I know, I know, it seems like only yesterday we were doing the last “we’re getting bigger” announcement but surprise! We’ve got more exciting news. Three more hires (in three different countries, no less!) and an important diversity benchmark achieved. Just in time for the 125th anniversary of women getting the right to vote too - what a week.
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Casually leaning, like it's no big deal doubling our Sydney office[/caption]Joining Sascha in our Sydney-based office, we’ve got Tara Kaplan who’ll be looking after sales to smaller and medium-sized clients. That means any of you who are making around 25 hires per year (or more).Tara’s got a long history with recruitment and HRTech industries, as well as a specially affinity with the hospitality sector (I mean, in a more professional sense than my “special affinity” with the cheese scones at the cafe downstairs). She’s an absolute whizz when it comes to the people industry and we’re very lucky she chose to invest her skills with us. Our Aussie team are based in Sydney, but will also look after our customers in Melbourne and Brisbane (and anywhere else in the land down under).
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Donna, helping us be more active in the US since quite recently.[/caption]Donna Yelmokas has joined the fold to help grow our US-based strategic partnerships. She’s leading our relationships with industry partners -- VMS’s, Enterprise ATS’s, RPO’s, MSP’s. You can call her “US Weirdo In Charge Of Alphabet Soup”. We’re extremely chuffed to have Donna join the team. She’s right up there with Dale in terms of HR/Recruitment industry experience and contacts, and is the safest pair of hands we could have as we grow our presence in the States. She also owns the same kind of dogs as President Barack Obama which obviously means she has flawless taste and a timeless elegance.Based in San Francisco, Donna’s also going to be jumping around the country a bit -- often joined by Dale who’s continuing her frequent commutes to the US for sales, customer and investment meetings.
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Mr Science, improving our minds.[/caption]Helping to refine our methodology, question bank and analysis, and working alongside the product engineers to feed our machine learning engine, Jamie McEwan’s got his work cut out for him. Luckily, he’s more than up for the challenge. Having worked within recruiting agencies and consultancies his entire career, he’s well practiced in the traditional rules and methodologies of organisational psychology. In fact, so well practiced, he’s dead keen to start developing new, smarter ways to think about assessment and testing. We like rule breakers over here in Weirdly HQ, so that suits us perfectly.Jamie has previously worked alongside Jeff who helped architect a lot of our validation methodology. He also used Weirdly with both clients and candidates in a previous agency role, so he’s been able to see how we work from all angles. That’s invaluable perspective to bring to a team that aims to turn the tired old assessment world on its head. We’re so excited to announce his addition to our crew of merry men. Which provides me an excellent segue to our next milestone:
Weirdly started life with an exact 50/50 split - two founder dudes, and two founder dudettes. As we’ve grown, those ratios have fluctuated a bit, but we’ve always been very conscious that wherever possible, looking for diversity in our team is an important goal. We’ve got lots of variation in thinking and working style, as well as background and experience, but it’s super-cool to be able to say our team is made up of over 50% women again - across sales, marketing, management AND product teams. This is not the end of our diversity quest by any stretch - we’d love to add more perspectives to our team and will continue to actively look for ways to do that, but today we’re pretty happy to have hit this milestone!
If you're keen to talk to any of our new team - whether you're an Australian organisation or describe yourself using one of those acronyms Donna's interested in, get in touch!
