Tell me about yourself
- soc & comm degrees, didn’t know what to do but goal to help, impact, work at company/org with values aligned
- Non-profit job, wanted to help who NPO helps, discovered EX incidentally
- Have to work most of life, should be fulfilling and overall positive
- Org cant meet goals as effectively if EEs aren’t taken care of- Lower retention, more burnout
- Took on doing team activities, onboarding
and saw results - retention, morale, better partnership
- Been working in EX roles ~5 years, many hats
morale events, training and supervising, onboarding, offboarding etc
- Current role = strong focus on onboarding; 500 ees before, over 700 now per year
- Also work on offboarding, I-9 processes and platform, ServiceNow ticketing reporting and processes, employee surveys and data, trained most of team, some Workday processes, and variety of other items
- Learned a lot; great team & manager; Grateful for what I’ve learned
- Learned also what I want to do now & where to take my career now ready to hone in on PM skills and my onboarding passion more as next step and leadership skills
- Discord role stood out b/c focus on helping scale onboarding program and processes @ growing company
-Already user & fan of Discord's product / company, so I got really excited when I saw the job
not only was the exact role I was looking for but at a company I also really like
So that’s why I’m here today & I’m very excited
Describe yourself / your strengths
- Ideation
Come up with new ideas and explore thoughts.
Exp: go to person (recognition platform, talent matters, learning days)
- Learner
Always want to learn more and improve
- Exp. hard for me to finish school because love a challenge and learning something new, but have gotten to still do a lot of that in the different roles I’ve had
(I-9 compliance, creating a new program, figuring out a new system)
- Problem-solving / process improvement
Investigate and look for reasons and causes in different situations
- Exp. Created 30+ SN ENHs, written more KBAs than anyone, built highly rated onboarding process
- Individualization
Find unique qualities different people to figure out how to best collaborate
- Exp: On my team some people are more of problem solvers some are more detail-oriented, more process oriented; Try to recognize strengths and consider that when collaborating, delegating, asking for help
- Passionate
advocate, driven by strong interests. If I know something is a creating a negative exp for EEs, will do whatever I can to fix it or help it get fixed
- Exp. Late laptops
Describe your weaknesses
Letting-go
- Issue: Hard sometimes to hand over reins on project I’ve put a lot into & am passionate about
Good at delegating tasks, but the ownership sometimes hard to let go of
Not that I don’t trust people or believe in their abilities because I do
But when I’ve gotten so used to putting all this effort into something, can be hard to hand it off
I can always find ways to keep improving it
So hard to let go of that and put it in someone else’s hands at times
- Solution: But to counteract, write training plan and do hand off sessions as needed
And remain as a resource to help if needed
This helps me feel like who I’m handing to has all resources to take over
- Exp: Orientation
Overthinking
- Issue: struggled with quick decisions at times, like to think different outcomes
- Solution: remember agile principles, iterate & learn
- Exp: Start date exception decisions
Self-Critical
- Issue: Can always look back at work to find something to improve; Can dwell on mistakes or errors or worry about making them, distracting
- Solution: Remind self of successes; shout out folder; prioritize to stay on track with other things to focus on
Think about learnings and how to apply in future to move on; set deadlines for myself to finish something up
- Exp: Workday mistake
Why are you looking for a new job?
- In different place in career when joined company; hadn't decided focus yet in HR
- Have now explored a lot of HR, figured out onboarding / PM is desired path & path to grow leadership skills
- @ current job, PM/onboarding focused roles not available
- I asked manager about this in career convo and was told we don't have PM roles for that kind of thing and company doesnt see need for a focused onboarding team or role right now
- To build career and skills, realized need to explore jobs
- Came across this role, shocked because early in my search
- Role has everything I was looking for and is at a company I already know and like
What are you looking for in your next role?
