Conversation
Highlights

In this episode of Whispered Hiring, Andy Mowat speaks with Cody Guymon, President at Zonos and former COO at Qualtrics and Workato, about how he built a career from rev ops to the C-suite and what that path taught him about hiring. Cody owns all of revenue at Zonos and has sharply defined views on which traits are irreplaceable now that AI is doing the order-taking.

Topics discussed:

• How Cody made it from rev ops to president by forcing himself into deals. He never carried a quota, but jumping into sales conversations alongside reps gave him the customer context that back-office ops leaders never develop.
• The two traits he screens for in every senior GTM interview: insane curiosity and a high motor. He asks candidates what they know about Zonos and grades them on depth and follow-up questions, not surface familiarity.
• Why tell me something about you that is not on your resume is his dual test for curiosity and motor. He wants to hear what you are learning or building right now, not a decade-old accolade.
• English is the new coding language. Cody redesigned the Zonos website himself using Claude Code with no design or engineering background and submitted a PR to the engineering team for review.
• If you are just an order-taker, your job is already gone. Claude Code can execute orders. The people who survive are those who proactively form a point of view and use AI to act on it at scale.
• Take care of your best builders, and if they still leave, download their context into shared repositories before it walks out the door with them.
• Cody’s primary sourcing channel for senior hires is a standing monthly poker night with 10 to 12 operators from his Qualtrics network, where back-channel conversations surface who can actually deliver.
• When the network runs dry, he stops looking for someone who has already done the job and bets on the up and comer who could step into a bigger role. He landed the Zonos president role exactly that way.
• Character is the foundation that makes every other trait worth anything. Two conversations ended immediately: a candidate who could not touch the Rubik’s cube listed on their resume, and one who admitted to VPN masking their location from their current employer.

ABOUT YOUR HOST: 

Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating. 

Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com

Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search