Plan Earlier, Hire Smarter - Emergency Hires Can Really Sabotage Great Decisions (S2E11)

Anita Chauhan

Hi, and welcome to our latest edition of Looks Good on Paper, powered by Willo. Today we're joined by Tia Fomenoff. So excited to have you here today. Tia is the VP of People at PurposeMed, where she leads the team building a more accessible, compassionate healthcare system for underserved communities through brands like Freddy, Freida, and Fourier. Tia has some great background experience at companies like Unbounce, Buffer, and Think ific. I'm gonna throw it to you, Tia. Please let us know all the amazing stuff about your journey, how you got here today. I'd love to hear from you.

Tia Fomenoff

Hi Anita, thank you for having me. Yeah, my journey along with many people in tech, I think, has been a little bit all over the place, but I actually started out my career in, I went to school for marketing, so I have a business background. Started off early on in a lot of non-profit work, so I worked for my local YMCA, I worked for my local tourism board. And I was just really lucky at that point to have a lot of leaders that let me kind of just learn and do whatever I wanted to, and so I fell into digital marketing, which at the time, that was kind of like when Twitter was first early on the scene for businesses, so it was a lot less competitive now. I don't think I'd be able to keep up with social media marketing anymore.

Anita Chauhan

Love.

Tia Fomenoff

But yeah, did a lot of that, So I did some social work, went down, moved down to Vancouver from Northern BC and got my first tech job at Unbounce. So I spent a couple years there doing content, social media management, moved over into the customer success space at a certain point because that was really interesting to me. I really loved just getting to work with our clients. Went to Buffer for a very short amount of time, but it was very, I think, instrumental in some of my growth too, just knowing how the world works, how business works, and got to be a part of a really amazing culture because that was one

Anita Chauhan

Thanks.

Tia Fomenoff

thing that they were really known for and be able to bring that with me forward. So at that point that was kind of where I started to get into more like the being interested in the people space and the operations space. And so again I was very lucky to be hired at Thinkific in very early stage and they were like what do you want to do? And we were in a spot where we had to hire a lot of people in the coming year and so I jumped in, started doing interviews, and then just everything kind of built from there. So I spent six and a half years or so at Thinkific. We went public. We went through COVID, we went from 20 people when I started up to over 500 at one point and then I was looking for my next thing and I was just so, so grateful to find a LinkedIn posting the old-fashioned way at PurposeMed. And they were doing a little bit of everything that I hoped for, so I considered going back to non-profit but I wanted something with a little bit more far-reaching impact, Being able to move quicker, and not be those roadblocks that come along.

Anita Chauhan

my gosh.

Tia Fomenoff

nonprofit work and so I get to do a little bit of everything, now. And we get to work with some really amazing patients and change lives so, I love it.

Anita Chauhan

I love that. That sounds amazing! and foremost, I think one of the things that I love about this podcast is we talk to a lot of people who have non-traditional ways into hiring, talent acquisition. And I love hearing from someone like you, who you grew Thinkific, you're working at some really cool brands, It just goes to show you, and I think for a lot of people, not just for anyone in a hiring capacity, you can go from anywhere and come into a role like this. always tell this story and I know my listeners are going to be like, Anita, you sound like a broker record, but I actually don't have a background in marketing, but I run marketing teams. So it's always so funny how you end up in these places, right?

Tia Fomenoff

Yep. Yeah, I mean, early in your career if you get an opportunity that comes in front of you and it's something that you're excited about, I always tell people to just take it because you really have no idea where it's going to take you.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely, absolutely. So, why don't we jump in? You know the drill. Three questions. Rapid-fire, speed dating style. And the first one is, what's the biggest hiring mistake companies keep making even though they know it's not working? Tia Fomenoff (04:15.98) Yeah, I know I saw a few of your past guests that they're like, I can't pick just one. And it was so hard because obviously going through startup hiring, especially you make so many mistakes, and you will keep making mistakes forever and ever. But one of the things I've been reflecting on, especially in the last year or so now, that we've kind of, we've got all of our hiring practices in place pretty well. Like we've worked with a lot of our hiring managers more than once at this point. But I, going back to my experience hiring at Thinkific and here and just like, Anita Chauhan (04:20.57) I know.

