Blog Archives

May happy hour in the south bay

5/25/2017

On Thursday, May 18, OrgOrgers in the South Bay hung out in the sunshine on Medallia's patio. Sipping on wine and summer craft beers, they gathered at a long table to get to know each other and ended up talking about the logistics of stocking their offices with food and beverage. Zesty provided a delicious spread of their house-made hors d'ouvres, some of which they finished assembling on site to ensure they were as fresh as possible.

After a failed attempt to start a serenade by Medallia's A-Cappella group, the OrgOrg crew watched an iPhone demo and played ladder ball.

See you at the June Happy Hour - venue To Be Announced!

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OrgOrg is for you, to support you, to celebrate us

5/21/2017

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This post comes to us from an OrgOrger who wishes to remain anonymous. - Kim

In April of 2016, I needed some voice of reason and reached out to my friends in OrgOrg. I was feeling overworked, underappreciated, and absolutely powerless. I had doubts whether or not I was good enough for my role as an Office Manager at a 25-person startup.

After the departure of the company’s Head of Finance and Head of Talent, I had taken on a lot of new responsibilities for the company. Aside from a part time financial controller, I became a one-woman-show of operations for the company. I alone was responsible for facilities, budgeting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, company culture, recruiting, HR, payroll, and all administrative work. As the icing on the cake, our lease for our office space was being terminated and I had to locate and execute an office move by the end of the following month.

Coworkers and co-founders would offer to help, but when given a specific task they would suddenly shy away. My mind was in panic at the amount of work ahead of me, but I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and so I kept going.

With our brokers at Hello Office, I found the perfect office for the team. Everything was within walking distance. It was within our budget. It had plenty of natural light, full kitchen, and plenty of storage space. It was a startup’s dream office.

The team packed up their boxes on a Friday afternoon. That same team walked into an office that was fully furnished, and plug-and-play ready on Monday morning. As I sat in the beautiful new office with all my colleagues ecstatic around me, I was so proud of myself for what I had accomplished.

A few months later as the office got settled in, I was ready to ask the co-founders for the next steps in my career. I wanted to offboard some of the mundane day-to-day office coordination items. I hoped to start working on bigger and more meaningful projects for the company and pick up some new skills. I made a list of my regular responsibilities and the time it consumed on a weekly average. I also made a list of other projects I wanted to tackle. I made a strong argument to my cofounders how I needed some part time administrative and facilities help to take my career to the next step. They said they understood, and how much they valued me and appreciated me and would let me know what they decide on.

As I anxiously waited for their decision, they neglected my needs for an entire month.

Finally, they got back to me and excitedly told me they would get me a virtual assistant (that I of course would have to research and choose on my own, and that wouldn’t solve my need for in-office help) and a small bump in pay. They were SO proud of themselves with the solution they had come up with. Little did they know they had shattered my self worth just a little bit more. At that point I realized no matter how hard I worked my efforts there weren't going to be appreciated.

So I left.

I started at a new company in August and I have never been happier. The difference was immediate and jaw-dropping. The manager and director both thank my efforts on a constant basis. They ask me almost weekly if there is anything new I would like to tackle, and provide suggestions for projects they think will interest me. They check in to see how comfortable I am with my workload on a regular basis. I feel appreciated and valued.

I wanted to share this story because you are not often told it’s okay to give up. As I kept insistently telling myself to “keep going” and to “suck it up”, my friends from OrgOrg reminded me to “listen to my gut”. I continued to put myself down day after day until I realized I was not giving up on myself, but I was giving up on them.

If you are giving 110% and if the company makes you feel like it's still not enough, they don't deserve you. If they cannot invest in your future, you cannot invest all of your effort into them. All the unsung heroes of OrgOrg work in a difficult profession where 100 wins go unnoticed, but one late lunch will be an outcry from the entire office. I hope you all remember to pride yourselves in the work you do and make sure your management does the same.

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HelloSign Uses Lunch to Bring Teams Together

5/7/2017

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Great company culture can often seem elusive, investing in a few key programs can support and accelerate your company's culture initiatives. HelloSign was ready to advance their company culture in a big way. To drive collaboration and knock down internal silos, they began sponsoring weekly lunches. What they liked about weekly lunches was that it encouraged teams to eat together.

