Be Your Own Advocate | Ariana Gett

<p>Ariana Gett was an executive assistant for 8 years before she moved into HR, and in one of those jobs, at a very small company with no HR, she was asked to fire her own replacement. She later spent nearly four years at edX, where she pulled together the HR information when 2U acquired it. She&#39;s now Head of People Ops at mabl. She and Maddie talk about performance reviews, being your own advocate, and how AI is changing the way her team works.</p><p><strong>Takeaways</strong></p><ul><li>&quot;Performance should not be a surprise.&quot; If 360s happen after big projects or each quarter, the year-end review should feel like a summary of what you&#39;ve already been hearing.</li><li>Be an advocate for your own career. Say when something&#39;s not going well and say what you want, whether that&#39;s a promotion, more money or a different role. Your manager can&#39;t read your mind.</li><li>One review process can still fit different teams. At mabl, engineers reflect on the customer outcome of what they built, and the success team focuses on skills, since commission already shows results. Both happen at the same time of year, with calibration across the company.</li><li>In an acquisition, the buyer wants to know how your culture will fit with theirs. Expect them to look at your values, your engagement surveys and even your Glassdoor ratings, and know your headcount, hiring plans and contractors well enough to answer live.</li><li>When women were leaving faster than men, mabl funded its ERGs, started paying ERG leaders and gave each group an executive sponsor.</li><li>Change is messy. When you&#39;re learning, you&#39;re not having an impact yet, and that can feel confusing when you come to work to have one.</li><li>Her advice: know your business, and meet people where they&#39;re at. Underperformance is often something underlying that you don&#39;t see yet, and most of the time people want to do their best work.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Connect with Ariana on LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariana-gett-75423159">https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariana-gett-75423159</a></p>