Tia Fomenoff

working with a lot of recruiters or other people in HR fields. I think the biggest thing that I've seen go badly time and time again is that it's really like even before the actual posting goes up and it's just waiting too long to hire. Or, waiting too long to to make that decision to go ahead and hire. And so then by the time you are finally given the green light to hire for a role, the team's already so underwater. It's they're desperate for help. The hire becomes more like an emergency. Or like a checkbox on something that has to get done. And I think it just like kills the good decision making. Not always obviously, but it makes it so much easier for people to rush through it, not really be clear on what they want. not slow down enough to figure out like what is this person even gonna do the job description might not even be as clear as it needs to for the person being hired and then again, yeah, you just are you mostly like you can sometimes end up in a place where you're just like they can do the job and you might make a lot of compromises that you wouldn't have if you would have taken the time intentionally before.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely, it sounds like, the way you're describing it, a good word I use is just reactive. It just feels super reactive. You're already behind when you decide you need something like this, or you to go through all the approvals to get it. I was a hiring manager for my line of business at many companies, and I know by the time that I was already swamped, it was already too late. And then the rest of my team was already burdened. And then to your point, by the time I was able to actually bring somebody in, that job description changed, the needs of the team changed, the company had changed.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah. Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

It took a lot, and I can't imagine for even big organizations how many approvals they might have to go through internally. But I like your take on the angle of how is this impacting the rest of the team in this way?

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, and it goes back to like even If you're thinking about a lot of like leaders, especially in high growth companies, they're still often doing a lot of the hands on work, right? They're not just leading a team and hiring and that's their whole job all day. So being able to, or like having to take them away from some of that day to day work impacts the team too overall and slows down work getting done overall in the business. They're like, their schedule's already full. They're trying to slot in all these interviews. They're tired. They're maybe making really bad. I've seen it a million times and especially remember going through a lot of the hiring when we were in Thinkific. There were times when we were so exhausted and we were like, can't even, we've talked to so many people today, we can't even really feel like we're confidently making a good decision.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, that's fair. So what sort of things did you implement, if anything, to help with that?

Tia Fomenoff

I mean, yeah, it's a learning, work in progress everywhere, I think. But one thing, especially at Purpose Med right now, and it's something that my talent acquisition manager and I've been talking about, especially in the last couple of weeks going into 2026, is really just trying to spend a lot more time through that, not necessarily the approval process, but like the planning and approval process of it. is when a hiring manager first is flagging that they need something, we actually want to spend a lot more time with them upfront going through and And almost doing the kickoff that we have typically done a little bit later after everything gets approved through finance and with the founders And do that earlier with the hiring managers so that we can actually coach them through really critically thinking about like exactly what they need. When do they need it? Answer all of those questions a little bit more fulsomely before we get to that stage. And so we're not making all those tweaks last minute. Because I think what we found is we'll get to that kickoff stage and then we're going back and forth and we have too many people with input and it's like, it does stall that process. to actually just finally get it up and live. And then the hiring manager's frustrated and like everyone's kind of frustrated. And we're like, we could have just sorted this out earlier if we would have talked about what you really need. I think they're so focused on just getting like a seat, like a role opening slot that they don't necessarily always think about exactly what they need early enough. But yeah, and that's like on our side. the opposite of what you said, like the reactive is we're trying to be a lot more proactive

Anita Chauhan

Hmmmm

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

and going to them. So I think on a more regular basis, having like either monthly or quarterly conversations with them ahead of time and just trying to like check in more often and be like, hey, do you see any choke points that are coming up or like where are people feeling strained? Because I think a lot of times they're still just kind of scared to ask, right? Where we all know we're resource constrained and we want to be really conscious with cash, especially the way that a lot of businesses are having to make hard decisions in these last few years. So even just encouraging them.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Tia Fomenoff

like kind of being in their corner and be like, no you actually do need help. Anita Chauhan (09:32.44) Yeah, yeah, and you can't function and the company can't function until you have that help or you know, just overall employee experience and quality of work is gonna go down your team if you don't get this help, right? So it's smart.

Tia Fomenoff

Yes, well yes, especially if you think of our highest performers, they typically are the ones who take on the biggest workload and don't ask for help and then it leads to burnout.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so now on to number two. What's a hidden bias companies unknowingly have even when they think they're being progressive in their hiring?