Team lunches initially began as pizza Fridays, but eventually, the team grew tired of the same fare week in and week out. They decided to formalize the program by partnering with ZeroCater. With access to 350 local vendors, there is always something new for the HelloSign team to try, reducing their lunch fatigue. Their account manager learns all of their preferences, dietary restrictions, and delivery logistics. Custom account management ensures the primary focus of the program is enjoying a delicious meal as a team.

As a result of weekly lunches HelloSign has seen an increase in employee retention by building a family-like culture. Furthermore, they've seen stronger collaboration because of powerful peer-to-peer relationships built over lunch.

Culture is one of the top ways to retain talent—use food as a tool to build culture and keep it strong. Companies like ZeroCater make food simple, so office managers can focus on their priorities.

Kayla Rockwell is a campaign manager at ZeroCater. An avid writer both personally and professionally, she enjoys writing non-fiction. In her free time, she spends as much time outside as possible; skiing, hiking, swimming, and hanging with her pup.

ZeroCater makes planning and ordering food simple for companies. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, ZeroCater specializes in providing companies catered meals for any occasion from a diverse range of local restaurants, caterers, and food trucks. ZeroCater currently feeds thousands of companies including, BuzzFeed, IDEO, Bleacher Report, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ClassPass, and Blue Apron. As of March 2017, it is operational in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Washington D.C. and Chicago.

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Phoenix Happy Hour!

5/1/2017

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This past February, OrgOrg established a Phoenix, AZ chapter and in late March, met for our first ever happy hour. OrgOrg members from ZocDoc, General Dynamics, Tanga, and DoorDash met at Bar Louie in Tempe to enjoy drinks, light apps, and get acquainted.

We'd love for you to join us at our next Happy Hour this Thursday, May 4th, 5:30-7:30PM at Kona Grill in Scottsdale.

Phoenix locals are invited to join our Phoenix OrgOrg Facebook Group where we share opportunities, ideas, vendors, and resources.

Please reach out to dana@orgorg.co with any questions!

Dana Brown is the Office Manager at DoorDash in Phoenix, AZ. Her free time is spent running around town with her French Bulldog, Stevie. Dana loves trying her hand at new hobbies like knitting, calligraphy, and brewing her own kombucha.

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tips on hiring

5/1/2017

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The Sourcery helps companies with early stage recruiting, and OrgOrg is awesomely aimed at supporting people needing to juggle various tasks at once (one of those tasks is sometimes recruiting). In any organization hiring and interviewing is mandatory, and the task of managing the hiring process can often fall into the lap of the person running the office. This article is meant as a bit of a roadmap of things to help that person navigate that process.

SCOPE and what you think you want versus need versus the reality of the situation
The more specific you make the job requirements, the fewer people are going to fulfill them. The fewer people that can fulfill them, the harder the role will be to fill and the more you are likely to have to pay that new employee. While it might be nice to want to clone the background of a high-performing employee or even the hiring manager his-or-herself, properly defining the role based on actual needs without unnecessary complications will save you time, energy, and frustration throughout the process.

When hiring managers first conceive of a position that will address their needs, it’s quite common to create a laundry list of skills and experience that would ensure their new team member would be equipped to tackle every imaginable challenge they might face in the role. While this might be a great way to start the brainstorming process, at some point sacrifices need to be made for the sake of pragmatism.

Ask yourself, “how many of these skills are essential to the position on day one, and how many can be learned on the job?” For skills and experience that truly can’t be learned easily or that are fundamental to the core function of the position, add them to your requirements lists (examples may be expert-level understanding of a particular concept, past management experience, or participation in a specific marketing function). For the skills and experience that would be advantageous in the role, but that can either be learned or demonstrated through other means, consider adding them to your bonus requirements (examples may be technologies your team is interested in learning, a particular degree that might be advantageous to the role, or a skill you are confident someone could learn in the future).

ENERGY and where to best focus your limited time and money
Once you have your new role properly and realistically scoped out, you’ll want to make sure you get the most from your time, budget, and hard work. In order to do this, you need to be selective about how you go about the search.

Finding a good job board is great, but even posting to a relatively small number can quickly eat up your time-budget, and most are not appropriate for every type of role. To make sure you aren’t posting somewhere that isn’t going to give you the traction you need, approach finding the job board as you would approach finding the job you are looking to fill. Search the internet for comparable roles and take note of where they are posted. Once you have a good idea of where your type of position is typically advertised, make a spreadsheet to track the different boards and the cost associated with posting there. This will allow you to select the boards that best fit in with your posting/advertising budget, and you’ll have some options to come back to if any of the boards don’t seem to be generating the candidate flow you would expect.

