As Global Head of Recruiting at Notion, Kate has an interesting vantage point on tech career journeys. But her own path is a powerful example of how growth is a jungle gym, not a ladder. Kate launched her career with a cold email to Marc Benioff (at a point when Salesforce had 4,000 employees!) and spent years in sales roles at Salesforce, Dropbox, and Notion, where she rose to become Head of SMB revenue before making a leap into people and recruiting. Kate’s story is full of simple but powerful points on the value of relationships across careers—and she offers priceless advice on how to ask strangers for help.
As Global Head of Recruiting at Notion, Kate has an interesting vantage point on tech career journeys. But her own path is a powerful example of how growth is a jungle gym, not a ladder. Kate launched her career with a cold email to Marc Benioff (at a point when Salesforce had 4,000 employees!) and spent years in sales roles at Salesforce, Dropbox, and Notion, where she rose to become Head of SMB revenue before making a leap into people and recruiting. Kate’s story is full of simple but powerful points on the value of relationships across careers—and she offers priceless advice on how to ask strangers for help.
---
I think people often are afraid to reach out to someone up, down, whichever direction they are near you. But at the core, most people I run into, want to help other people or they want to lend a helping hand. Anyone who’s asked me anything on LinkedIn, even if I don't even know them, I'm like sure, why not? Let me help you in some way. I find that's not unique to me asking a favor from someone or reaching out to someone, and not being afraid of what the answer is, and the response. Don't overthink it, just ask someone for help.” - Kate Taylor
---
Episode Timestamps:
*(02:10) - How a cold email to Marc Benioff launched Kate’s carrer
*(05:57) - How Kate moved from Salesforce to Dropbox
*(07:42) - Why Kate gravitated towards Armando Mann’s leadership style at Dropbox
*(11:16) - The importance of having a job that shares your core values
*(15:08) - The benefits of building genuine connections and personal relationships
*(16:35) - Why you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to people or to ask for help
*(19:55) - Being authentic with your ask
*(22:08) - How a personal connection with Kate’s intern came full circle to a job at Notion
*(29:15) - People love to be remembered
---
Sponsor:
Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.
---
Links:
[00:00:28] Annie: Welcome to Who Got Me Here, a podcast about making connections matter. I'm your host, Annie Riley, and I'm here today with Kate Taylor. Kate is the head of global recruiting at Notion and prior to Notion, she spent eight years at Dropbox leading SMB revenue and scale sales ops and IT Notion she previously owned the customer experience and she worked across product sales, marketing, and
[00:00:57] Annie: to scale ROI and recently she pivoted to run global recruiting and it's in the process of scaling Notion to over 1000 employees. So welcome Kate to who got me here. We're thrilled to have you.
[00:01:11] Kate: Thank you so much. It's gonna be so fun. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:14] Annie: I'm fascinated by your story, and I heard that you actually got your first gig by sending a cold email.
[00:01:22] Annie: Is that true?
[00:01:23] Kate: This is true, yeah. Actually I went to USC, which is largely referred to as like the networking school. A lot of people like leverage our connections from college. I would say USC is one of those that's known for that. And so I graduated in 2008, 2009, not a great time to graduate from college. I had this awesome consulting gig lined up.
[00:01:43] Kate: I actually talked my way into the Marshall School of Business, got to their like career fair and got this consulting gig even though I was like a PR major. So was super excited for myself, thought I was so cool, and then graduated and they postponed everyone's jobs. They. You actually don't have a job right now.
[00:01:59] Kate: And so I had my cool place in Manhattan Beach, my beach cruiser, like got rid of it all and moved home with mom and dad, you know, had to go back to the drawing board. So I emailed Marc Benioff. Salesforce at the time was like 4,000 employees. And I just thought, well, I'm just gonna email him and like Salesforce is up an coming company, Oracle, like Siebel is still kind of a thing, but I'll email him, maybe he'll get in touch with me and with him a few minutes he had responded and hooked me up with someone who's running kind of like early career hiring and was like, Let's get you figured out.
[00:02:32] Kate: And so Benioff was such confirmation that putting yourself out there, just a quick email to someone can result in something we had like where we went to college in common. That was pretty much. But that was like how I like got my foot in the door after kind of like a disheartening graduation experience
[00:02:49] Annie: That's amazing. What did you put in that cold email that
[00:02:52] Kate: worked so well? It was very simple. I was just like pretty straightforward. Wasn't fluffy, nothing gimmicky. It was like, Hey, went to usc, graduated in tough times. Is there any way there's anything at Salesforce that I would be willing to do whatever job I just need to get started?