Tia Fomenoff

Yes, this one is like, obviously I've been really lucky to work at companies that care a lot about diversity and hiring and have interviewed a lot of people who've come from interviews that are the opposite. So we've taken a lot of feedback through the years and made so many changes. One thing that's really stuck with me through my last 10 years or so doing interviews has been I feel like a lot of, especially new hiring managers can fall into the trap of having a bias towards, I don't know how to even say it, but more like the extroverted or people who are good sales people, they sell themselves well, those type of communicators. And especially in the more junior, actually no, It happens at every level. But to be clear, I think being a polished communicator is super important, especially there's so many things that it ties into.

Anita Chauhan

Mmm.

Anita Chauhan

Mm-hmm.

Tia Fomenoff

to like self-awareness and everything else. But a lot of introverts don't often interview very naturally and a lot of hiring teams or hiring managers, I'd say if you're working and recruiting you probably know to look for it a little more, but Hiring managers especially will be like subconsciously gravitating towards those people who are more charismatic and like kind of like have a fun conversation with, right? But charisma is not necessarily a good indicator of substance. So yeah, if they're a good interviewer they might not be

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

No, absolutely. End.

Tia Fomenoff

good performer but it's hard to hard to know sometimes.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah. They just might be a really good salesperson. That's great for like a sales role. But I think about that book. Have you ever read that book by Susan Cain called Quiet and How the World is Built for Extroverts? And yeah, yeah. So very same like vibe where it's just like we do need these different types of people, you know, we need and we need to be cognizant of creating scenarios or environments where they can also shine and show their full self even at an interview level, even like in person in a team, right? When you actually get the hire.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah. Tia Fomenoff (11:39.63) Yeah, I've heard of that one. I haven't read it though.

Anita Chauhan

And I think that's one of the main reasons actually that we started this podcast at Willo was because we're just like, we think that we need to go back to the skills based hiring type of style because we have these biases we don't even realize, right, as an individual. And you were right. Like I think that people who are talent acquisition managers, professionals, they do know what to look for sometimes, but those hiring managers might just come up with like five of the same type of people that sound just like them. Or they're like, hey, I can see myself grabbing a beer with this guy, right, and go off of that field.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

feeling.

Tia Fomenoff

And we all know biases are going to exist. You can't completely eliminate them. They're actually there to protect us in a lot of cases in life. And so when it comes to hiring, we're just so intentional. And we do a lot of work to make sure that we put in place opportunities for people to get accommodations through the interview process. But I don't think people think of this because it's not specifically a disability or something that you would see necessarily as a hindrance or something to call out.

Anita Chauhan

amazing.

Tia Fomenoff

you're not looking for it, you're not necessarily able to accommodate for it. I've had times where I've had to just be a lot more patient in asking questions a certain way or you know, especially introverts, they'll be even more humble, which I think is great. That's a huge plus for me, right? But they're not going to be spewing off all of the stuff that they've done. I'm going to have to pull it out. And I've always told my team it's more about sometimes even if it takes them a little longer to get there, that can be a negative. In some cases, if

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

the outcome or the thing that they say doesn't have impact, right? So like if it takes a longer time to get there, but the stuff that they say at the end is like amazing, you're like, wow, I can't believe they did all that. Like that's a completely different situation. So yeah, I've had more people than I can count where I'm like in the interview, there would be people be like, I don't know. They're like a little too quiet or I wasn't sure. I'm like, no, we have to hire them. And they've been like some of our top performers. Just takes them a little longer to warm up.

Anita Chauhan

Sure.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely.

Anita Chauhan

I love that. That's it, right? And then when they feel safe to show their full self, like I think about that, right? Like I think about the whole thing about like psychological safety. And I think that that sort of stuff has to happen early on, like interview process onwards, right? Like before you even get them hired. And as a manager and team leader, I used to think about this a lot, like what type of accommodations to your point can we make in the non not so overt ways that we're normally looking at, right? Awesome. OK, and now on to our third question. If you were to suddenly remove CVs from your current hiring process, what would that look like?