- Want to focus on program and project management to utilize & grow skills, Less room to focus on that in current role
- Want to continue growth rather than risk plateauing; Continued learning is very important to me
- Want to make a positive impact helping others
Also want company that aligns with values and values EX like I do
- In the job post, every bullet stood out
Felt like I could related to and get excited about every point
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
- Be at company I love, one been at for hopefully close to that long
- Grow alongside company
- Where I land now is where I hope to stay for that long now that I really know what I want w/ career
- Skilled program and project manager in the HR space
- Build leadership skills, manage team successfully
- I hope to get at least one or two HR certifications as well
- Above anything continue learning, innovating - don’t want to get comfortable in doing things ‘the same as always’
What is Discord? / What do you know about Discord?
- Communications platform / app, helps people come together w/ voice, typing or video
- Connect about anything; community of strangers or close friend
- Servers for anything and everything to help people have a place to talk about different things
- Goal to create spaces & belonging for all
- Love & use frequently, talk to partner about groceries, connect w/ friends, play games, music artists
- Became nitro sub trying to boost my friends and I’s server
What draws you to Discord specifically? / Why do you want to join Discord?
- Work for companies I can support / values
- Easier to put heart in when connect w/ company & products
- Has product I love
- Based on reading, seems to value EX and supporting its workforce, aligns w/ my value
How does your previous experience fit with this role?
- JD, each bullet resonated
- Designing and leading a comprehensive onboarding program for all new hires:
- Dev scalable programs and processes that can be adapted across regions
- Adapt to increasing size
- Lead global new hire experience and programming for the distributed-first workforce
- Call outs about inclusion & allowing hires to show up as true selves
- Building partnerships across departments
- Made big strides in digitizing and automating in the onboarding space
- Make it a goal to use design thinking and agile methods to iterate quickly based on feedback
- Not even all of it,- and that’s why I felt so excited to come across posting
- Everything I’ve been looking for role wise and company wise just appeared before my eyes one day on LinkedIn
Why are you the best candidate for this role?
- Felt like JD was written for me
- Experiences over the last 5 years prepared me for success
- Scaling & building inclusive and growing onboarding program for remote & distributed workforce, building partnerships across departments, creating new onboarding processes and managing the program from end to end
- Strong passion for creative problem solving & improving processes - huge core piece of who I am as a person even outside of the workplace
- Quick & adaptable learner
- Not phased by new environments & am usually first on a team to pick up a new system or process
- On top of that, strong passion for Discord as a company - Working for company I already love ike
- Discord would be dream come true
- You know I will be dedicated, put my whole heart into my work, and stick around to grow alongside the company
- Combining my experience and enthusiasm for this company and industry, I know I would be a good fit to succeed in this role and grow alongside the company
In the first 60 days, what do you think is going to be the most challenging thing about this position?
- Always new systems, processes and info to learn
- B/c onboarding focus, need to quickly get up to speed, become a Discord company expert
- Onboarded over 1000 employees virtually, never have been on other side
- New challenges come with joining virtually
- Not bad challenges though, exciting & I’m adaptable
- New learning experiences
What do you hope to gain / achieve from this position / role?
- Main reason I’m searching for new role is to learn and grow program management skills, grow in the onboarding space
- Excited by possibility of getting to learn new onboarding, help it grow
- Globalize processes, build new partnerships
- Current onboarding program I built has usually 96, 97% overall favorability rating
- Love to continue that at Discord
- Onboarding, EX, PM = areas II enjoy and am passionate about
- So, am excited to grow in that realm
- Also am a huge problem solver so excited to take on new challenges, solve new problems
- Through this type of work, naturally have been growing leadership skills as well
- Hope to do that in this role as well over time
How did you/do you offer value in your role?
- Fast learner - Usually first one to figure out new system or process then teach to the rest of the team
Document as many processes & instructions as possible
- Teach things when I can, manage team Coordinators
- Create and documents processes, something I just naturally do & enjoy- Manager eventually asked me to be the official owner for it for team b/c she found my documents to be clear and helpful
- Onboarding owner for AMER - Designed and built program essentially from scratch; Becoming program owner of that, been able to impact employees while also positively impacting company
- Ideation - Always thinking about creative problem solving, design thinking, how to improve things; People come to me when they want to brainstorm new solutions
What would you do in the first week, month and year in this role?
