Job description
Hi 👋🏼 I’m Jim, the VP of People and Talent at Ashby.
Instructions: Take your time with your application; you do not need to be first to apply or in the first 100 to get this job. The closing date for applications is August 20th at 5pm PT and we will NOT review any applications or speak to anyone until after that date/time. We will review EVERY application and speak to the shortlist we make based on the applications. There are no prizes for being first and no advantages to be gained by reaching out, being referred or knowing someone here, so please don’t message anyone at Ashby.
Here’s some resume feedback I’ve created from past Recruiter hiring processes that I’ve given to applicants we have screened out, based on reviewing hundreds of Recruiter/Sourcer resumes. I hope you find this useful in tailoring your application!
1. Resumes showed minimal experience as a Full Lifecycle Recruiter, recruiting for Software Engineering roles. We will only hire someone with deep SWE hiring experience.
2. Role descriptions on resumes focusing on projects or leadership rather than delivery of hires for Engineering roles. Projects and leadership is great, but I needed to see the evidence of you doing the Recruiting work.
3. Resumes showed no or minimal experience of hiring in a Product led Engineering environment. As per the job description we were looking for SaaS experience ideally.
4. Resumes didn’t articulate the impact that the applicant had in past roles. The JD stated “Data-driven mindset, able to optimize your workflows” and data can show this impact.
5. Answers to the application questions. Each question had context provided or real meaning for us, beyond what we would see in your resume.
6. Resumes had a general lack of specifics. “Recruited a variety of roles” doesn’t tell the reader that you’ve handled Software Engineering recruiting. Likewise, a company name alone doesn’t help the reader know it’s Product led organization. On that last point, a little blurb about the company is really helpful for anyone reading the resume and helps them avoid mistakes by thinking that a company isn’t from “X” sector.
The Story! I’ve been at Ashby for 2 years and a bit and we need some help! Interest in our product is driving amazing growth and, as a People Team, we need to expand our capacity to hire. Since our Recruiting team formed, our hiring managers have been doing most of the recruiting on their own, with some help from our lean recruiting team. As we plan out hiring for late 2025 and beyond we recognize we will need wider recruiting support, hence this role opening.
The job I do at Ashby is my dream job and I hope being a Recruiter here is yours! Not only will you get to help build the people side of our business but you’ll also get to become an expert user of our product and a thought leader on how to use it. You’ll get to make a lasting contribution to the whole recruiting community as we drive improvements across the talent tech space. Check out our Recruiting blog and Hiring Excellence Framework as an example of our content creation for the talent community.
Joining us means being part of a talented team, tackling the challenges of our stage, and contributing to our team and product growth. We value humility, continuous improvement and a dedication to excellence (more here). If you are passionate about bringing your unique strengths to the team and building a culture of success, we would love to hear from you.
The Role
Ashby is seeking a Technical Recruiter with a proven track record of discovering and hiring amazing Engineering talent. In this role, you will own the end-to-end development and execution of recruitment strategies to find exceptional talent to fill critical Software Engineer, Product Management, Design, Engineering Leadership and IT roles.
Success in this role over the next six months will involve attracting, evaluating and hiring high-quality candidates to meet our company’s hiring needs for Engineering positions across the business. It will also require building and collating phenomenal talent pools to create a strong infrastructure for future growth.
Note: I’m looking to fill 2 roles. I’d love to discuss which one you’re more interested in as we go through the interview process:
1 recruiter to focus on Product Engineering hiring. This role will be about building the machine that allows us to hire world-class engineers at scale, going deep into hiring strategy, and developing trusted, long-term partnerships with engineering leaders.
1 recruiter to focus on all other technical hiring (Design Engineering, Product Management, Design, IT, QA, SRE, Data). This role is ideal for a relationship builder who can partner with a wide range of stakeholders, manage multiple searches at once, and create a repeatable yet flexible process that works across the organization.