[00:03:08] Kate: Very short and. And carry that into my prospecting efforts. And ultimately, I think you get really intimidated when you email someone. But at the end of the day, just remembering like whoever you're emailing is a human just like you, and they like responding to other humans, most likely give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.
[00:03:25] Kate: And so Marc responded and yeah, just a lot of stuff like kicked off from that first email, which ended up being really lucky, but also just like a good life experience. That started a lot of great things for me. That's
[00:03:39] Annie: amazing. And what did that relationship become once you got to Salesforce? Was that kinda like, Thanks for the reply Marc Benioff.
[00:03:47] Annie: Were you able to capitalize on that relationship or build that relationship further once you got.
[00:03:52] Kate: What's cool with Salesforce is Marc, and to this day, he keeps his sales people like the SDRs and BDRs actually right on the exec row. Oh, cool. I was in like three landmark in San Francisco, like a marque kind of building in downtown.
[00:04:06] Kate: And it's right next to Marc's office. And so when we would be on calls or like whatever, you actually can see Marc very easily and he engages with the pod, He's very friendly and from a very much a doer like positive attitude background, that he was always someone who was willing to have a conversation with anyone at any time, no matter where he was in the elevator popping into the pod.
[00:04:31] Kate: Along the way though, like from that Marc intro, I met a lot of amazing people. One of them ended up becoming my boss later at Dropbox, which was so random. Like he on a whim chose to come to Dropbox when it was like 150 or like 200 people. And he was very senior at Salesforce and saw me at the time walking around Dropbox, and he was like, Wait, you work at Dropbox?
[00:04:56] Kate: I remember you walking around Three Landmark and so I ended up like making a bunch of connections at Salesforce that have trickled in through my life
[00:05:02] Annie: since. Oh, that's so funny. So you didn't go there to work with them explicitly. You just found yourself there, reconnected and then ended up joining their team?
[00:05:12] Annie: Oh yeah,
[00:05:12] Kate: actually was. I was already at drop. He saw me like I left Salesforce, went to Dropbox. That's kind of funny story, but ended up like joining Dropbox and having like lunch there and I see you have an Eagan walking around like interviewing. He like looks at me and he's like, I know you like you were in three landmark.
[00:05:31] Kate: And I'm like, Yeah, like I was a BDR and ended up, he was interviewing for like the head of sales at the time and I was on that as an account manager. He then ended up pulling me into like run sales dev and that connection with Kevin. He's someone I talk to regularly still and now that's been like a 10 year plus relationship.
[00:05:48] Kate: And that started at Salesforce in three Landmark and then has now been followed me in and around multiple companies since then. That's super cool.
[00:05:57] Annie: And tell us, you said it's a funny story how you got from Salesforce to Dropbox and love to hear more about that.
[00:06:03] Kate: Yeah. Just on like fortuitous timing, when I was scheduled to start at Salesforce, The start dates have overlapped with a family vacation, which I was bummed, but I wanted to start, so skipped this to vacation and my onboarding class, I ended up crossing paths with this guy named Sam Taylor.
[00:06:21] Kate: We ended up getting married, but we met sort of at bootcamp. We got engaged when we were at Salesforce. and he left Salesforce and went to Dropbox. If we had like 50 employees at the time, cool. Up and coming, people like knew what it was, had just gotten a bunch of funding, but it was not like the name brand of Salesforce.
[00:06:39] Kate: I would say. After he went there, I spent a lot of time at Dropbox. It was like a family type company. People were out on weekends. It was a lifestyle. It wasn't just like where you clocked in, clocked out. It was where you. A lot like where you had dinner, where you were on weekends, where you were like working where you ate all your meals, like a home almost.
[00:07:00] Kate: And so I was there a lot. And so finally nine months into him being there, they were like, Hey, you should probably interview here. You've been here so much, like it's probably time for you to like actually work here. And that was how I got started at Dropbox, was just from. Being around everyone already feeling like part of the family and then formally making that decision.
[00:07:19] Kate: But that's why I got into Dropbox, just through Sam and through just spending a lot of time there and getting to know people.
