Hi I’m Hope! I’m the new Copywriting Intern. When I saw the opening on the Deeplocal blog, I was excited to work for a company that describes itself as an “innovation studio.” But I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. My experience so far has involved a writing project, a thermal camera, the expected joke about my name, and an epic kickball victory. And this is just my first week.

I just graduated from Wake Forest University, where I spent a lot of time in the library cranking out philosophy papers. Now I get to write all day at a cool IKEA desk across from a giant purple beanbag, so the transition has been smooth. For the next few months, I’ll be blogging, editing, brainstorming, researching and marketing with the creative team at Deeplocal.

Part of the reason why I already love working here is the Deeplocal culture. Unlike my previous work environments, there are no cubicles. The workspace is like this on purpose, which means there are open lines of communication in a tight-knit group. It also means I get to hear some interesting conversations. Here is a sampling of some of the comments I’ve heard this week for Overheard in the Office, Deeplocal Edition:

• I guess you can’t set batteries on concrete floors.
  
• Patrick was made for Hollywood. He just was. We didn’t know it until he started working here.
  
• Ew these cupcakes are a week old.
  
• Just pretend you’re fighting a fire.
  
• The shoe flew to the pitcher, the pitcher caught the shoe, and Kickball Mark just kept running.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be sure to keep you updated on Deeplocal news and events in future blog posts.

We are not a big company. Ten people hang out in our studio on a regular basis. We get a tremendous amount done with such a small team but with a growing work load and growing responsibilities comes a little bit of pain. We are starting to feel that pain now and are posting the position. We are looking for an Account Manager to join Deeplocal full time.

At Deeplocal I value hard work above all other qualities. Just for fun, the above photo is of my late grandma riding a tractor and operating a hydraulic snow plow. She was a hard worker and now all of Deeplocal must live up to the standards she set for me. Good luck

Rather than simply posting the position, I wanted to share a little bit of background on how we identified the need for this role. I am sharing it since I think this might be helpful to other start-ups that wonder when they should hire additional help (especially for a role that is seen as overhead – no direct billable hours, etc).

Deeplocal has worked without any dedicated project or account management since we started nearly five years ago. Our model has been simple: individual responsibility to a client. Each engineer or designer works and reports directly to a client. This worked well as it reduced overhead, allowed us to exceed client expectations, and made us very efficient. As workloads have begun to grow though, we’ve started to notice that we are having a harder time meeting those high standards we set for ourselves. We need to grow – but just a little.

Growing is a scary thing. We are at the stage where we know what makes our culture great and we know what to look for in candidates. Above all else, employees must fit into the culture here. We are all friends and we look forward to getting into the studio in the morning just to hang out a bit with one another. Adding people to the mix (especially overhead) can be disruptive to a company’s culture. I know that and the team knows that.

I try to listen to all my employees opinions. I really don’t believe this is just some bullshit I say to make us sound good. I really believe that I need to listen to and absorb the insights and knowledge that my coworkers have. Their perspectives are each unique and different from my own. I started by going through simple reviews with each employee and got ideas from everyone on what tasks they are doing a not so great job at. I want us all to be great and challenge everyone to be exceptional everyday. We are all humble enough to admit when we are falling short. From those interviews I developed my own list of “pains.” This was essentially a job responsibilities list. It was then necessary to figure out where these pains can be distributed to become roles and responsibilities of others on staff and when we couldn’t handle it internally it went into a bucket of tasks we aren’t great at… yet.

After those interviews and the development of the “pains” list, the group (sans me) got together for a little white-boarding session. During this session, Eamae led the group in a design exercise, lumping pains in buckets and pulling together what has led to a redistribution of roles.