Tia Fomenoff

I saw this question and was like, well, I've never even considered that. We talk about so many other ways to remove bias and I know that there's a lot of options out there to like remove names or backgrounds or like make it a little bit more subjective, objective, but.

Anita Chauhan

Mm-hmm.

Tia Fomenoff

I, to be honest, I think, I do think CVs are really important, especially when we're considering like the volume that we're working at. These days, they are the fastest way for me to see progression through someone's career, diversity of experience to make sure that they've had a whole bunch of different experiences, not all the same, the kinds of environments that they've worked in. I... have actually in the past had, Thinkific, early days we had something where we people would be expected to make a course to apply because that was our product and which I think what I thought was really cool at the time but then it also took up so much of my time to review them so there was there was a point I think we did we got rid of it at one point and sometimes people would take initiative and do it and we loved that when it was like once in a while and they were kind of going above and beyond.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah. Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

What? Anita Chauhan (15:40.42) Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

But yeah, it's it's the amount of time that it takes to go through applications at this point. I love them. But if I had to take them out, I'd probably compensate a few other ways. Like our application questions are actually really important to us that we have on our each of our job postings and we tailor each of those very specifically to the job. I very much have passed on people who have a decent resume, but they put no effort into the application because I'm like, if you can't even put some time into the application, then you're

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

not gonna put much effort into the work when you get here. And then I'm, I don't know, like this is a controversial one. I know some recruiters are on the opposite side as me, but I really, really love a good cover letter. And so I get excited when I see one come in and like not the generic ones that are just like keywords stuffed or repeating the resume, but if they can show their personality, they're like showing how passionate they are. It really like shows how maybe our mission aligns with their values, that kind of stuff.

Anita Chauhan

For sure, yeah, absolutely.

Tia Fomenoff

that let them stand out as an individual person, I think that's like way more exciting to me than just a resume by itself.

Anita Chauhan

for sure. It's so funny that you say that because the one that's coming out, like the one I recorded, the podcast I recorded last week, the guest Julia, who works at Float, she said that she hates cover letters. This is why I love this question.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, see, it's like so polarizing, I know. And I've always loved them. And I love writing them when I'm applying too, because otherwise I feel like I'm limited in being able to communicate my personality in a resume, right? It's not the same.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah? Yes. Absolutely. And I feel this exact same way, but I am extroverted and I love a good show. I love like a video interview. I like, I love being able to show myself on screen, but I have those skills, right? So one thing I'm really loving about this question when I ask a lot of talent professionals is the really like, Consensus is you can't remove the CV full tilt. Like it is embedded. There's no way it's going. And so in some cases it's like from my dead cold hands, I'm getting, but mostly

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

Hahaha

Anita Chauhan

A lot of people are like, we just had to figure out a way to accommodate everybody to allow them to show as authentically as possible. Whether that is through a cover letter, if that's what they choose, is it through questions in the application? Is it a video, a 60 second video? I just think it's a choose your own speed type of thing I'm getting here.

Tia Fomenoff

Mm-hmm.

Tia Fomenoff

I was going say, I love the idea and that we try to do this a lot of internal, with a lot of our internal people programs to PurposeMed is like being able to offer choice as much as possible to our team or to our candidates. so like even within the hiring process, a lot of times for our first screen, We'll say, you can choose if you want to do it on a call or a video call, like it's up to you. Cause some people are more comfortable without video on the first interaction. Right. But I think, yeah, I wouldn't be like, we would make it work if we had to.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

to get rid of them, we would totally make it work. And I think there's so many stages after that first step too that are if that would capture the rest, like we would still have our same either like skills based or technical assessments or whatever conversations we have to have. Right. So, but As a first step, yeah, I'm like, we could probably survive, but it would be slower. I think it would be a slower review process. So it'd be hard on our team from a volume perspective.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

