Uncharted & Electric with Carin Van Vurren, CMO of Greenhouse

Poya Osgouei and Robby Allen, who help SaaStr with sponsor partnerships and other Cloud leaders with sales, and have led sales at many SaaS leaders, have put together a series of great podcasts talking to SaaS leaders.

Episode #21 is with Carin Van Vurren, CMO of Greenhouse, talking about belonging and inclusion, after growing up in South Africa.  One key part of Greenhouse is helping to eliminate bias in the hiring process.

Carin shares her learnings under apartheid and since:

• “Inclusion has to start with you taking a look at yourself.  What can you be doing to make people be their best self?  And what are the barriers and blockers that get in the way of them doing that”?
• “Doing more on inclusion during work from home is a great question.  You need a culture that creates human connection, even when folks are isolated.  Constantly ask people where they are, how they are, and what’s on their mind.”
• “You need to set a series of goals over time that you can hit.  If you move too quickly, you may find no one is with you.  You need to bring the team along.”
• “Diversity during work from home means including their family and home.  We need to get better at this.”
• “We need to learn to make noise together.  Zooms are too quiet.  We need to make noise, talk over each other, laugh out load, cheer and wave.  A smile is not enough.”
• “During work-from-home, we need to be more deliberate about unstructured home.  Even a ‘study hall’ can work.”
• Carin is a beekeeper!  What has she learned from bees?  “Change does not happen to the hive without everyone being given the opportunity to have input.”
• “Reach out to someone that wasn’t expecting to hear from you.  Just connect.  This will create a chain of positivity connections.”

Take a deeper listen here.

Published on June 9, 2020