[00:07:25] Annie: So your husband went to work at Dropbox and you'd pop in for dinner? Socializing?
[00:07:28] Kate: Yeah. I was like having dinner. Yeah.
[00:07:32] Annie: And people are like, Well, you're here anyway so you might as : well just work here.
[00:07:35] Kate: Yeah. So like, you should just be on payroll at this point. You spending a lot of hours here. Let's make this a real thing. And at the time, Armando Mann was running head of business or head of sales. He'd come from Google and. Armando just has this really engaging and touching personality where you, you talk to him and he just immediately wants to sit down with you and get into it and learn more about you.
[00:07:57] Kate: He's very genuine and I really gravitated toward him and his leadership style, and so met Armando early. We were all riding around on scooters and doing that whole early tech thing that was cool back in like 2010, 11 or whatever. I gravitated towards the people and the family home environ. and so got to be part of like a very early special crew of people, all of whom, like I keep in touch with so many people from that time and I spent a lot of time there generally because I liked the problems we were solving, but like it was just a curated group of generalists that liked solving complex problems or very early about what our company values were.
[00:08:37] Kate: And when we interviewed people, we were very true. To making sure that there was like alignment with people. And so I think we got a lot done. Not because we were necessarily all good at specific things, but because we worked very well together. And so that group has stayed. Like in my network.
[00:08:55] Annie: Mm-hmm. . And is there anything in particular you've done to stay in touch with or cultivate that group of people?
[00:09:01] Kate: The foundation of how I've either gotten jobs or changed or moved things in my career has been purely on like creating a genuine relationship with someone. It's genuinely through texting meetups where like, Let's go get coffee, let's hang out, let's go on a trip. It's been really centered around keeping those relationships going in one to one or.
[00:09:23] Kate: Formats where we see each other at like a wedding or something, and then my natural curiosity or because I actually care about these people. We've stayed in touch, not only about like work things, but life things. Maryanne Brown was at Dropbox with me early. We started out three months apart. She ended up going to Gusto after Dropbox was at Gusto for a long time and just started at Notion to rent people.
[00:09:45] Kate: And she's actually the person who pulled me into recruiting. I never, ever expected to be in recruiting. That was never my career path, but I trust Maryanne. I know her very, very well. and those early days Dropbox relationship. I know who Maryanne is as a person. I know a lot about her and I wanna work closely with her.
[00:10:01] Kate: And that's ultimately like a big part of the decision of me, like switching kind of my career. So I would say like keeping close ties through, like genuine reasons, like weddings or like getting coffee, going to dinner has allowed us to have these relationships that I've called. Many times throughout my career, my personal life, these people are part of lots of facets of that.
[00:10:24] Annie: Mm-hmm. , how did you end up at Notion, You had such a good run at Dropbox, you were there for a long time, had many different roles. It seems like you really rose through the ranks as the company grew. Like how did you make the decision to leave and what brought you to Notion? Was it Marianne?
[00:10:40] Kate: I actually joined right before Maryanne.
[00:10:41] Kate: Okay. So there, there's actually a group of three Dropboxers. We all joined pretty much the same time at Notion. Myself, Marianne, and then Robbie O'Connor. He's like our GM for Mia. He joined in October. Mary joined in October. I joined in like end of August. So like the group of us kind of were talking to each other as we were all like dealing with our offers.
[00:10:58] Kate: But yeah, I had an amazing run at Dropbox. I was happy the entire time. I was very happy. And I also had the joy of having three children. During that time. I was like completely supported through my journey of building a family and building my career at the same time. I can't be more grateful for having a company that was good at its core.
[00:11:16] Kate: I recommend when people look at jobs, like think about what's important to you. And make sure that matches what's important at the company. And so I was on my third maternity leave. Covid was like just starting. I started mat leave March 30th, 2020. Totally. I thought it was like the lockdown piece. At first.
[00:11:32] Kate: I was like, Oh, this is kinda interesting. And then had the baby, and then I'm just like in my house for four months. In that period, both my husband and I, he was at Quip, which had been acquired by sales. Had been there for six years. I'm at Dropbox and just kind of like thought about, okay, this is our family.
[00:11:47] Kate: What are our like personal goals and do our companies line up with those goals? And I felt like I was really ready to dig back in on my career and kind of go back to like a building phase. To be honest, I actually didn't interview anywhere except for Notion I was not. Doing a big search, but Notion for me, like was in an interesting space.
