My first month at The Employer Brand Shop
Hello! My name is Natasha and I recently joined The Employer Brand Shop team as an Employer Brand and Recruitment Marketing Specialist. I wanted to share a little about what my experience has looked like to date and why I decided to transition from a medium-sized organization to a small agency environment.
Before The Employer Brand Shop: My career history
My career has taken me on many interesting paths to date where I’ve focused on a range of different work, including:
HR administration
Learning and development
Recruiting
Employee experience
Employer branding
It was during my stint in talent acquisition, that I was first introduced to the world of employer branding and recruitment marketing (and funny enough, this is how I was introduced to our founder, Kaitlyn Holbein, whom I heard speak at a Communitech event). I began to take on some employer branding projects and loved them — I was immediately excited about the space and the new challenges it brought. I knew I wanted to find a way to spend more of my time focused on this area.
From corporate life to startup life
With all my additional free time in quarantine, I’d taken lots of time to reflect on my personal and professional values. While I loved the role I was in, it was a bit more focused on the employee experience side of things and I wanted to spend even more time focused on employer branding!
Further to that, I’m a big proponent of work-life balance. I’m a pretty strong-minded and independent individual — I thrive in environments where I have control over my schedule and can manage my time and provide
To date, I’ve mainly worked at mid to large-sized organizations. I was very accustomed to the corporate world, but I always had a little voice in the back of my head telling me it wasn’t the right fit. When Kaitlyn reached out to me about an opportunity at The Employer Brand Shop, I knew I had to take it! Kaitlyn’s values are very similar to mine, and I knew that the work would be dynamic and challenging.
Joining The Employer Brand Shop was my first foray into the startup world. I was kind of nervous with the new level of responsibility I would be taking on, but having worked with Kaitlyn in a professional capacity previously, I knew I would be in good hands!
The most noticeable difference in startup life versus corporate life is the level of autonomy I’ve been entrusted with. The Employer Brand Shop is highly focused on quality and deliverables versus hours worked. This means that I have total control of how I organize my time. While we do have core working hours of 11 am - 4 pm, there’s no looking at the clock or worrying when to punch in and punch out. The team here really values work-life balance, so we are extremely respectful of each other’s boundaries. So long as everyone gets their job done — and gets their job done exceptionally well — we’re all left to manage our own time.
Starting a new job in a pandemic
While I worked from home from time to time in previous roles, I had never worked in a primarily digital environment before, so a virtual onboarding was going to be completely new to me! Fortunately, things went very smoothly.
On my first day, Kaitlyn shared a one-month ramp-up plan that outlined all the tasks and responsibilities I would be learning and taking on each week. We also had a two-hour Zoom meeting to review everything from software and systems, to how we work with our network of freelancers and contractors, to an overview of our current and upcoming clients.
I loved this approach because it gave me a very clear outline of where to focus my time, while also giving me the space to explore and learn at my own pace. Even though my role is completely new, I was really impressed with how Kaitlyn laid out a vision and an onboarding plan so things felt organized and purposeful.
In summary…
My time so far at The Employer Brand Shop has been nothing short of amazing. Even though we’re currently working remotely, I still feel super connected to the team. Kaitlyn and I have daily standups to catch up and chat about what we’ve accomplished, list our priorities for the day, and describe any roadblocks or barriers that we can help each other out with. We’re also super fortunate to both live in the same area so we’ve been able to catch up in person over a socially distanced meet up already.
Overall, I’m excited to see the trajectory of my career here and am looking forward to helping the company grow over the next few months and years!
About The Employer Brand Shop
The Employer Brand Shop is a boutique recruitment marketing and employer brand agency located in Kitchener, Canada. Our team helps organizations around the world attract and engage talent using creative marketing strategies.