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I work at Brainlabs Digital, an experimentation-led agency famed for its world-class company culture.
We seek to create an environment where everyone is excited to come to work and contribute to our two-fold mission:
- to change the future of digital advertising
- to build the best company to work for
As Talent Acquisition Manager for our North America region, I oversee the end-to-end recruitment and hiring process for the US & Canada. Our small, but mighty Talent Acquisition (TA) Team hired over 150 new Brainlabbers in North America in 2021! We’re growing rapidly, going from 30 to 300 employees in North America over the past couple of years - exceeding 600 globally. And this is just the beginning, our ambition is to be the best and biggest full-service marketing agency in the world within thirty years! 🚀
How big is it?
Our TA Team in North America is a scrappy team of 3. I’m lucky to work with an amazing Talent Acquisition Admin who oversees recruitment for our entry-level roles and an awesome Talent Acquisition Coordinator who oversees recruitment for our mid-career roles. In our broader People Operations Team (POps), we have a Director, Senior Manager, two Managers who oversee Benefits & Engagement as well as a Workplace Experience Manager.
Where are your teammates located?
Our entire TA Team is located in Bloomington, IN. However, our broader POps Team and our 300+ North American colleagues are located in 28 US states as well as Ontario, Canada.
I think the first step is establishing what is your company culture? What are your shared values? Our Culture Handbook and our four core values are our north star. This gives us a shared language and expectations for how we show up for each other everyday. Our fab Benefits Coordinator, Briann Feliciano, also created our How to be Remarkable at Remote Working guide. This provides additional best practices, tips, tricks, ground rules, and sideboards like if one person in a meeting is attending remotely - then everyone is attending ‘remotely’ even if some find themselves in an office together.
A strong remote culture is based on trust, connection, and accountability. Some of this means having the right structures, systems, processes in place to support a remote team. We can intentionally create and operationalize connection, but sometimes we need to just get out of the way and let this happen organically and naturally. For example, an employee on our team recently created an #emo-kids channel on Slack. It blew up! So many Brainlabbers across North America brought together through this shared cultural connection. Celebrate employees’ bringing their whole selves to work. This builds trust and connection and it's just more fun!
Strong remote cultures are built on strong connections.
Strong connections are built with Hailey.
We use TINYpulse as an employee engagement, feedback, and recognition tool. They also happen to be clients of ours! With TINYpulse we can send out surveys to our team and receive anonymous feedback. This helps us keep a pulse on happiness. We also use it to send ‘Cheers for Peers’ which is super fun. Our Cheers are tied to our four core values - We are One Team, We Have a Growth Mindset, We are Speedy Strategists, and We Wow Our Clients. And because TINYpulse integrates with Slack, you can see a running list of Cheers for Peers on our #duckofawesomeness channel. We love to celebrate each others wins’ and it's inspiring to see all the good work that’s being done across our growing, global agency
Make sure your team's work is seen, heard, and understood. It’s creating a sense of belonging. This is why ‘Cheers for Peers’ is so important and other opportunities for employees to speak and be heard and seen and celebrated are key.
I think it's making sure people and their work is seen, heard, and understood. It’s creating a sense of belonging. This is why ‘Cheers for Peers’ is so important and other opportunities for employees to speak and be heard and seen and celebrated are key. We have a very active employee-led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee as well as employee resource groups - safe spaces formed around specific shared identities, typically of marginalized groups.
Our executive leadership team hosts regular leadership coffees with employees to gather feedback from all levels of the organization. These are just some examples!
All of the above! We do have a variety of happy hour socials and will give employees gift cards to buy a treat - beverage/snack of choice to enjoy remotely while informally socializing with teammates. For our leadership coffees, participants receive a coffee treat in the mail prior. We are also organizing Brainlabs Hub in areas where there are 10+ Brainlabbers. These local Hubs organize a variety of optional get-togethers and activities as well.
Sure! Donut on Slack has probably been most popular.
Sure! I think the one that is most popular is sharing ‘one good thing’.
Definitely! Our Brainlabs Culture Blog has some great articles from my colleagues on topics such as:
LinkedIn Learning has tons of great resources on all the subjects.
I also like following blogs on various ATS platforms:
For personal & professional growth, my go-tos are Glennon Doyle, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, and Patrick Lencioni.
We’re looking for a data-driven paid social enthusiast to join our team!
We're ready to lead you through a comprehensive training program to put you on the path to becoming a client-facing Paid Media Strategist!
Participate in all aspects of clients’ paid search media campaigns, including initial planning, implementation, monitoring, optimization, analysis and reporting
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