Content Lead, Talent Trends - Americas

Hi, I’m Anum, Head of Content & Community here at Ashby. I joined Ashby in 2023 to develop and lead our content marketing strategy. From producing endless content formats in the pre-IPO days of HubSpot to running (and later selling) my own media startup, my 12+ years in the industry have been filled with opportunities to push the needle of how content should evolve within an organization. I’m fortunate to be at a company where leadership is fully bought into the value of content and where written communication skills are a requirement for everyone who joins the marketing team. This allows me to avoid the gloom of a service-oriented content team that is simply shipping blindly and managing copywriting requests to instead building a one-of-kind strategic team that owns key content pillars including our Offer Accepted podcast, senior talent leader courses on Hiring Excellence and AI, and all sessions for our Ashby One conference.

One of the pillars I’ve fully owned since joining over two years ago is our Talent Trends Reports. Ashby’s foundational product infrastructure enables Content to work closely with the Data team to extract talent benchmarks and recruiting insights that teams can use to inform their own work. When I joined, the reports were chock-full of insights but ready for formatting and structure. I enjoyed breathing qualitative insights from our customers into each, partnering with our Data team on what questions are most imperative to talent and recruiting leaders, and working with Design on the best way to visualize so that the findings are simple for readers of all data literacy levels to digest. We’ve experimented with long and short form reports, a weekly newsletter with bite-sized insights, and brought the content to the stage at Ashby One.

It’s time to think even bigger. For this role, we’re looking for someone ambitious who enjoys owning collaborative, data-rich content projects and is open to the challenge of a unique role at the intersection of brand, data, and content. You will immediately own our weekly newsletter, take over and scale our reports, become the chief visionary for how we present this data across our owned website, work with demand gen on the best ways to use across campaigns, and own the further development of our data content strategy. You should see this role as not inheriting work, but being responsible for 10xing it to its new level of operation across design improvements, velocity of publishing, and multi-media distribution online and IRL.

Many of our team will be OOO over the next 10 days, and will not be reviewing applications until we return. Our suggestion is to take your time with the application and you can expect to hear back in early January. We appreciate your patience!

What you’ll be responsible for in this role

1. Evolve Ashby’s Talent Trends strategy. You’ll take full ownership of how Talent Trends grows into a defining Ashby content pillar. This means setting the editorial vision, identifying the most critical questions to answer for recruiting leaders, and continuously innovating on format, depth, and storytelling to ensure Ashby becomes synonymous with talent data.

2. Be the founder of the GTM strategy for Talent Trends. You won’t just create reports, you’ll define cadence, set benchmarks for success, and own how these insights reach and educate the market. From LinkedIn to newsletters, from demand gen campaigns to live events, you’ll drive creative and consistent ways to bring Talent Trends to life across channels by working with channel owners.

3. Lead cross-functional collaboration with authority. You’ll be the connective tissue across Data, Design, and Leadership — aligning stakeholders, making tough calls on scope, and ensuring every deliverable meets the bar of clarity, impact, and brand alignment.

4. Elevate Ashby’s voice in the market. You’ll grow into the external presence for Ashby’s insights, whether through publishing consistently on LinkedIn, ghostwriting for leadership, or representing Talent Trends through video or audio formats. Hosting a YouTube series would not be out of question for the kind of speaking level work and comfort with data you should have to thrive in this role.

5. Raise the bar on quality and impact. You’ll champion design excellence, richer insight development, and stronger distribution, ensuring that Talent Trends not only informs but also shapes the conversation in the recruiting industry.

6. Follow your intuition over playbooks (it’s one of our 10 Operating Principles). We rarely follow traditional content playbooks or look at what competitors are writing about. We believe in knowing our customer closely and evolving our work to meet their needs — even if that means trying something never been done or that historically hasn’t worked. While it’s helpful to bring knowledge of past content programs you’ve run, we encourage you to think freely and build confidence in your intuition.

7. Own all the operational work around your content programs. Everyone on the marketing team writes their own copy for social media, landing pages, emails, and beyond. We expect you to be an end-to-end marketer who can strategically drive your work forward versus rely on others to fill in the gaps (or at the minimum, be comfortable getting uncomfortable to learn).

You will probably love this role if

• You’re motivated by building something foundational. You see Talent Trends not as a project but as a signature brand pillar that you’ll shape, grow, and evolve.

• You’re equally comfortable with big-picture strategy and end-to-end ownership, setting vision, defining cadence, and also rolling up your sleeves to bring it to life.

• You get energy from data-driven storytelling, turning complex findings into clear, compelling narratives that influence how talent and recruiting experts think and act.

• You are a straightforward writer who can connect with the audience and translate difficult insights into easy-to-understand narratives.

• You thrive at cross-functional leadership, aligning Data, Design, and Executives around a shared vision, while making decisive calls to keep projects moving.

• You see distribution as a creative strategy, not afterthought. You’re excited to experiment with how insights show up across channels, from LinkedIn to events to premium digital experiences,

• You want to grow as a market-facing voice by building credibility as the person shaping how the industry consumes recruiting benchmarks and insights through written, audio, and video forms.

• You have the type of charisma that makes speaking in front of a crowd feel second-nature, where you can host a panel or command a crowd comfortably and naturally.

This role is not for you if

• You’re looking for a traditional content role where the work is primarily writing or publishing volume; this is about building a strategic pillar with market impact.

• You are not data curious or could answer thoughtful questions about the analysis behind our reports.

• You prefer to follow established playbooks rather than inventing new and unchartered ways to educate, distribute, and engage an audience.

• You want to stay behind the scenes; success here will involve developing your own external voice and amplifying Ashby’s in the market.

• You’re uncomfortable with autonomy or struggle to work independently. Our team thrives in a low-meeting, high-ownership culture where you drive your own deadlines and direction.

• You’d rather focus on narrow functional expertise (e.g., only data analysis or only writing). This role requires end-to-end ownership: strategy, narrative, design collaboration, and GTM.

• You are not interested in learning SaaS products. While we do not expect you to be a product expert, consistently learning about the Ashby platform and its unique differentiations to weave seamlessly into your work will be key to being successful on this time. You are expected to learn our product well enough to do a sales demo confidently.

• You operate solely off specific traffic or lead gen KPIs. While our team sets goals and holds ourselves accountable to a high standard, we do not set arbitrary traffic or lead goals as the driving force of success. We develop the best content in the space and let our demand gen partners in marketing to have the best content for any need.

Interview Plan

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 project working sessions. Our interview process is:

1. 30-minute intro call (Recruiter Screen)

2. 45-minute interview with Anum Hussain (Hiring Manager)

3. Panel: 30-minute interview with Harriet Johnston (VP, Marketing) & 30-minute interview with Kevin Conolly (Head of Data)

4. A take home assignment reviewed by the hiring team

5. Final Panel: Meeting the team (Kayla Ricketts, Community Lead, and Elizabel Riggs, Content Lead) for 45 minutes and our CEO Benji for 30 minutes.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.

• Opportunity to work with a talented and passionate team.

• 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.

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.