeah, not exactly. And suss it out yourself. Make sure that your team you're joining has what you want from that too. Yeah, absolutely. I think I want people who have passions actually outside of work. If you're passionate about like baseball cards, you're probably gonna be passionate about this job eventually once you start loving it.

Like I want people who are passionate about something. I don't care, it could be rocks. I usually have a passion about something. Yeah. Sweet, alright, so that's it. Ashley, thank you. That was a great conversation. Y'all, thanks for hanging out with us on this wonderful Friday. Ashley, stay on real quick as we end. But y'all, thank you again for hanging out with us. Go connect with Ashley. She's obviously a wonderful mine when it comes to this stuff. And Monday, I will be with you all Monday. Who do I have on Monday? Who's hanging out on Monday? Monday is, oh, I have Ingrid, a pure. She is a staff engineer at Netlify.

So I'm hanging out with her Monday. So y'all won't want to miss that. Y'all have a great weekend. Actually have a great weekend. And I'll see you all Monday. Bye. Thank you so much. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others and the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like, right now.

Unless you're driving, then don't do it. So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at Vaco.com or at Tdastin on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.