As the coronavirus pandemic continues to fade into history, businesses across the country are regaining their footing and preparing for a brighter future ahead. For some, this means revamping their onboarding processes to ensure new employees a smooth transition. For others, this means investing in new technologies in order to properly scale business.
Below, Built In Seattle connected with two of the fastest-growing companies in the local tech scene to gain some insight into their plans for the year ahead and the challenges they’re navigating along the way. And while their plans may differ, one element unites them: They’re ready to tackle this year of rapid growth head-on. What’s more? They’re actively searching for motivated individuals to join their teams.
Real estate technology company Flyhomes is currently in a period of rapid growth, hiring for a variety of positions across the organization to supplement that expansion. To ensure the transition goes smoothly, Tarbaux said that they’re doubling down on the onboarding process to help new employees acclimate quickly.
What do your hiring plans look like this year? And what are some of the key characteristics or traits you look for in new team members?
We’re scaling across the board and have opportunities on all of our teams. In addition to our core real estate brokerage and mortgage teams, we’re hiring engineers, marketers, product managers, people team members and more. We’re also excited to expand into new markets this year.
We’re focused on homebuyers and we want our clients to see themselves reflected in our team. Rather than one type of person, we look for people who are passionate about enhancing this exciting time in people’s lives. That means we’re open to all people and we’re cultivating a team with diverse backgrounds.
The people who fit best here tend to have a growth and change mindset. As we’re scaling, things happen quickly, so we pivot roles when we need to adjust, and there is a ton of opportunity for personal growth.
The structure of our business allows people to focus on what they’re best at. As far as our real estate and mortgage businesses, we hire both veterans and people who are launching their careers in the industry.
What steps are you taking to make sure this period of rapid growth goes smoothly from an employee experience perspective?
It’s important to us to be transparent about changes so employees don’t feel confused or left behind. One venue for this is our company town hall meetings, where everyone connects on a regular basis.
We have a robust onboarding process that’s going to continue to get even better this year. New team members attend Flyhomes Flight School within their first two weeks. It’s a multi-day experience where a new group of teammates can connect with each other and hear from leaders across the company to start internalizing what the company does and stands for. It’s a chance to get ingrained in our culture, even in a remote world. Our brokerage and mortgage teammates follow up Flight School with an intensive two-week training program to ramp quickly and get set up for success in their first 90 days.
We’re open to all people and we’re cultivating a team with diverse backgrounds.”
What is the most interesting challenge facing your team at the moment, and how are you working to overcome it?
Flyhomes exists to solve an interesting challenge: How can the homebuying process improve so people have a better experience, and how can we help homebuyers become more confident decision makers? These questions drive us every day.
The answers build on one another, and as they do, we develop new solutions. For example, we created our cash offer program when we realized buyers weren’t working with a level playing field. We’ll continue to take on whatever roadblocks are preventing buyers from getting the homes they love. As we scale the team, we can also scale our solutions to help more homebuyers in more markets, and we can continue to innovate on the homebuying process.
Location data platform Foursquare is looking to grow its employee base in both 2021 and 2022. In order to meet its ambitious hiring goals, Ellenbogen said that the company has been focused on adding skilled recruiters as well as continuously implementing onboarding cohorts to improve the hiring experience.
What do your hiring plans look like this year? And what are some of the key characteristics or traits you look for in new team members?
Foursquare is in a period of high growth, and consequently has aggressive hiring goals in 2021 and beyond. Specifically, we are looking to grow our employee base by 20 percent this year. We're planning to double our headcount from there in 2022.
Some key characteristics and traits we look for in new team members are positive, can-do attitudes; grit and resilience; robust collaboration abilities; diverse, strong communication skills; open-mindedness; and solid ethics and honesty.
Having the right technology and processes in place is an area of focus as we strive to scale the business.”
What steps are you taking to make sure this period of rapid growth goes smoothly from an employee experience perspective?
Scaling a company, while very exciting, also creates plenty of challenges. We try to anticipate growth and plan as much as possible so we can ensure our employees have a good experience from the day they submit their resume through their entire tenure at Foursquare. We have focused on adding skilled recruiters to our team and more onboarding cohorts to continuously improve the experience for both candidates and hiring managers.
The most important thing we can do is to listen to our employees. We currently have very active employee resource groups within the organization representing diverse viewpoints. We regularly send out pulse surveys to gather data regarding morale and then create action committees based on these results. Finally, our goal is to work as efficiently as possible, which is why having the right technology and processes in place is an area of continued focus as we strive to scale the business properly.
What is the most interesting challenge facing your team at the moment, and how are you working to overcome it?
Since March 2020, in addition to hiring a good amount of employees, we’ve also acquired two companies and have a new CEO. We are coming back to the office a much different company than we were when we left 15 months ago. For a company that historically worked in the office five days a week, we will be facing the challenge of navigating the transition to a hybrid work model. This also comes with cultural changes because many in our workforce haven't met their teammates in person.
We will overcome this by embracing change, listening to our employees and being flexible and thoughtful in our approach. As always, we will put the health, safety and well-being of our employees at the forefront of all our decisions and are looking forward to tackling these challenges in a post-pandemic world.