[00:12:08] Kate: Dropbox had had like built a prototype of, of a Notion of a quip back in like 20 14, 20 15 we had paper and then Sam was at Quip. So I like seen kind of ay collaboration as a space, but no one had really gotten it right. So I was very familiar with the space and then I wasn't using Notion cuz I was all on Quip, but an intern that I had hired at Dropbox.
[00:12:30] Kate: In 2013 on sales dev now, like these many years later, was running sales ops for Notion. And so I reached out to Shelly and I was like, Hey, remember when I hired you as an intern? Like do you wanna think about hiring me at Notion? And so she introduced me to like our coo. Aha. I spent a lot of time with Aha, a lot of time with Ivan, and I was very specific about the type of role I was looking for and what I had learned at Dropbox and Notion.
[00:12:57] Kate: Had a very different philosophy of what it was to interface with customers and that's where we came up with this like front door idea. But I ultimately was introduced there through Shelly and I loved the team. Felt very close with actually Ivan
[00:13:12] Annie: Ivan. Is this with our values, right? Of Notion?
[00:13:14] Annie: Ivan's our ceo. Yes. Awesome. I love this Shelly example.
[00:13:15] Kate:Yes. It's like so funny.
[00:13:19] Annie: So you had hired Yes. Shelly as an intern
[00:13:21] Kate: Ages ago. Yeah. So yes. Like literally. And had you kept in. Yeah, her sister was a BDR reporting to me on the team, and so Julie's like, Hey, my sister Shelly's a sophomore at Cal. Can we employ her as like an intern?
[00:13:35] Kate: We didn't even have interns at the time at Dropbox. I was like, Okay, we'll figure this out. So that's like started my, I guess my crew now, which I'm in. People like building an internship program, hiring someone into it and like all that stuff. I like absolutely loved Shelly. I became very close with her because she helped us figure out what an intern program would even look like.
[00:13:54] Kate: Salesforce and like LinkedIn have huge like college intern programs or just internships at all inside of sales and it was cool. So I met Shelly then and her sister Julie and I still keep in touch personally and professionally with both of them. That's amazing. And
[00:14:08] Annie: what role is Shelly doing at Notion?
[00:14:11] Annie: Do you work together closely?
[00:14:12] Kate:When I was on the go to et side, we. Pretty close cause I was running like the SMB side and Shelly basically was doing North America sales ops. I like would see her every day. We were in meeting kind of like a dejavu situation. It was very funny. It sounds like
[00:14:29] Annie: she opened the door, she made the intros then to AHA and to Ivan to kind of Oh yeah.
[00:14:36] Annie: Get those conversations going. Recommend you. And what I love about that Yeah. Is like oftentimes people are looking at more senior people. Yeah, for sure. Who have I worked with? Who? Who was my manager or my manager's manager. And what are those people doing and. Or like this intern that I hired who obviously went on, Yeah.
[00:14:56] Annie: To grow into different roles and probably to do really cool stuff in her career. Was the connection that ultimately got you into Notion and got you this job. I think that is super, super cool.
[00:15:08] Kate:I genuinely try to. Build personal relationships and have this like genuine connection with people. I'm say, I'm like naturally curious, but I actually care.
[00:15:20] Kate: So like it wasn't strange when I like texted Shelly, Hey, let's talk about Notion because there were enough touch points throughout. And even if there aren't touchpoints, like if you build the genuine relationship with someone in a context that you have that at that time, that makes sense. And let's say like yours even go by and you call upon that person for so.
[00:15:40] Kate: Like that's totally okay to do because you've built that relationship and they genuinely know you. But I find people with networking, it can often be people are looking to like step up a ladder or use you for a specific reason. And I find that if you can really get down early days of just asking people deep questions about them, getting to know them, sharing more about yourself.
[00:16:05] Kate: No matter where you come across that person later, there's that foundation that really, like anything goes after that. Mm-hmm. .
[00:16:13] Annie: Yeah. And I love this concept that people are gonna grow in their careers, and so it might be, yeah, your manager or this person running this other big division, or someone who was an intern on your team, you just don't know, right?
[00:16:25] Annie: If you build those genuine relationships, then yeah, the connection, the opportunity can come. From anywhere. From anyone. Yeah.
