Recruiting Leader @ Zapier | Former Educator | Advocate for job seekers, humanizing recruiting, and making the workplace more equitable for everyone!!

WARNING: There are scam accounts using my name. The only domains I use are "zapier.com" and "bonniedilber.com". If the email comes from any other domain, it's a fraudulent account, please report to your email provider, and to the FTC. https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/
If you receive comments referencing me on your posts, these are bots as part of a scam, please report and block those accounts! 

A bit about me: I'm a former educator and dog/toddler mom who is passionate about equity in the workplace. I love to be outdoors except when it's super hot, I'm a foodie who hates cheese, and I like cooking, politics, and travel. I have a full time job managing the GTM/Ops recruiting team at Zapier, and also love creating content on recruiting, workplace culture and trends, and career development. There's a lot of misinformation and I try to combat it as much as I can! 

My goal is to educate and bring transparency to recruiting and hiring processes - I hope my content helps you understand why things play out the way they do. That doesn't mean I always like or agree with the realities of being a part of the working world in 2025, but I think we're all better off when we understand the rules of the game we're playing. 

All opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer! If you'd like to work at Zapier, please apply directly on our jobs page. 

I do not have the capacity to respond to DMs or answer one-off questions but DO answer reader questions and offer free 1:1 chats via my newsletter on beehiiv - your best bet is to submit it there!
You can access all of my resources here: https://linktr.ee/bonniedilber

Bonnie Dilber

Well y'all, for the first time in over 3 years, I'm HIRING for two Sr. Recruiters to join my team at Zapier!

One role MUST be a seasoned sales recruiter with experience hiring Account Executives for SaaS companies, the other can be more of a generalist across GTM/Ops roles.

I've detailed what we're looking for and what to expect in the interview process on the job posting, but I'll highlight a few tips:
- I care a lot about the application questions - an imperfect resume with thoughtful responses will go further than the perfect resume who skips those questions. 
- Builders and "figure it out" people do really well at Zapier in general, and certainly on our recruiting team. Our recruiting team has built our enterprise sales team from the ground up in the last year, we've built AI workflows that other companies have adopted, we test out new systems all the time - if you enjoy that kind of thing, you'll be a great fit. 
- The values on Zapier's website show up in how we operate more than any other place I've worked - if you lean towards transparency, authenticity, and are comfortable giving feedback in all directions, then you'll do well here. 
- Candidates who are leveraging AI in their work thoughtfully (which includes knowing where to use AI and where not to) will have an advantage as AI fluency is an expectation at Zapier. 

If this seems like a good fit for you, I hope you'll apply! I'll drop the app below. :)

Recruiting Leader @ Zapier | Former Educator | Advocate for job seekers, demystifying recruiting, and making the workplace more equitable for everyone!!

Someone on LinkedIn told me they couldn't take me seriously because I was a teacher more than a decade ago after I requested some data to back up their claims (something that happens far too little on social media). 

That's not an unusual sentiment from those working in just about any other field outside of education - I heard it when I told people I was joining Teach For America out of college.

The reality is our society doesn't respect or value teachers. They place much of the blame for the state of education in this country on teachers rather than where it belongs (poverty, income inequality, etc). It's been normalized so it doesn't surprise me that someone would jump to "you're just a teacher" to attack someone's credibility. 

And I don't personally take offense at the "attack" - I'm proud of my time in the classroom and in education. It's still on my resume, I talk about it in every interview even though it's not altogether relevant. But I think it signals something about my character, values, and skills:

As a teacher:
- At 22, I taught kids to read 
- At 23, I wrote my first grant to build a community garden
- At 24, I raised over $70k to take my kids from TX to Disney World
- At 25, I became a grade level chair
- At 26, I ran an entire summer school as part of Teach For America's training institute

There's no world in which I could have learned and grown that much sitting in an office for 4 years. 

I clearly have a lot of confidence (why else would I regularly subject you all to my thoughts?) and my time in the classroom taught me that people lash out when they are feeling bad about themselves so I don't take this "critique" personally. 

But I wonder how someone currently teaching might feel seeing their profession used as a critique of someone's achievement, skill, or worthiness?

People are leaving the classroom in droves in large part because of the challenge of the work coupled with the lack of value society places on that work resulting in low pay and a lack of support. 

But I'll leave you with this: in a talent strategy conversation a few months back, our CEO said, "I love hiring people with teaching backgrounds, you all know how to find creative solutions, you work hard, you appreciate what we're building here. We need more people like that here." 

