Content Lead, Courses & Events

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 Talent Trends Report, Offer Accepted Podcast, and the very exciting premium Courses & Events content that this hire will take over and drive.

For this role, we’re looking for an ambitious content lead who enjoys owning presentation-style formats and is open to the challenge of a unique role at the intersection of brand, community, and content. You will immediately own our monthly community webinars, take over and scale two courses, and own the development of our events content strategy.

In true startup fashion, my 1.5 years at Ashby has seen a range of projects outside the traditional content role, from developing our annual company Keynote to leading PR for our Series C raise. I’ve also made the active choice to continue owning our social media calendar (including daily monitoring), which may surprise some. I share this all to reflect the special team we’re building at Ashby: one filled with people who are just as passionate about untangling big, complex challenges as they are about rolling up their sleeves to do the critical foundational work that enables us to stand out in our space. I promise to be right in the weeds with you to solve projects big and small together.

What you’ll be responsible for in this role

1. You’ll start by owning our monthly community webinars. These events are well-attended with a strong event duration rate. This includes working across the editorial calendar to find the best topics for the best time to align with marketing initiatives as a whole, developing all the required assets from landing pages to email and social promotions, prepping speakers/running dry runs, and successfully hosting the event. There’s untapped opportunities to work with our partnerships teams to draw new audiences to these events as well.

2. You’ll quickly jump into the full content roadmap and development of assets for our upcoming conferences and events. This includes deeply understanding our target audience, pulling from our growing roster of internal and external experts for speakers, and ultimately building the end content that will be presented with brand design support from our in-house designer. This responsibility isn’t simply executing on the creation of decks, but being the strategic owner of how Ashby’s library of content stays extremely relevant for the fast-moving industry and comes to life in a way that captives our community — a bar we have set and maintained across all content initiatives so far.

3. You’ll scale our existing program experiments for courses and certifications. We often operate in sprints on our team to provide the headspace to tackle something big and new. Recent sprints included the researching and running of our inaugural courses for two of our strongest ICPs. We want you to scale these programs, keeping the content relevant each cycle, and engaging directly with our core community to provide valuable content resources regardless of whether they are using Ashby.

4. Develop a deep understanding of our customer. Everyone on the team listens to customer calls weekly to be close to our ICP and ensure that our content reflects and directly supports their needs.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Work closely with Partnerships, Events, and Community on the marketing team. Collaborate with team members to ensure alignment on goals, campaign approaches, and processes.

You will probably love this role if

• You’re a builder at heart. While there will be a roadmap of work to jump into, thriving at Ashby comes with an openness to tackle the unknown and build for the best outcome.

• You love working in Google Slides and being a systems thinker to visualize important frameworks, concepts, and ideas for easy understanding.

• You work autonomously while knowing when to raise a hand for help or brainstorming.

• You are crafty at repurposing. Hopefully reading the main responsibilities already started turning your wheels on how you’ll repurpose content across your work and pull from what is already being done on the team to have the most impact while operating efficiently.

• You embrace new technologies to enhance productivity and efficiency. This means not being afraid to use AI tools to enable you to be more productive.

• You are able to develop a deep understanding of which topics resonate with the respective audience, and use personalization tools and strong writing to craft copy for various channels.

This role is not for you if

• Your main method of content success is high volume publishing. While we work at a high capacity, we are not a traditional content machine that creates without thinking through the strategic value of our outputs.

• You rely solely on SEO to do your research. We care about staying on top of what is top of mind for our ICP and investing time in getting to know our customer.

• 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. In this role you’ll be expected to spend time with our customers and 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.

• You want a traditional content career. This role sits at the intersection of brand, content, and community and is a unique opportunity to flex into all three.

• You struggle to work independently. While we love to collaborate across the team, we are an autonomous, low meeting culture. This requires ownership of your time, self-deadlining tasks versus relying on stand ups, and being the main owner of pushing your work forward.

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 with Recruiting

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

3. 30-minute interview with Harriet Johnston (VP, Marketing)

4. 30-minute interview with Benji (CEO)

5. A take home assignment which you’ll have 1 hour to discuss with the hiring team

6. A virtual on-site of 1.5 hours with a panel of interviewers – this will be with Shannon, Community Lead, and Kat, Head of Partnerships

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.