Chief People Officer Maryanne Caughey Explains How to Get Hired at Notion

“The Blind Ambition with Jack Kelly” provides a candid look into the top tech companies. Go behind the scenes with tech and workplace leaders and explore engineering and work culture, what it takes to land a role at these companies, and how to build, scale and succeed as an engineer or technologist.

Maryanne Caughey is the chief people officer at Notion. Notion is a workplace productivity app. People use it as their all-in-one workplace, bringing together to-do lists, documents, and even product roadmaps.

Below are some highlights of the podcast featuring Maryanne. Listen to “The Blind Ambition with Jack Kelly” above or on your favorite podcast app.

What it’s like being a chief people officer

… As the chief people officer of Notion, as you would imagine, every day is wildly different. And, I think it’s why I love being in the people space so much.

I view the role of a chief people officer… [as] crafting a really meaningful and intentional employee experience for our employees. So how we attract really great talent to how we invite them in and have a great recruiting process that’s reflective of what it looks like to work here… ensuring onboarding, and everyone is set up for success… [and] making sure Notion, in particular, is a great place to work.

Every all-hands, we talk about how one of our top three goals [at] the company is making sure it’s a place where people can do their best and most meaningful work. So when you look back upon your career, 10 or 20 years from now, this should be the place where you work with a collection of some of the greatest talent and worked on some of the most challenging problems.

Why Notion is “transparent by default.”

We have pretty prescriptive communication norms as a company. One example is everything is transparent [and] transparent by default. So if you ever have a question… don’t just directly message an individual; instead… put it in a group chat… so everyone can continue learning from each other.

I think it builds more trust amongst employees as well. I think it expedites the learning process and the onboarding process quite a bit. You always have access to the information that you might need, and if you’re curious, there’s always an answer.

Interviewing at Notion: Everything you might want to know

… Recruiting… should be a two-way conversation. It should feel very human… almost like a conversation that you’re having with someone at a bar and not like an interrogation at the airport border.

… We really do look at every resume and every applicant that comes in…

… There are three main things in our hiring process:

1. Do you have the skills to be successful and excel in the job itself?

Depending on the type of interview, there [are] various skills assessments: for engineering, it’s programming; on sales, it’s [whether] you have a customer-centric approach to how you sell and pitch.

2. Are you really motivated to work at Notion in particular, and have you done your research?

We want to hire people who authentically believe in our mission of like really creating more toolmakers in society.

3. Making sure that everyone has shared or aligned values with Notion.

We are very intentional… Our values are what we look for:

People who are owners of our mission.
We look for pace setters, so people who love to move very quickly.
We look for truth-seekers, so people who always want to understand the root of [the] problem.
We are kind and direct.

I think the interview process should be reflective of what it’s actually like to work here, which is quite warm and community-focused.

Notion’s growth overseas

I’s a really product-led growth story where organically Notion… just became very popular in some markets. Korea is a great example; we localized early as a product there, and it’s a very significant part of the company’s growth trajectory… It’s just actually all fairly organic to date.

For our Dublin office, we did send two wonderful women that have been with the company for quite some time there to help be members of the landing team… Then [there is] a mix of hiring local talent as well.

We will have… a rotation program where engineers can go work from our Japan or Korea offices for two to three weeks—just to make sure they’re building global awareness and [understanding the] mindset of the customers we have outside the United States.

It’s hard to build a compelling product for [a] market without… user empathy… It’s grounded in making sure our engineering team stays truly connected to our customers and users because that’s why we’re all here.

Employee benefits at Notion

We wanted to be really progressive about [employee benefits] and taking care of people. We’ve made a few programmatic changes, which I think have helped as well.

… The company has mandated vacations where everyone’s off at the same time. And I think that really helps, especially in a role, like my own where the only time you could really disconnect is if the company is also disconnected.

We have unlimited vacation time… What our HR team does is if you haven’t taken enough in a quarter or in a six-month timeframe, we actually ping you in your manager to say, “Hey, did you know you haven’t taken vacation?”

I think our benefits are really like best in class for a company by stage and size… everyone has access to therapy; we also give employees a monthly stipend… for additional support services as well.

… As a company, we’re going to roll out a six-course training that’s custom to our employees [on] how to actually build wealth, how to think about equity, how much to save… to make sure people have access to financial advisors in their career… [to] really make the best decisions… I would have definitely benefited from [this] earlier in my career.

How to be a standout professional at Notion

… People at Notion overwhelmingly have a high degree of urgency and move very, very quickly. And equal parts warmth, so equal parts taking care of your colleagues.

How we look at talent is really of what you’ve accomplished:

What is your impact?
What outcomes have you driven as an individual?
How [have] you… accomplished those.
Have you shown up as a great colleague to work with?
Are you effective cross functionally?

The performance review process at Notion

I think that’s what a lot of performance reviews do wrong because it’s so embedded in the past and not enough forward-looking… where do you want to go in your career?

And then, based on that, how do we make sure you get the right experiences and education and exposure to actually help you succeed in your career? Otherwise, you’re just giving feedback for feedback without actually being grounded and helping groom someone for what is next in their career as well.

We have quarterly check-in conversations between managers and [individual contributors], and it really is an hour just to check… [if] you understand how your work connects to the company’s goals? Do you have any feedback for me as a manager?

We try to keep [reviews] casual and lightweight by design, so it’s not so cumbersome from the people team. Instead, [it’s] about how do I, as your manager, just help you be the best that you can be and want to be…