Episode Details

What's up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Ashley Langford, Marketing Operations and RevOps Leader.

Summary: Ashley Langford has every credential the MOps job search advice says you're supposed to have: 2 Marketo Champion designations, a decade of B2B SaaS experience across multiple industries, a strong community presence, and a track record of building functions from scratch. She's still getting auto-rejected within minutes and ghosted by companies she was genuinely excited about. In this episode, she breaks down what the MOps job search actually looks like in 2026 from the inside, including how she uses Claude to build an interview packet before every meeting, why she has a hard line against unpaid take-home projects, and how the director-level search carries friction points that most job search content ignores entirely. She also says something most practitioners won't say out loud: she realized she was performing confidence instead of having it. If you're in a search right now, or know someone who is, this one is worth your full attention.

About Ashley Langford
Ashley Langford is a Director of Marketing Operations and 2-time Marketo Champion who has built and led MOps functions from scratch across B2B SaaS companies including LastPass, Integrate, HackerRank, GreenSky, and Waystar. Her work spans fintech, insurance, biotech, and HR technology, with deep expertise in Marketo, Salesforce, 6sense, and Looker. Adobe's Marketo Champion program selects around 40 practitioners globally each year; Ashley has earned the designation twice, in 2020 and 2023, and is also a Marketo Revvie Award Finalist.

What Nobody Warns You About When You Get Laid Off

The shame of a layoff hits in a specific, quiet way that almost nobody includes in the public job search conversation. It doesn't look like despair. It doesn't stop you from applying, updating the resume, or showing up to the networking calls. It just tilts you. You overexplain the layoff in interviews. You hedge when confidence is what the moment requires. You walk in grateful to be considered instead of knowing what you're worth.

Ashley Langford is 4 months into a search that should, by any rational measure, be going better. She has 2 Marketo Champion designations, a decade of track record across multiple industries, and genuine community presence. Her time at LastPass ended in a layoff that was clearly business-driven following the company's public turbulence. None of that insulated her from the quiet voice that arrives anyway.

She didn't recognize it immediately. It took a few conversations before she saw what was happening. "I was performing confidence instead of actually having it," she says. For someone whose professional identity is built on expertise and results, that admission is uncomfortable. But naming it is where you start. You can't correct what you haven't acknowledged.

The market doesn't help. Ashley has the credentials, the community ties, and the network. She's done what the standard job search advice prescribes. She's still getting auto-rejected within minutes and ghosted by companies she was genuinely excited about. "I haven't been ghosted this much since I was on Tinder like 12 years ago," she says. "At least then I knew why."

The honest accounting: being well-credentialed matters inside the MOps community, where a Marketo Champion designation opens doors with people who know what it means. Outside that community, there are plenty of doors where it doesn't register. And the external recruiter pipeline, which used to generate steady inbound interest for practitioners at her level, has gone almost completely quiet. That drought is a real signal about what's happening in this market. The job posting numbers don't capture it.

The practitioners who move through a senior search with the most clarity tend to be the ones who name what they're carrying early.