On this episode of By HR for HR, host Jocelyn King hosts Victoria Ashton, Chief People Officer at Lob, to discuss building the HR function in high-growth technology environments and aligning people analytics directly with business objectives. Victoria shares her experience scaling early-stage startups from single-digit headcount through rapid growth, emphasizing that HR leaders must operate with "proximity and curiosity" toward executive peers. She explains how spending time with CFOs and CROs to understand P&L statements and growth models allows HR leaders to connect traditional talent metrics directly to revenue and gross profit.
Victoria provides an inside look at how Lob leverages custom AI analytics dashboards to synthesize data across fragmented HR systems. By overlaying employee engagement and attrition trends onto customer retention and point-in-time financial performance, her team builds a trusted advisor relationship with executive leadership. The conversation also covers compliance strategy, where Victoria advocates for moving beyond minimum transactional standards to craft proactive, employee-centered policies that reflect genuine cultural values.
Additionally, Victoria shares insights from her role as an advisor within a venture capital fund, detailing how people operations impact investment attractiveness and due diligence. She closes the episode by addressing the operational challenges of AI in talent acquisition. Describing the "avalanche" of AI-generated candidate spam flooding inbound job applications, Victoria offers practical advice on deploying detection tools while remaining curious, agile, and experimental in modern talent leadership.
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