Wanna be on my team?

UpBuild is hiring! If, after your read this, you feel like you’d be a good fit for our team or you know someone who could be, go to the site and shoot an email.

Note: This post was written when I was the Director of Analytics & Optimization at SwellPath. Enjoy!

Over the course of my SwellPath tenure, I saw dozens and dozens job postings go up. As we hoped, those postings led to lots of new hires; shiny new additions to our team. The folks who ended up joining our team over the years usually fell into one of three groups:

1. Exceptional: The exceptional new hires have always been the people who were great cultural fits and had the drive to produce exceptional work. The loved being here and, as a result, we loved having them on as part of our team.
2. Good: The good hires were able to do a good job, but SwellPath ended up not being a great long term fit for them. A stint at an agency was simply one step for them leading to what they probably wanted to do all along. So invariably, people who aren’t fantastic at working in an agency setting and aren’t perfect cultural fits end up moving onto something else.
3. Poor Fits: Then there are people who just weren’t good fits in terms of culture and/or quality of work. Thankfully, we almost never see that.

My aim with this post is to get this job opportunity in front of people who are in the first group: folks who want contribute to our team in a meaningful way, who are excited about the prospect of growing together and learning while producing great work for our clients, and who are passionate about what they do.

Back when I first started dabbling in team management, I started making an effort to notice what qualities allow team members to become exceptional. I’ve been playing with this list for over a year and I think it holds up pretty well. For SwellPath, great team members display:

• Curiosity: This is one of the most important traits I think you can have. We need people who are driven to be the best at what they do, to be on top changes and trends in digital marketing, to understand the intricacies of their discipline. Curiosity drives them to want to learn more, to test, to read, to analyze. Why does ___ work the way it does? What would happen to the site if we did ___?
• Humility – Humility is a vital part of being able to work on a team and to progress as an individual. A team member who displays humility is always open to feedback. They can accept both praise and critique equally well. This doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but those who strive for humility tend to work better on our teams, learn quicker, and give our clients better results.
• Initiative – Pinch me if I ever write “self-starter” in a job description. Yeesh. I hate that phrase, but honestly, you have to be able to take the initiative to make the first move. A team member with initiative is biased toward action. They want to keep moving forward and won’t just wait around for marching orders. If they don’t know the answer to a problem, they try to find a solution; they don’t bang their head on their desk for the rest of the day, they look for answers and ask for help when they need it. They’re more inclined to try out a new idea and ask what someone thinks about it later than wait for approval.
• Passion – An exceptional team member loves what they do, whether it’s SEO, paid media, analytics, managing client relationships, or as Nick likes to put it “making people’s lives easier”. If you view your work as “how you pay the bills” and not “what gets me excited in the morning”, you’re going to struggle and SwellPath may not end up being a good fit. Passionate team members are also more than happy to share their passion with others. Seeing that manifest as an active social media presence, educating other team members, writing blog posts, or speaking at conferences is a beautiful thing. Passion also fosters a sense of ownership in your work, and as one of SwellPath’s core values, ownership is important here.
• Integrity – Whitehat SEO, FTW! All joking aside, having professional and personal integrity is huge. In the agency world we have an immense responsibility to look at the data and turn it into a story, it’s our responsibility not to sugarcoat things and accept our failures and own our missteps. It’s what allows us to improve.
• Team-Focus – Exceptional folks at SwellPath don’t just tolerate interacting with other people; they thrive by being around people who are passionate about similar things, enjoy sharing and receiving knowledge, and love being able to bounce ideas back and forth. They also go out of their way to help their teammates and do what they can to foster the community and culture we have here.

I haven’t polished this post much but I’m eager to get it out. If there’s someone who would read this and get excited about working on the team we have here, I want to get this in front of them ASAP. So, if you think you fit the bill or know someone who does, reach out! In addition to an SEO & analytics role, we also have a posting up for an Account Coordinator.

Until next time, happy optimizing!