the interview: Heather Doshay

Dr. Heather Doshay is a talent and people leader on a mission to change the HR stereotype from administrative burden to strategic partner for startups, specializing in distributed teams and remote work. Equipped with a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, and 15 years of career experience focused on helping people achieve their educational and professional goals. Heather is VP People at Webflow where she leads Talent, People, IT, and Operations teams. Previous to her time at Webflow, Heather served as SVP People and Places at Rainforest QA, led Talent Marketplace at Hired, and taught Organizational Leadership courses at the University of San Francisco. She is SHRM senior certified, serves on the PeopleTech Partners Advisory, and has served on the Forbes HR Council. Her work is also published in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Thrive Global, and VentureBeat.

What made you want to join Webflow?

When I joined Webflow, I was looking for 3 things:

1. A sustainable business model
2. A company that is making a difference in the world
3. A CEO I respect and trust

Webflow empowers designers to create websites without code. How do you think about the broader low-code / no-code movement and its implications for product design and development?

I believe that this movement is so uniquely critical to the future of our global economy. We all know the famous Marc Andreessen Software is Eating the World concept, and we also know that 99.5% of the world doesn’t know how to code. While the approach to date has predominantly been to teach code to more people, I believe that the best way to democratize how we build for the web is to make web development far more accessible- and no code/low code tools do this.

With the pandemic last year until now, even more businesses are having to come online to survive and access to these important tools help them not only survive but also thrive.

There’s a sense that people need to “learn Webflow” to effectively use the platform, and Webflow skills have even made their way into job descriptions. What is Webflow doing to lower the learning curve from a product standpoint and from an educational standpoint?

What makes Webflow unique is it gives designers a visual interface that lets them control the SAME exact CSS properties used by Apple, Google, and Stripe — that’s our big differentiator. This isn’t a watered down interface, and it’s packed with tools that give designers complete creative freedom. And we created Webflow University: where designers of all skill levels learn and use all this power for free, meaning they can start from a blank page and build almost anything they can dream up. Today it does take some time investment to learn from scratch, but that learning is totally free and accessible to all.

Webflow as a product decreases the learning curve to be a frontend developer by 10x just by having this visual interface, but beyond that we are trying to decrease that learning curve even more by optimizing our product experience. We’re exploring a variety of avenues from new interactive onboarding methods to more pre-built/usable components that allow people to more easily build while maintaining the flexibility Webflow provides. Our goal is to democratize development for the web, and we know not everyone starts with all the same skills/experiences.

You have extensive talent experience from your time at Hired and at Rainforest QA. What did you take away from those roles that you are applying to your role at Webflow?

Lots of lessons! I think a couple big ones are:

1. Plan to have a plan. So many companies at these early growth stages struggle to forecast needs and so as a talent leader it’s important to have systems that help build that hiring forecasting muscle. And then, it’s important to invest ahead of time on those talent teams so that the people responsible for hiring can really step on the gas as needed when big growth happens.
2. Get clear on what kinds of interviewing gives you the biggest signal in the shortest possible time. An efficient hiring funnel is important but efficient implies both speed and quality, and so often teams can get stuck in speed that they lose sight of the latter.
3. “Work sample!” Having candidates produce a work sample is one of the best ways to predict on the job performance as well as one of the best ways for candidates to get an accurate picture of what it’s like doing the role. The key is for companies to be intentional about the work they ask candidates to do so that it’s realistic but not used in production and to keep it to 90 minutes or less, so that it effectively replaces a round of interviews. If either of those conditions are not met, it should be paid.

Companies are beginning to more actively consider diversity and inclusion as part of their hiring efforts. What processes and / or technologies have you put in place at Webflow to ensure that you build a diverse team?

First, I’m thrilled more companies are centering more on this, but also it makes me nervous being diversity, equity, and inclusion are *deep* topics with extremely harmful downside if treated superficially. And almost every sales pitch for a hiring tool these days seems to superficially market themselves as supporting DEI.

I am a big advocate on building the deep infrastructure and commitment around DEI rather than a check the box mentality of the tech stack you should invest in to say you’ve done it. I encourage leaders to invest deeply in their own education and their leadership’s team education and advocacy. I encourage companies to first look at the sentiment and success of their current/internal team first before they try to recruit people into their company to increase diversity, they make sure that they are an employer who is meeting commitments/expectations to the team they have. An audit of the current team, current interview process, promotion processes, compensation philosophy, etc and audit of bias mitigation there.

Adding a “diversity sourcing platform” or an “unconscious bias training” can be a great complement to deep systems level changes that self-reinforce overtime, but too often people are looking to the former as quick wins and that can sometimes open a can of worms that causes more harm than good.

We’ve talked about no-code and recruiting, but the future of work is obviously a much broader category that can span everything from benefits to solutions serving deskless workers. What trends are you most excited about in the future of work right now?

I am most passionate about future of work trends that optimize for the integration of people’s personal identities and needs with their ability to show up and do good work

For me that means two big trends that I’m excited about that gained a lot of attention this year: remote work and mental health benefits. These are two wholly different categories worthy of exploration on their own, but the intersection between the two against a year of so much external threat makes that a distinct category of their own.

These are both areas that there have been some forward movement for over the past many years, but this year in particular was sort of a perfect storm for really highlighting the need for companies to consider these and get them right.

What is your favorite company in / around the future of work (besides Webflow)?

Well absolutely Webflow- whether it be that small brick and mortar business needing to build an online presence in a poor economy or a large company needing to figure out how to cut costs to protect jobs, Webflow for me is an important part of the conversation.

But I would give shout outs to two companies that I think advance both remote work and mental health as the category I’m most passionate about:

1. Loom—For remote work, asynchronous communication is so critical, and virtual meeting fatigue is really real. Loom is a great option for people looking to to advance their async communications.
2. Bravely — a platform that supports workplace health. People can easily connect with a professional coach for a confidential conversation about their performance, growth, relationships, or company culture. Of course I believe in providing top medical benefits so therapy is in reach for all, but short of that, these kinds of perks can be a real resource in so many aspects of the workplace beyond the psychological safety and mental health components.

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Know someone building an exciting new company in future of work? Get in touch @ brittany@crv.com.

Thanks to Shawn Xu for the connections to women of the Anchor List.