I worked with Heather during a crucial time in my career, one which definitely stacks up on my own Lightbulb Moment Christmas Tree. It was 2006, I was promoted to run my first team when I was in the agency recruiting world. More exciting was the move from Chicago to San Francisco, a city that I had never been to prior but was now stepping off a plane to see a new chapter in my life take off. I was wisely told to always seek to get outside of your comfort zone as many times as you can and this was a big step for me.

Heather was my direct manager then and for the next 3 years in San Francisco, she taught me to hone my authentic style, outwork everyone in the industry and build the 6 person team by showing them the right way to do the job as opposed to focusing too much on micromanaging them. Inspire by leading from the front has been a mantra ever since. So when I thought about this Lightbulb Moment myself, it made a ton of sense to have a chat with Heather about what three moments defined her career trajectory.

Heather Samaras runs all Growth Recruiting at Scale AI, a company that recently was valued at $7B and a dominant force in the generative AI field. Heather has over 20 years of recruiting and leadership experience working with Meta as well as the recruiting agency we worked together in, Motion Recruitment Partners.

Lightbulb Moment 1 – Ride the Wave

“My first moment was when I changed the course of what I thought I was going to do with my career,” Heather reflected when I asked about her 3 Lightbulb Moments. “I first graduated college, lived in New York City and I thought that I would a career in entertainment all my life because that’s how it was lining up, I went to school for broadcasting and interned with Letterman and was in the city where it all happens.”

It was right after college when Heather’s mom got cancer, after which she immediately moved back to her hometown of Boston to be there with her. What she thought was a temporary, turned out to be a defining career moment.

“I needed a job, so I answered this entry-level ad in a newspaper to get into sales and got into recruiting and sales. I never thought in a million years I would be in sales or recruiting, it was a completely foreign concept. I had friends that did the run of the mill, outside sales work and I know I didn’t want to do the door to door thing so I think there was just something about recruiting that landed with me.”

This was technology recruiting in the late ’90s and was the ‘boom’ time to get into this profession. Heather experienced early success in recruiting immediately. Recruiting in the .com Boom / Bust period was very different than today.

“There was no HR at the time. No internal recruiting departments so using an agency was just a part of building tech companies. I got there and everything was just taking off and crazy money was being made by young people like me. You would call hiring managers and convince them you had the best talent and these IT departments needed to be built to take on all of the demand because now everyone had a computer at their desk. I felt like I scratched a lottery ticket being so young and making the money I made was just crazy.”

This was the time that Heather began to center herself on recruiting as a profession when recruiting was not necessarily a field that was known or popular.

“I just did very well at the start and was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m going to do this now.’ I was offered to move to New York City within my first year to run my own team. This was my first, major, transition point from what I ‘thought’ I wanted to do to what I acted on and they were very different things. What I thought I was good at was the journalism, turned out to be unlocking what I’m truly good at which is connecting with people and unlocking my competitive spirit, being numbers driven and all of the components that were present in recruiting. Within a year I was hooked and stayed committed to this profession.”

Heather’s first moment is similar to many of us coming out of college, thinking you know yourself only to realize there’s so much more to discover about what makes you happy. What was ahead was how Heather navigated growth in her own professional identity in both the ‘Boom’ and the ‘Bust’ times.

Lightbulb Moment 2 – Leadership Identity

“The next moment was when I transitioned to a hardcore leadership position and moved to San Jose California. It was transitioning from running a small team in NYC to managing multiple teams, and managers and moving to Silicon Valley in 1999.”

Heather was promoted from NYC to run a 30-person sales office in the heart of Silicon Valley with no formal leadership training and to train entry-level recruiters, right out of college, how to do the job and find their own respective identities.

“I had to learn a lot about myself. I was 25, I didn’t really know what technology was in a lot of ways and it was honestly a sink-or-swim type of deal. I had to learn who I was first and then who I was as a leader, who I wanted to be and who I didn’t want to be. This was all about my identity at this moment as I had a mirror held up to my face many times in many situations. I did a lot of things right as a brand new leader. The office ended up being the number one in the company out of 20 different offices. Now granted, it was a really good market and we were in Silicon Valley but it was pretty amazing to be a part of this growth while I was going through such a big social change in moving from the East Coast to the West Coast.”