Hmmmm

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, absolutely. I think just about the ecosystem that supports the hiring process right now. Everything has kind of been built around the resume and the CV, right? So it's like all these ETSs. Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah. And they're like, all the recruiters out there are already so overwhelmed, I think, right now. So I'm like, I couldn't imagine throwing that on them right now. Maybe one day.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely. One day in the future, maybe this podcast will inspire someone to build something. I'm just joking. There are things out there already. It's called LinkedIn. It's horrible. No, I'm just joking.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, well I mean yeah, LinkedIn I see similarly as a CV but yeah, they're anything that I can scan quickly.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, it is kind of the same, right? Yeah, it's all the time for the time management right now, right? But while we move on to our wild card question, you had mentioned what you're doing for your 2026 planning. I'd love to hear what you think are trends that are coming up for 2026 and how you guys are thinking about that at PurposeMed. Tia Fomenoff (19:51.92) From just like from a hiring perspective altogether. I don't know what to I don't want to default to AI. Because I feel like that's like the big one, right? It is what everyone's talking about it. Our CEO.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

But you know what? It is, but how are you gonna be using it? Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

is obsessed with it. Everybody on our teams, we are actually have been incorporating that. that's a question I'm asking my team to write when we're going through some of our planning is how can we better leverage AI to take away some of that manual work? We, I am like a very firm believer still right now and it's current state that I do not love incorporating AI into any of like the decision making process of hiring. Note taking, great. I still think it's not that good at it though.

Anita Chauhan

Sure.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Tia Fomenoff

a lot of mistakes still sometimes, so you need to be really reviewing it. But from an automation standpoint for tasks and that kind of stuff, I'd love for my team to be able to look at more opportunities for that. Outside of hiring, I know that's one that we're looking at on our people operations side, especially, because the amount of requests that we get every day, there's so many things that we do in a repetitive basis that we could make a lot easier there. We haven't done a lot with scheduling yet, but I think that's another admin. task that takes up a lot of time and I think AI could hopefully at some point get us there. But it's all about like, you know, the limitations and tools that you're currently using and you don't want to be adding on more and having to integrate more and another software cost on the books. we are trying to get we we typically try to get creative internally as much as possible when it comes to like cutting down on that admin side. I think that's I think that's where people are going to try to spend the most time is like how do we allow ourselves to spend more of that like

Anita Chauhan

It's true, absolutely.

Tia Fomenoff

time that needs human connection time by using AI to get rid of the automated stuff.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah, absolutely. We had a podcast recently with Jim Miller from Ashby, who is just phenomenal. And he was talking. he's great. And he mentioned that he believes that the biggest trend for next year is intentionality with AI. And I think that's exactly what you're saying as well, where it's just, you know, how do you use these tools instead of just being like, AI on everything? How do you actually use it for that human connection, which is the biggest part of this job? Absolutely.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, I saw that.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, yeah, no, I know it's very interesting. And I think I do also feel like just the way that the market is right now, I'm noticing like our recruiters and other people I'm talking to are having to spend a lot more time investing a lot more time in sourcing.

Anita Chauhan

Hmm.

Tia Fomenoff

Cause we are still getting a high volume of applications, but I would say the quality it's harder. And like the people who are really, really great at their jobs are also at this point in time, hesitant to leave good jobs because they're worried about the uncertainty of the job market. Right. So I think spending a lot more time, we've seen it, like we were investing a lot more time doing outreach and making those connections. And even for roles that like don't exist, like we just find profiles that look interesting for the future. We've spent a lot more time on our canvas.

Anita Chauhan

there.

Tia Fomenoff

our candidate pool, and just building out some of those pipelines.

Anita Chauhan

Amazing. Yes, that's great. I think, so a couple of years ago I worked as fractional CMO on top of working with Willo, but one of the things, one company I worked with was a talent relationship management tool called Oomple. And this was the crux of it where it's like, we know we're gonna have that need later down the road. Let's build the relationships now. Let's create a situation where it makes it easier for when we get there to bring those right people in. They know the employer brand, they trust us already, and we are a viable option when they do decide to move on.

Tia Fomenoff

Mm.

Tia Fomenoff

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, those ones have paid off too. I've like, some of those are, I've spent two years trying to get someone at some point. And I know I do, I remember like a designer in particular, it was over two and a half years, I think, before she actually finally, we finally did hire her on at some point, but it started with just like a coffee and a conversation. Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

Absolutely.

Anita Chauhan

Yeah.

Anita Chauhan

That's the best. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Tia. It was lovely having you. Awesome. Stay tuned, everyone. We have our hiring intelligence report coming out really soon, first week of December. And hope to see you here for the next episode of Looks Good on Paper. Bye.

Tia Fomenoff

Thank you.