[00:16:35] Kate: I'd also say I think people often are like afraid to reach out to someone up, down, whichever direction they are near you. But at the core, like most people I run into want to help other people.
[00:16:49] Kate: Lend a helping hand. Like anyone who asks me anything on LinkedIn, even if I don't even know them, I'm like, Sure, why not? Let me help you in some way. And I find that's not unique to me. Asking a favor from someone or reaching out to someone and not being afraid of what the answer is, and the response.
[00:17:07] Kate: Don't overthink it. Just ask someone for help. People wanna lean in and help because they've likely gotten help themselves and they feel like they're paying it forward. I genuinely feel. Take that leap and ask someone for a favor.
[00:17:20] Annie: I think that's a really important lesson, and I love that you bring up when people kind of ask for help on LinkedIn, for example, because sometimes people have more of a gap in their network.
[00:17:33] Annie: You know, they haven't yet been at Dropbox or haven't yet been at Salesforce, haven't had that experience to have the chance to build. Those connections, they're you in oh nine, sending the cold email, totally looking to get the foot in the door. And I'm curious if there are certain asks that you've seen that are more effective than others.
[00:17:56] Annie: For people who are looking to get that intro, make that first connection, get that help from someone that they might not know personally,
[00:18:05] Kate: Quick story on this, and I don't know if this exists now, believe it or not, I think college was like 18 years ago for me, but Atsu, we had this like database of all of our alumni and you could look anyone up, you could look up a company and it would tell you, whoever from alumni worked there gave you their email address and phone number.
[00:18:22] Kate: I would go in there and I. Look up different companies in all different industries and I would just reach out. Like I remember I talked to this woman from Mattel. I didn't know if I wanted to work at Mattel, but I just thought Mattel was cool. Like it was a brand. I knew they were like in ELs, Segundo like reached out to her and like just asking, Hey, can you, can we talk like about your career?
[00:18:40] Kate: I don't know if I wanna work at Mattel, but like you went to usc, maybe you'd be open to chatting with me. And she was like, Yes, I did probably 10 to 15 of those calls between junior and senior year of college. And it gave me a ton of at bats of how to figure out like what to ask people or how to learn from people who had a very small connection, which was college.
[00:19:02] Kate: How do you get information from someone so that it could help you and make a decision? Why would they ever give you the info? Like what incentive is it for them? And so for me now, like I think about that all the time when people ping me. Cause I'm like, Oh, maybe I'm that person now for someone else in college.
[00:19:18] Kate: If any college student ever ask me anything on LinkedIn, I always respond and I always try to help them out cuz I'm just like, Remember me doing that? And then I'm like, Maybe that database doesn't exist and now it's LinkedIn and they bought LinkedIn Sales Navigator or whatever. A lot of people ask for a chat, like they wanna talk and learn about your career, and sometimes what they actually wanna do to just refer them to the company, they don't actually wanna know about your career.
[00:19:43] Kate: They just wanna get a referral and they think they need to talk to you to get it. . And so I usually respond to those ones like, Hey, if you want me to just refer you, like send me your resume. Like let me look it over and if you're fit, like I'll just send you in. And so like be authentic with your ask. If you wanna get referred, just ask the person directly.
[00:20:00] Kate: Most companies have referral programs made for this, so just ask. But if you actually wanna have a crew chat, you wanna like learn about someone's path, just legitimately ask. I always say yes to that. It can be time intensive. Those actually can be greatly beneficial for that person and it gives me a lot of gratification when that happens.
[00:20:20] Annie: I think you highlighted this idea of being really specific in what you're ask is or what the goal is, what request you're making. Cuz I'm hearing you say a lot of people reach out and they're like, Can I have a chat? And there's only so much time that you. That you can spend on this. And so if they actually want something specific, if it's to learn about your career path and the chat is the only way to do it, then that's great.
[00:20:43] Annie: But just to be a little more specific, a little more concrete around what their objective is, because it almost makes it easier for you to say yes.
[00:20:51] Kate: Totally. A lot of the requests will sound the same, so I just respond, Hey, do you want like A, B, or C? And then like, happy to help whichever direction. And I think all of us have some like small crack with most people.