I work in a workplace that values my background as an educator, and I have lots of colleagues who share that background. 

And while there are those people out there who see educating our children as an inferior career path, there are plenty of people who recognize and value what educators do and know that the future of our country depends upon teachers.  

If you made it this far, I hope you will:
- support and advocate for the teachers around you
- fill your companies with the kinds of people who value and respect educators instead of those who look down on them
- hire more people with education backgrounds

In full transparency, I:
- do not answer calls from numbers I don't know
- will not give our personal information on a call with a person whose identity I have not verified (on the rare occasions I accidentally answer)
- do not engage with job opportunities where I don't have basic details like title and compensation 

I share this because I see a lot of recruiters out there criticizing applicants for not answering their calls or engaging with their outreach. And personally, I don't think this is a realistic expectation in 2026 when we're inundated with spam, and when scams are rampant. 

My suggestion to my fellow recruiting professionals:
1. Always emails from a professional domain. 
2. Let people know when they can expect to hear from you, or better yet, schedule a call at this convenience.
3. Provide information about the opportunity you're contacting them about, or be open to providing that info before requesting someone spend their time on a call with you. 

And if you're on the market or hearing from recruiters, please know that the above are both reasonable and protective measures you can take in this market where sadly anyone can be a target.

The bar for AI fluency has risen significantly in the last year and as someone who is theoretically going to be hiring for her team in the next few weeks 👀 , AI fluency will be top of mind. 

A year ago, "I've been using ChatGPT to plan my next vacation" or "Claude helps me speed up emails to customers" met the bar. 

Today, that's table stakes, and companies are looking for things like: 

"I built a workflow where an agent identifies inbound emails that could be potential customers, adds them to my CRM, enriches the profile and routes them to the right AE based on company size and location."

"I automated our weekly reporting by connecting ChatGPT to our CRM and data warehouse, cutting a 3-hour manual process down to 5 minutes."

“I created a custom prompt library and evaluation framework so our team gets consistent, on-brand outputs instead of generic AI responses.”

“I fine-tuned an internal GPT to answer questions using our SOPs, product docs, and past tickets — and tracked deflection rates to measure impact.”

“I built a hiring intake assistant that turns messy stakeholder notes into structured job requirements and scorecards.”

If you've done this kind of stuff, be ready to talk about it in interviews. If you haven't, then pick one of those ideas or come up with one of your own and start building!

P.S. I'd be lying if I said I can do this on my own; I use Zapier's copilot heavily to drive the process and then make a few tweaks from there so if this is overwhelming, start there. :) 
P.P.S. I'm going to drop some of the resources we're shared around AI fluency and AI in the hiring process in case you're considering applying at Zapier!

I keep seeing suggestions that people use AI to create resumes that match the job posting, lie about their experiences, etc. so they can "beat the ATS". 

And while I often try to educate on how ATSs work, today, I'm going to just embrace that and say, "OK sure, the ATS only moves forward people who perfectly match the job description." 

Even if that were true (which it's not, but if it was), eventually, you will have to talk to a recruiter or a hiring manager, and at that point, your lack of relevant experience, or your misrepresentation of your experience will come out and be disqualifying...and likely will disqualify you from future employment at that company as well because most companies aren't going to give a second chance to people who submit fraudulent applications.  

So it simply makes no sense to try to game the system. 🤷‍♀️

Dark Wolf Solutions

Direct cross-functional teams of 50+ IT professionals, managing systems architecture, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and software development for high-profile government clients.
Develop and implement IT roadmaps, ensuring compliance with federal regulations (FISMA, NIST, FedRAMP) while optimizing resource allocation and minimizing risk exposure.
Provide thought leadership and strategic direction for IT service delivery, guiding projects with multi-million-dollar budgets and tight timelines to successful completion.
Deliver large-scale, multi-phase IT projects within budget and on schedule, supporting government agencies in enhancing infrastructure, software solutions, and cybersecurity frameworks.
Oversee system integration projects, collaborating with stakeholders and vendors to implement secure, scalable IT infrastructures for clients across defense and intelligence sectors.
Lead security protocols and risk management initiatives, managing federal cybersecurity requirements and implementing best practices for data protection, incident response, and disaster recovery.
Foster strong relationships with government stakeholders, ensuring consistent communication and successful collaboration to meet evolving technology requirements and timelines.
Act as a key liaison between government clients, contractors, and internal teams, ensuring alignment between IT objectives and broader organizational goals.

