Here’s this week’s edition of our Coworking series. Each week, we chat 1:1 with an HR Brew reader. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.
Marissa Morrison jokes she’s experienced HR from every angle. The VP of people at ZipRecruiter told HR Brew she got her start in the function as a management consultant for Big Four consulting firm PwC; she’s also served Big Tech at LinkedIn and has led HR at startups at various stages, sizes, and levels of funding.
For Morrison, the HR-adjacent, midsize public company with its mission to connect people to their next great opportunity was a perfect Goldilocks situation: just right.
“I have worked in a variety of different kinds of companies,” she said of her fit at ZipRecruiter. “Getting to step into a leadership role at a people tech company, I think it raises the bar for the people team.”
Morrison said the ZipRecruiter product inspires her and her team to “be leaders on pushing the limits and trying new things when it comes to recruiting,” but it also gives her team a “strategic advantage” when it comes to succeeding in the business.
“There’s no excuse that we shouldn’t be understanding the metrics of our business because we live and breathe that much in our own lives,” she said. “We should be able to be more competent in the drivers of a successful business which makes us better at our people jobs…and that’s such a non-negotiable.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the best change you’ve made at work?
The change I am most proud of was launching a robust and meaningful leadership development training program at ZipRecruiter.
Leaders are the core of a successful company. Ensuring they’re equipped with the skills, support, knowledge, community, and encouragement to do a stellar job makes a huge impact on how an organization operates.
Because we know that strong people leaders impact every part of an organization, we built programs for managers at every stage of their leadership journey—from those who are new to the company or new to people management to a formal multi-week VP+ executive development program.
Growth is a lifelong process, and investing in the personal and professional skills of our people leaders is a core part of our business strategy, and a focus that I’m very proud to be a part of.
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What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?
That it’s subjective and driven by feelings, when in fact there is both an art and a science to people leadership.
I’m a big believer in systems and setting up fair, consistent, and scalable processes that set the team up for success. Some parts of our job are creative and innovative. And many parts thrive with the same structured approach as engineers and product developers—relying on a hypothesis, business case, consistent measurement, and strong cross-functional relationships. Our people team works in sprints, measures the return on investment of our work, tracks metrics, and holds ourselves accountable to being innovative in our approach.
What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?
Coaching leaders and helping them break down what may feel like a really complex, difficult situation into a simple, straightforward plan.
I feel most fulfilled when a leader comes to me feeling like there’s no good solution to a people or organizational problem they’re facing, and through our conversation, they get the clarity they’ve been struggling to find and see the path forward clearly. That feels great!
What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?
People teams adopting AI and technology in new and exciting ways. There’s so much opportunity for people teams to focus on truly strategic work when regular, administrative tasks are automated. With AI, people teams also have access to complex data sets that may have taken much longer to analyze before. I believe the accelerated impact people teams have made over the past years will only continue as they adopt new technologies and lean on AI.
What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?
Single-point HR tech solutions. I’m always thinking about the employee and how to make their life easier. HR professionals are inundated with pitches for single-point technology solutions. This has gotten a lot of traction over the past few years and in the coming years, companies will try to consolidate their tech stack or find products that solve more than one problem in an integrated and sophisticated way. For busy employees, logging into multiple systems for multiple purposes is not efficient and these products aren’t used as a result.