Posting job ads is not likely to fill every type of position though, especially if your company doesn’t have a lot of brand recognition or prestige. To fill these positions that don’t generate a sufficiently qualified applicant flow--no matter how many job boards and revisions to the ad you try--you’re going to have to start actively approaching talent. While this can be a daunting thought for many people unaccustomed to the type of work, there are some things you can try before calling in the experts.

First, make sure you have a strong referral system in place to leverage your existing employees’ social and professional networks. Good people know good people, so starting with people connected to your (hopefully) strong staff will give you a leg up.

Next, post an update to your social media networks on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn letting people know what you’re looking for along with a link to the job ad. Even if you don’t know someone that fits the bill, word can get around and you might find an introduction to a great candidate with relatively little investment of effort.

Finally, if none of this has generated the success you were hoping for, you may need to call in a professional or professionals that specialize in active candidate outreach. These recruiters will be able to assess your needs and actually go out into the field to identify, evaluate, and engage candidates that would be perfect for the role you’re looking to fill.

PROCESS and how to effectively manage your hiring pipeline
Now that you’ve put in the hard work to start generating strong flow of candidates that are interested and qualified for the job you may feel like the heavy lifting is over. While a lot of the most complicated and difficult tasks may be behind you, it would be a mistake to assume that this next step won’t have a tremendous impact on the ultimate success or failure of your search. We’re talking about the interview process, and you should ignore it at your own peril.

While filling a typical role may have a fairly familiar and predictable interview process, it’s often the little things that make the biggest differences.

Candidate experience, in particular, is something that is overlooked far too often to the detriment of the search. Taking days or weeks to respond to applicants is a sure way to lose out on candidates before you’ve even had a chance to speak to them and evaluate their skills and fit. Taking further days or weeks between interview steps will serve to weed out even more candidates along the way, and these are the people you were hoping to continue on in the process.

Similarly, hastily assembling an interview panel of inexperienced or poorly-briefed staff members will be more likely to work against your efforts than to generate a hire. Make sure everyone that speaks with a candidate knows exactly how and what they should be evaluating them for, and remember that candidates are simultaneously evaluating the role, company, and culture based on their experiences during the interview process.

Once you’ve found someone that can do the job, that is interested in the company and position, and that the team agrees would a great addition to the company, you would be wise to do what you can to bring that person on board. There will always be situations where you want to evaluate another seemingly-strong candidate in order to make an informed decision, but make sure that person is actually in the pipeline and moving forward in the process. Avoid continuing to “shop around” with the hope that the perfect candidate will suddenly appear (especially if you’ve already seen several candidates or the search has been going on for some time) or you will risk losing out on someone that could have fulfilled your needs and let you focus on your next most pressing priorities.

Hiring strong, qualified talent can be one of the biggest challenges most companies will face. Trying to do so in a timely fashion is just another complication that leads to frustration, long hours, and wasted resources. While much of the work described above can be tackled by existing team members looking to help with the hiring process, there are solutions that exist to aid in the process and ultimately improve every step of it along with the candidates it will produce.

The Sourcery has supported the hiring efforts of hundreds of growing companies and can assist you from beginning to end, or anywhere inbetween. As a professional services provider we’re happy to chat and help think through these issues as needed. When working with our clients, we start by scoping out the job requirements and help to write and post a strong ad. We source, identify, evaluate, and engage top talent (our particular specialty) as well as manage the rest of process as needed. Finally, we pass these specifically-targeted candidates along to you and advise on how to best move them through the interview process all the way to the offer stage.

At The Sourcery, we approach recruiting in a fundamentally different way than traditional fee based agencies. By working as an extension of our clients’ hiring teams, we are able to focus our resources on the highest priority and most challenging roles while removing the bulk of the process from the client. While the extra bandwidth and technical proficiency that we provide to these searches has a huge impact, there are several things that anyone looking to fill a role should consider.

Give us a call or shoot us an email and let us know how we can help! You can reach us at info@thesourcery.com :-)

Ryan Miller is the Director of Accounts at The Sourcery and oversees the recruiting services that deliver through in support of our clients. With more than a decade of recruiting experience including building and running a small recruiting company, Ryan is an expert in building and delivering on recruiting strategies for clients.

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May happy hour in the south bay

OrgOrg is for you, to support you, to celebrate us

HelloSign Uses Lunch to Bring Teams Together

Phoenix Happy Hour!

tips on hiring

OrgOrg

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