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A Day in the Life of Greenhouse Software's Ailbhe Cunningham

In this week’s 'A Day in the Life of...' interview, Greenhouse Software's Ailbhe Cunningham provides an insight into her role as Technical Consultant.


Hi Ailbhe, can you tell us a bit about your role and how you got here?

As a Technical Consultant in Greenhouse, it is my job to help customers get the most out of their integration between Greenhouse and their HRIS system. This can be through our purpose-built product, HRIS Link, or custom integrations. I typically spend eight to 16 weeks with a client designing their integration, ensuring the integration is best in class, and making sure it meets their business needs.

I ended up as a Technical Consultant by accident. I chose to do engineering in college because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I knew I liked maths and problem-solving, so engineering seemed like a good place to start. When I finished my undergraduate in electrical engineering, I decided I wanted to move towards a more people-oriented career, so I did a Master's in electrical engineering and business. This was in an effort to get out of the lab and have a mix of more people-based roles while leveraging my technical background. After college, I started as Technical Consultant at Deloitte and had a few great years there before joining the SaaS industry with Greenhouse.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My typical day is comprised of customer meetings where I help customers design their integrations and help troubleshoot any issues they are having during the build process. I will also have various configuration tasks that need to be completed for my customers and lots of follow-up emails to be sent to ensure that the milestones of the project are being met.

What part of your role do you enjoy the most?

What I enjoy most about my role is getting to work with clients from all over the world and the fast pace of our engagements. During my time at Greenhouse, I have worked with clients from Canada, the Netherlands, Korea, and Germany, to name a few. I love learning about different working cultures and personalities. Our standard engagement is also quite short, which means we have to keep a fast pace to get the work over the line. This means no two days are the same.

Which top three skills are vital for this role and why?

1. Problem-solving: This is, without a doubt, the most important skill for my job. Customers can have massively different recruitment flows, and it is a technical consultant's job to make sure we can make those flows work with our product. We also have to be able to look at an existing process and iterate and improve on it to ensure the customer is getting the most out of the Greenhouse functionality.

2. Communication: Clear communication is vital for a technical consultant as it is our job to communicate complex technical information to people from a non-technical background. A customer doesn't need to know what an API is, but they do need to understand that we will be moving information from one system to another and be able to help with the mapping of this information.

3. Time management: Working with multiple clients at the same time means you need to be able to juggle multiple tasks and be able to prioritize correctly to ensure all deadlines are met.

What’s the most challenging aspect of your role?

For me, the most challenging part of my role is keeping up with the ever-changing space. Our product is constantly changing and improving, as are the products that we integrate with. Staying on top of this can be challenging, but it also adds to the enjoyment of the job and ensures no two days are the same. As a queer woman in tech, I also often struggle with imposter syndrome working in such a heteronormative male environment. Due to this, I love getting involved in initiatives like myGwork to help promote visibility and provide a safe space for minorities in the workplace.

How do you help others feel like they belong in your team/promote inclusion?

A really easy thing I like to do to promote inclusion is to include my pronouns on my email sign-off, LinkedIn and Zoom. I hope this shows my allyship to the transgender community and promotes inclusion in my workplace. This is a really simple thing for me to do that I hope shows in a small way that Greenhouse is an inclusive place to work and shows we are open to learning and educating ourselves on how to be allies to all people in the LGBTQ+ community. Recently, I have also started putting the pronunciation of my name (Al-va) in my sign-off to help promote the inclusion of different cultures.

Which podcast/Youtube series would you recommend to someone interested in pursuing a career in this area to help develop their skills/prepare them for the role?

To be completely honest, I’m more of a podcast-for-fun kind of gal. If you’re looking for recommendations on long-form investigative journalism or pop culture podcasts, look no further! My current favourites are ‘and that's what you Really missed’, ‘Celebrity Memoir Bookclub’ and ‘Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV’.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I honestly don't know. Covid taught me that planning can be a bit futile and that being able to roll with the punches and take opportunities as they are presented to you can remove unnecessary stress and bring you to places you would never have planned for yourself. I hope that I’m happy and working in a job that still challenges me in a workplace that matches my values.

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