Up until this point in Heather’s early career, she was led by autocratic leaders and when she was promoted to her own office in San Jose, was told to run the same, old school, playbook.

“This moment taught me to be scrappy, and resourceful, ask a ton of questions, but most importantly, develop my own leadership voice. Up to this point, I just did what I was told to do but then I realized that part of being a good leader is to be authentic to who you are. I started to push back on this autocratic playbook and took pride in finding my own voice and have the voice of my people. I think I always have been an empathetic leader all the way through because empathy was a skill that helped me be a top performer in the first place.”

This was a point in time where 360 feedback didn’t exist and feedback was treated very differently than it is today. The only feedback you would hear was positive because the negative feedback just wouldn’t surface without an empathetic, relationship-based leadership style. This type of leadership ended up helping Heather survive the tough times that were right around the corner.

“The first four years were easy, I made tons of money and had a lot of fun. Then the market crashed and everything fell apart. For the next 4 or 5 years it was a major struggle because all of a sudden it was very, very hard to do what we were doing. Leading through turmoil was so different, how do you lead through layoffs and how do you develop your leadership identity when things are not going well. It was this empathetic leadership style that helped band the teams together though downsizing, smaller offices and commission checks. While my peers were leaving the industry altogether I stayed because I thought I owed the house a bit. It taught me resilience.”

In 2000, the ‘Bust’ happened and in Santa Clara County unemployment was the highest than anywhere else in the country for tech workers. To say the dynamics of what worked previously shifted is an understatement, the world suddenly became completely different. Heather had to adapt.

“This recession went on for two to three years after. Suddenly it was a lack of success when success was so easy to come by before. It’s funny, when you’re so successful you can define yourself one way but how do you define yourself when you’re not successful? When people are struggling. What you do as a leader during those times really shows truly what type of leader you really are.”

Lightbulb Moment 3 – Master your Craft

Heather worked at an agency recruiting firm for nearly 20 years, during this latter years at the agency, Heather started to make deeper relationships with her team (including myself) and to mature as a more, confident leader.

After nearly 20 years at the agency, Heather decided to move on to a different challenge and move to internal recruiting.

“Moving to a high-growth company like Meta was a whole different game. Understanding what it means to recruit at scale and work with leaders that have very high expectations was different. They expect you to know your stuff and be as on the ball with your craft as they are with theirs. If you don’t understand your pipeline or what you own in your area, you’re toast.”

Moving to Meta, Heather was exposed to 360 feedback that came in nearly on demand. Previously, Heather was on six months performance and feedback cadences.

“When I first got to Meta there was just so much feedback. It was almost crippling because you get it so often, from everyone. It was an eye-opening, humbling experience that some quarters I’d get great scores, and then some quarters were not so good. But all in all, I adjusted and sophisticated my game because I had no choice but to focus if I was to succeed in that environment. ”

Heather speaks about this moment sharpening nearly 20 years of work in a specific area being humbling to a point but adopting the growth mindset that existed in earlier years.

“I had to step up my game and figure out how to really connect with different types of people, how to make an impact, remove roadblocks, and deal with competing priorities. These senior leaders think that their positions are the most important and you have to navigate these complex relationships differently. The most effective way is to use data as a leverage point and how to build a case around it, build programs and become more sophisticated than just pushing things through because you’re the boss.”

Heather’s final learning lesson that recently has helped her is being transparent with expectations. Not over-promising or over-committing but being honest with stakeholders in a direct way.

“Everyone is moving so fast and we’re all trying to deliver, so it’s important to be empathetic with them but also direct and not being afraid to say no. I’ve learned that the promises you make and don’t deliver on can really add up, but if you’re being transparent on expectations early, no one gets disappointed. Bad news ages poorly and you just get burnt out trying to meet unrealistic expectations.”