[00:21:03] Kate: So like think about what those ins might be. Some like common connection that can kick you off. But then if you approach it low ego, you're genuinely authentic in your questions and you have a clear purpose for like what you're trying to gain from the convers. Nine outta 10 people will jump in and wanna help.
[00:21:20] Annie: I would love to talk about this transition that you've made recently. Yes. From the world of sales and revenue and product and now you are running global recruiting. You mentioned that there was , a close connection. That was ultimately what helped you take the leap into that new role, new function. Can you tell us more about that transition and that decision?
[00:21:42] Kate: I have never had a five year. Like I've never like mapped out my ultimate career and I just sort of take it down year by year. I'm a very, like in the moment, present person. I've never just been this master planner and I've followed people. I've tried to find amazing people, work for them, learn from them, and.
[00:22:04] Kate: all of those people that I have worked for, I call upon now. Those connections to me have been what's driven my career Notion was the first time like Shelly brought me in. But like I, it was the first time I had like a new leadership layer and hadn't worked with people before. So that was actually part of the reason I actually went to Notion two is like, New Shelly about how will I do in an environment where I don't have a ton of connections, right?
[00:22:28] Kate: Like this will be a new foundation for me at a small company, but I've always just followed this amazing network of people. And so this transition, I never thought I'd be in recruiting. A lot of like strong female leaders have done this transition. From revenue or sales, leadership, Marceting into recruiting.
[00:22:48] Kate: For me, it's entered around like three main things, but I knew I wanted to get a different type of operator experience. I found like doing SMB at Notion, there were a lot of parallels to Dropbox. It was kind of like same movie but like different actors is how I describe it. I felt like for my time there, like I wanted to.
[00:23:08] Kate: enter a different problem set. How could I kind of take my like core foundational skills and learnings from my past and apply it to a similar thing, like instead of revenue, we're talking about people and like instead of a sales funnel, we're talking about a recruiting funnel. So very like parallel things, but a completely different like vocabulary.
[00:23:33] Kate: So that was like first was just like diversifying my operational experience and I love advising companies. I love talking to founders. And as a side note, I do find like the biggest question that startups wanna know is who should my first hires be? No one asked like about revenue early on. They're just like, who should my team be?
[00:23:50] Kate: Getting the right team in place is gonna make the difference of whether we succeed or not. And we're very specific to hire for best in craft that align with our company values. And so how will, how are we going to find those people in the world? I was drawn to the group and getting to kind of have a significant piece of the team.
[00:24:13] Kate: I was bringing in this like business expertise, while I've got a really strong team that knows recruiting, I thought that would be like a really powerful combination. And
[00:24:20] Annie: when you were making the decision, I'm sure there were a lot of factors at play. How did you get advice from people you trust, you respect?
[00:24:32] Annie: How did you leverage this network that you had built to help you make that decision?
[00:24:37] Kate: Marianne approached me about it in like September, October of 2021. I didn't say yes till beginning of January. The path to get there was pretty long. I mentioned Kevin Egan already. Kevin actually randomly at Salesforce, like popped and ran recruiting for a component of his time there, and so he did like.
[00:24:57] Kate: The sales thing to recruiting, and then he's now back in sales. So I picked his brain pretty heavily to understand more about that, like what that pivot did. And I think I was most nervous, like I've done, I've been involved with dollars my whole life, so my whole career. So like to move away from that, what are the things I need to think through?
[00:25:15] Kate: What are the cons of that decision and what are the limitations? Kevin's thing was, wouldn't think of it as limitation, but more as. , getting you to touch different parts of the business isn't a negative thing, not as a pivot. Let's say. If you wanna be like a cro, probably stay on the revenue side, but that, that's not my path.
[00:25:34] Kate: If you wanna be a coo, you wanna found a company, you need to understand the nuts and bolts of growing the company. And so was very like supportive of that from the lens, especially like where Notion was at. The other person I asked was Quentin Clark. He's at General Catalyst. He run product and engineering and design at Dropbox for a couple years.
[00:25:55] Kate: I reported to a man named John Kalo. Lionetti. He's now the CRO at Zappier and GC reported to Quentin and Quinn. I like had a connection with him and going into vc, I picked his brain. If you are in VC and you're looking at my resume, like what does this say to you? Cause I was just curious. He brought up again, like the operator experience, like thought it.