So what happened after all of this thinking (which really only took 1 day)? Matthew, our engineering lead has stepped up and expanded his role to begin to manage technology development timelines. Heather has refocused her role strictly around marketing Deeplocal and our projects and taken on additional duties around measurement and analytics. Jenn has expanded her role to deal with internal project documentation. Eamae has expanded his role to take on more art directorial duties. I have begun the process of refocusing my own role, moving low value tasks off of my plate like managing our Quickbooks file and paying bills, giving me more time for business development. What couldn’t be handled internally became a few job descriptions that we will be looking to fill over the coming months.The first one is for an account manager. As you can see, we are looking yet again for an exceptional person that is excited about a hybrid role. For the right person, Deeplocal is a dream job. For the wrong person, this could be a nightmare. We love what we do here and we demand passion and sincerity in everything. So hopefully, we can find that candidate.

So, long story, but here (and in true Deeplocal transparent fashion) is our first job post to come out of all that I described above. I hope you can see how taking the bottom up approach to even hiring can often work better than the alternative. By asking everyone at Deeplocal what we weren’t great at, we developed a requirements list and then distributed that list when possible internally. When we didn’t think we could handle it internally, we formed job descriptions.

Help Deeplocal find our next team member.

Working at Deeplocal
Deeplocal is a small boutique design and development company based in Pittsburgh. While we are advertising several job openings below, we do not have a fixed time in which we need to hire for any of these positions. We are looking for the perfect person. We work on great projects with fast timelines and each employee must be highly driven, passionate about what they do, and be able to multi-task. If we find the right person for any of these open roles, that is when we are hiring. Please apply but don’t be upset with us if we don’t write you back. We are pretty busy and either you may not be right for the job or we may not be looking to fill that role at that time. We appreciate your interest in Deeplocal.

Benefits
- Stock options
- Bonus plan / profit sharing
- Full healthcare coverage
- Retirement plan with employer matching
- Work Anywhere program (allows employees to work from other cities for short periods of time)
- Company retreats and trips
- Paid vacation, three weeks annually
- Gym Subsidy

Account Manager – Full Time (hiring immediately)
Deeplocal is looking for a smart person with amazing organizational skills and attention to detail to work with our existing clients and our technology lead to manage deliverables and client communications. Technology development and design timelines will be handled by our Engineering Lead. The Account Manager role will work with the Engineering Lead to set and manage deliverables. At the start of new work, the Account Manager will define project goals and assist in measuring the performance of projects and creating reports to deliver to the client post-project. This role will be responsible for maintaining timelines internally, making sure our team is aware of deadlines as they approach, delivering materials to clients in a timely manner, having regular check-ins with clients, and spending a lot of time writing great emails.

Additionally, the Account Manager role requires working closely with our Marketing Director to maintain stellar relationships with our clients and expand our portfolio of clients. This means being accessible by cellphone (into the evening when necessary, as we have a number of west coast clients).

Good candidates for this role should also have excellent communication skills and be willing to assist the CEO and Marketing Director in new business development (which is currently a shared responsibility).

The Account Manager should know at any given time where each project is as well as what a client is waiting on. We want someone who is proactive and will pick up the phone if email is too slow. We will consider applicants with non-traditional backgrounds but expect to see some kind of experience that relates directly to the tasks described.

Requirements:
- strong organizational skills
- experience managing clients and/or projects
- positive attitude
- charm
- good phone skills
- writes nice, thorough emails
- creative
- interest in assisting with new business development

Responsibilities:
- be accessible by phone and responsive to calls
- know where each project stands
- know what we are waiting on from a client
- push back on clients to prevent scope creep
- know what a client is expecting
- maintain project management software / share project statuses internally
- report any project updates back to our clients
- be proactive and pass new leads off to our CEO
- work with Engineering Lead, CEO, and client to set project goals and terms for measuring success
- assist in measuring the performance of projects
- assist in the development and delivery of performance reports to client
- assist in new business development and winning new business from existing clients
- report directly to the CEO when there is a change in scope or a potential risk

To apply: Write a paragraph about yourself, why you want to work here, and why you’re a good fit for Deeplocal. You should also include some sort of resume. Upload everything to http://deeplocal.theresumator.com/apply/bNvWMV/Account-Manager.html. Don’t hate us if we don’t write back. We are a pretty small company and despite the email address, do not have an HR department.