Cloudera’s Culture Sets Up Partners For Success

Cloudera has made significant investments in building and preserving a strong, diverse culture, and partners are noticing.

When Cloudera Senior Director of Global Channel Programs and Strategy Rachel Tuller hires new members of her team, there’s one thing she won’t do.

“I try really hard not to look at names—sometimes you can’t help it, it pops up on the resume. And I don’t check LinkedIn until right before I have the interview,” Tuller said.

It’s part of her effort to weed out bias, ensuring that she not only recruits the best candidates, but the most diverse. After all, research has found that when employees are on a diverse and inclusive team, they generate more breakthrough ideas, avoid groupthink and deliver more creative, successful solutions. All reasons why Cloudera has built a culture focused on diversity throughout its business operations, even hiring a chief diversity officer in 2020.

“Regardless of who sits at the table. If it’s a homogeneous group, we’re going to come up with the same ideas,” added Tuller. “You have some people that come to the table and might be a little more bullish or direct in the way that they want to approach a partner situation. You have others a little softer. And so for me, balancing that is really key to engaging with partners.”

It’s proof that diversity and company culture have a direct impact on a business’ bottom line. For Cloudera, that’s seen in its partner relationships that extend worldwide.

“I myself have contacts across the world for Cloudera,” said Andy Smith, GSI and global technology alliances director at Talend. “If I give a good example, in the French marketplace, we’ve got a great deal of overlap and very strong professional and personal relationships that actually happen.”

Achieving that kind of personal relationship with your customers and partners goes beyond the hiring process, which is why Cloudera has put forth a number of initiatives to strengthen its company culture, like employee un-plugged days.

“It’s not a holiday, and it’s not your PTO. It’s an extra ‘unplugged day’ that everybody takes off. And what’s so amazing about that is you don’t come back to 5,000 emails; everybody takes a day off,” said Natascha Lee, senior director of global partner marketing at Cloudera.

It comes as the pandemic causes a massive shift in the workplace. More employees are working remotely and must engage with their peers in new ways. Preserving a company culture has become harder, but as Cloudera shows, it’s an achievable goal. And the benefits go beyond employee retention, even enhancing partner relationships.

For more coverage on Cloudera and how it‘s working with partners to reach its goals, check out CRNtv.