Director of Information Technology

BAE Systems, Inc.

•Lead geographically dispersed enterprise Operations, PMO, and Cybersecurity professionals developing and delivering on strategic roadmaps and enterprise objectives in support of Department of Defense programs.   
•Guide Cybersecurity teams implementing RMF processes and procedures to maintain the highest levels of security for on premise and cloud environments.
•Develop organizational objectives, goals, and roadmaps to implement Digital Engineering and Model Based System Engineering capabilities across multi-billion-dollar defense contracts.
•Ensure achievement of financial, schedule, technical, and new business performance objectives resulting in over $10M in revenue year over year.
•Develop and implement enterprise portfolio integration, risk, opportunity, and dependency identification and traceability through resolution.
•Develop and implement best in class system architecture, technical design, and system/software development processes utilizing DevSecOps principles and processes.
•Implement and utilize Earned Value Management System (EVMS) across programs and provide real time status reporting to senior leadership.

Senior Technical Manager - Information Services

Zendesk

•Led data architecture programs to improve key customer metrics including CSAT scoring, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Churn/Retention Rates, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), etc.
•Led enterprise Cybersecurity improvement programs to achieve SOC 2 and FedRamp compliance and improve proactive threat detection, reducing system attack attempts.
•Influence cross-functional organizations while improving strong internal relationships to meet business requirements and cost objectives.
•Increased application availability and integrity and implemented SLAs for high levels of accessibility, security, and reliability.
•Led and provided development opportunities for direct reports and teammates to learn, grow and improve in their careers.

Sr. Technical Manager, Program Management

BAE Systems

•Led software development teams to develop new software capabilities and implement a technical code refresh for the F-35 aircraft program.
•Developed organizational objectives, goals, and roadmaps to implement Information Technology and Digital Engineering Systems across multi-billion-dollar DoD contracts.
•Led 125 employee enterprise Information Services team developing and delivering hardware, software, and cloud capabilities on Sentinel, MMIII, and F-35 DoD programs.
•Developed, maintained and monitored OKRs and KPIs providing gap analysis to drive improvement across all business functions.
•Led Cybersecurity teams implementing RMF processes and procedures to maintain the highest levels of security for application and network infrastructure.
•Managed implementation of 3 classified labs providing technical support to Nuclear Surety, Telemetry, Ground Support, and others in support of Sentinel and MMIII.
•Developed and maintained supplier and partner relationships to increase time to delivery for hardware and software capabilities by 70% and reduce FTE spend by $2.5M year over year.
•Developed and implemented best in class system architecture, technical design, and system/software development processes, improving cloud and data center uptime to 99.9%.
•Led program/project management teams establishing a governance framework to optimize collaboration and execute complex projects utilizing Agile and Waterfall methodologies.

Chief of Staff - Information Technology/Services

Dyno Nobel

•Define, implement, and monitor core operational tech stack to ensure optimization and scalability of hardware and software solutions.
•Use Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposal (RFP), and Request for Quote (RFQ) techniques to identify, select, and engage with suppliers to ensure competitive market advantage. Direct and implement supplier-sourcing strategies to ensure high quality, timely delivery, and cost competitiveness.
•Manage and report on budgets, resources, and return on investment for multi-million dollar concurrent projects.
•Facilitate global cross-functional steering committee and decision-making meetings.
•Utilized Earned Value Management System (EVMS) on projects and provide real time status reporting to senior leadership.
•Responsible for preparing, examining, analyzing, negotiating, and revising contractual language in contracts and subcontracts.

Principal IT Program/Product Manager

Intermountain Healthcare

Delivered strategic internal and customer facing initiatives and programs enhancing and creating new revenue streams.
Led initiative to leverage industry best practices to increase structure and use of PMO processes, procedures, and standards.
Built and grew relationships with executive leadership and organizational leaders to increase PMO footprint and support.

IT/BD Project Manager

Technology Innovation and Development Leader

Information Technology Leader challenging the status quo.
• 10+ years leading global cross-functional technical teams
• 10+ years developing strategic roadmaps, leading L1 OKR programs, and improving processes and procedures that increase recurring revenue and reduce overhead expenses
• 10+ years leading software development teams utilizing the Agile SDLC and implementing CI/CD processes and procedures

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Bonnie Dilber

Dan Johnson PMP, CSM 💭

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Dan Johnson PMP, CSM 💭

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