You will achieve this by:
Attracting, evaluating and hiring top talent for all Technical positions
Developing processes that focus on the very highest quality of hire as we scale
Discovering and quantifying new talent pools and sourcing channels
Engaging with our co-founders, departmental leaders and hiring managers to expertly qualify requirements
Focusing on quality and alignment at the optimal volume to meet goals
As you are probably ascertaining from the above - we are looking for a person that gains energy from both strategizing on creative ways to accelerate our hiring as well as getting their hands dirty finding and evaluating candidates.
To be qualified for this role, you must have the following:
Proven track record as an expert “Engineering” Recruiter in a product-led company
Experience working on Software Engineering hiring, ideally from within a SaaS company, is critical.
Data-driven mindset, able to optimize your workflows, balancing diversity, quality and volume.
Demonstrated experience in creating innovative sourcing strategies that differentiate the talent pipelines from the inbound attraction and referrals that we have traditionally used.
If you need someone else to do any of the following, then this role is probably not for you:
Boolean search and talent mapping activities
Requisition qualification with senior leaders
High volumes of outreach and screening calls
Prioritization of your workload
You want lots of candidate contact after initial stages. We’re a Hiring Manager led process so they handle deeper relationship building with candidates.
Benefits
Competitive salary and equity.
10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.
Unlimited PTO with four weeks recommended per year. Expect “Vacation?” in our one-on-one agenda until you start taking it 😅.
Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
$100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
If you’re in the US, top-notch health insurance for you and your dependents with all premiums covered by us.
Ashby’s success hinges on hiring great people and creating an environment where we can be happy, feel challenged, and do our best work. We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. I hope that excites you enough to apply.
Interview Process
At Ashby, our team and interview process want to help you show your best self. We’ll dive into past projects and simulate working together via talking through past projects and conducting a short but realistic assignment. Our interview process is 4 rounds with some casual Zoom (or in-person) coffee in between to get to know each other:
30-minute introduction call to discuss Ashby and your past work with Josh, so expect a traditional recruiting screen.
A take-home assignment that will ask you to create a hiring strategy for a role as well as an example of a tailored outreach to a specific candidate we will provide you.
60-minute deeper dive into your Recruiting experience that will follow on from your assignment submission with Abhik, VP Engineering + Co-Founder.
A virtual onsite loop: 2.5 hours:
(60 mins) Meeting with me (Jim) to share more about the current state of recruiting at Ashby
(30 mins) A sourcing-focused interview with Liz.
(30 mins) Meeting with Josh to dive deeper into stakeholder management.
(30 mins) Meeting with one of our engineering leaders
Your Recruiter Your Recruiter will be Josh (Talent Acquisition Manager). He will be your main point of contact and will prepare you for interviews.
A word from a future colleague!
Hi, I’m Josh, and I joined the team in March as the first dedicated engineering recruiter alongside Eric, who is our Technical Sourcer.
I’m looking for someone to partner with as we continue to scale our technical hiring (we’ve already grown the engineering team by 50% so far in 2025!). I’m still new enough to remember all the things that impressed me most when I joined. Here are a few highlights:
How involved the recruiting team is in shaping the product. Approximately once a week, I get to chat with someone from engineering, product, or design to share my feedback on new features or proposed changes.
A whole new level of hiring manager involvement in recruiting. As in: hiring managers scheduling onsite loops themselves (with a little help from our pretty awesome product), writing some of the best job descriptions I’ve ever seen, and playing the role of recruiter from end to end creating an exceptional candidate experience.
The highly intentional engineering culture truly is a magnet for exceptional engineering talent.
Getting to test all the most cutting-edge tools in our industry before anyone else.
I hope this gives you a glimpse of why I’m so excited to be here. Can’t wait to connect!
About Ashby
We’re building the next generation of enterprise software and we’re starting with a suite of products that help talent leaders, recruiters, and hiring managers run their hiring process significantly better. We are well-funded, have incredible product market fit, and are backed by great investors, including Y Combinator, Elad Gil and Lachy Groom.
Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