[00:26:16] Kate: A really interesting story. It wasn't a negative thing, but it would require me sharing more about it and the intentionality behind it. The other person, like an operator, I look up to Molly Graham. I called her and then she tried to recruit me, but we got away from that because I was like, Then she's like, Oh, are you on the Market?
[00:26:31] Kate: I'm like, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. But um, you said
[00:26:35] Annie: she recruited you. To this podcast. .
[00:26:38] Kate: Yeah, . Gotta love Molly. But Molly had some like really interesting, interesting takes on the move and just like I agree with her of like that your career isn't this linear path and you're just like walking down and it's the like deviations you take off that that define you and make you interesting.
[00:26:59] Kate: That really resonated with me. And then I stopped asking people. I just like naturally let my mind drift in and out of the decision, and it just became very clear what's important to me, what are the things I value, And then the decision was a natural thing from there. So it was like lots of input sitting with myself, trusting myself.
[00:27:19] Kate: Everyone has their opinion, right? So like how do you reconcile all those opinions when you make a big decision? And it comes down to like trust and confidence in yourself to like bring all those jumbled opinions together into like something that makes sense. And that's what I did and it. I haven't looked back.
[00:27:34] Kate: Mm-hmm. ,
[00:27:35] Annie: Actually, it's something that I wanted to ask you about before we end, was this idea of building these strong relationships remotely. Cuz you talk about Dropbox and you talk about, you know, seeing people in the office getting spotted as someone, You were in that office, now you're in this office or being around the office.
[00:27:51] Annie: Yeah. For social events and dinner and things. Many people are now either in a hybrid or fully remote world. Indefinitely, how do you replicate or try even to replicate some of those dynamics? How do you think about relationship building in this more distributed world?
[00:28:16] Kate:I would say the biggest way we built connections was through the phone, not Zoom.
[00:28:24] Kate: Your computer is really distracting. There's people popping all out of places. Your text messages, slack, whatever stuff you're on, like you're getting hit up all the time while you're talking to people and cutting out that noise is actually really challenging. So I spent a lot of time on walks on the phone and I just like call people instead of like sending someone a message about something.
[00:28:46] Kate: The phone was where I found genuine connections. Check in what's happening and it was ad hoc. There's like ad hoc connections is like, or what you miss not being in the office.
[00:28:57] Annie: I want to go back to one thing we talked about sort of lessons on networking from your sales experience. I know you just made the transition recently into the world of recruiting.
[00:29:05] Annie: Are there any surprises when it comes to the world of networks, relationships, networking that this new recruiting role has taught you?
[00:29:15] Kate: The personal components of recruiting are so important. People join companies for the people that they meet. They wanna work with amazing people. and often they feel that special connection when we remember certain parts of the interview where they might have mentioned their favorite pizza place or that they have a dog and they take them to Christy Field on the weekends.
[00:29:36] Kate: All those like little tiny components along the way that we remember make that candidate experience so special when they show up and applying that to networking in general, just relat. Trying to remember the components of what people tell you and reflecting on those later, or it's circling back later to that person.
[00:29:56] Kate: That makes a huge difference. I've found it extremely helpful for me to do that, but I've been really, really impressed when someone else does that. Take a lot of notes when you're talking to people and set reminders for yourself if something comes. Because it's really impressive when people do that and it really like leads a special imprint.
[00:30:14] Annie: People love to be remembered, and so I think that's another just helpful reminder that circling back, even if it's been some time, it's another justification, another encouragement for people who might be reluctant to reach out to that person that's circling back is actually really, really special and helpful.
[00:30:34] Annie: Well, Kate, where can people find you if they wanna learn more about you from you?
[00:30:39] Kate: You can find me on LinkedIn or like honestly just reach out. I would be happy to help at Notion we have lots of openings or anyone who's like on a crew journey and you're like, contemp a big change. Like I genuinely will respond and I will help and if I can't help, I'll connect you to someone else who will.
[00:30:54] Kate: I know a lot of really nice people who like to lean in, so whatever way, but like LinkedIn's probably the best way and I'm on there all the time cuz now it's my job. You'll find me .
[00:31:04] Annie: Still get a quick response. Well, Kate, thank you so much for being with us today. It has been such a delight to hear about your experience.
[00:31:13] Annie: You've done such a range of cool things and it's been really neat to hear how the connections that you have have opened doors for you and created connections for other people. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:31:28] Kate: Oh, thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it.