First week
- Going through onboarding process
Taking notes on process / highlights / ideas
- Get acquainted with systems
Follow tutorials, play around
- Get to know teammates and key partners
- Start setting 1:1s to get to know people
- Ask questions, do research
- Spend time reading through various resources
- First month
- Continue getting to know team & partners
- Ask people how I can best contribute in my role in their opinion
- Learn from people who have been on the job longer
- Ask questions and for resources as needed
- Take a lot of notes, be a sponge
First year
- Was told Discord is trying to hire 700 or so people this year
- So hopefully would get a lot of hands on experience
- Learning onboarding process
- In less than a year at current company, was exceeding job description
- Got promoted
- Definitely not an expectation as a progress in my career to have that happen
- But just a demonstration that I learn fast and dive in
- Which IS something I would plan on doing here
- My hope is to have made solid progress in all expectations of the role
- Build strong partnerships with key stakeholders and collaborators across departments
- Onboarding program success requires strong partnerships
- So would put a strong focus on that
How would you help meet Discord’s goals and objectives?
- I know Discord has goal of creating inclusion & belonging w/ product
- So I can assume that’s a goal of the company internally as well
- Through continuing the success and growth of onboarding program
- Would ensure I’m creating inclusive welcome and sense of belonging for hires
- No matter where in the world they’re located
- Also no matter what the company goals are, will go above and beyond in my work to ensure I’m doing everything I can to contribute to success
What motivates and demotivates you / What are you passionate about?
- Passion for helping others
- Knowing I’m making impact big or small drives me
- Drew me to EX & onboarding
- Starting new job can be exciting but nerve wracking, want good experiences
- Want people to focus on excitement
- Good onboarding = better retention and overall more positive ratings
- Sometimes see exit surveys talking about positive onboarding and feels great knowing you helped
getting to problem solve
- Ideation is one of my top skills
- From brainstorming to completion, love the entire process
- Very fulfilling, seeing things from beginning to end
by results
- Love feeling of checking off to do list, meeting deadlines and goals
- Juggle a lot in role so always have long to do list, always set deadlines, prioritizing
- Feeling looking back at the end of the day, week, month, etc keeps me going
- Demotivates = when things get too repetitive
- Some repetitive nice, feels good to focus heads down on something every now and then
- Every day feeling the same = hard to grow, learn
- I love learning new things, don’t want to come complacent in ‘same old’
What stresses you out?
- Work well under pressure, induce stress on myself for challenge / learning and achieving new things
- Some pressure = drive to excel
- To pick 1 thing, stressed when a problem is out of my control to fix no matter how much I want to solve
- Problem solver by nature so always want to fix things that need it
- try to remind myself and refocus my thinking to work on the things I can control & impact instead
- if I can at least escalate problem to get it attention it needs, I’ll do that as well, even if I can’t fix myself
What is one piece of positive and negative feedback you've received before?
Positive
- Strong drive to improve things, use strength of ideation to do so
- Am who people go to when need ideas for solving problem or approaching situation in new way
- Especially if something that affects EX
Negative
- Have supportive manager providing constructive feedback
- I’m own harshest critic, high bar
- Flip side of positive feedback is my problem solving drives makes hard to ignore issues
- Reminded to not bite off too much and not all problems solved at one
What was the worst advice someone ever gave you at work and what happened?
- Thankful for general good coworkers, but “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it”
- Things that were great before could be greater now
- Nothing is perfect, almost always ways to improve
- Glad didn’t follow advice because may have stifled my strengths of ideation/problem solving
- Attitude to leave things alone because of tradition can hinder growth and innovation
How important is a company's culture for you?
- Very, as someone passionate about EX
- If company not open to invest in a people-first employee-centric culture, hard to progress
- Work can be done but when company doesn’t support/ allocate resources, hard to make it what it could be
- Culture also capable of shifting and improving,
- Change is possible if company is willing
What type of manager do you work best with/what are you looking for in a manager?
- Have great manager right now, what makes her great = constructive feedback, helping growth within what company allows
- Trusts me to do job
- Serves as resource /sounding board when I want /need it
- Supports when customers want to hear from someone in a management role
- Makes sure I get empowered to make decisions about situations
- Having a manager who = supportive, open minded, and constructive = important versus manager that doesn’t allow for any autonomy or seeks out what’s wrong