Buffer, the company whose products help you schedule social media posts, is also known for their continued action and discussion around the topic of transparency. In particular, they have been publishing everyone employee’s salaries since late 2013.  (And, with this handy Buffer salary calculating tool, you can figure out just exactly how much you’d make at Buffer.)

The team at Buffer recently held a BufferLive at Refinery Nashville to chat about one of the values of Buffer: Default to Transparency.  The discussion was led by Carolyn Kopprasch, Chief Happiness Officer, Courtney Seiter, Inclusivity Catalyst, and Patrik Ward, Customer Research Lead.

In the spirit of experimentation that Buffer embraces, I put some of what I learned from attending this lively discussion into a set of sketchnotes. (And I’ll be transparent and say that this is the only second sketchnote I’ve ever created. Please send any feedback on how to improve!)

The post Sketchnotes from BufferLive: Talking About Transparency appeared first on Startup Southerner.

We’ve all heard of escape rooms, those life-sized interactive games that have been spreading like wildfire since 2012. The concept is simple: you’re trapped in a room with a small group of people and have an hour to escape, working together to solve puzzles, decipher codes and discover keys that will unlock doors. According to the Escape Room Directory—an online catalog of escape rooms across the globe—there are currently over 600 of these games in the United States alone, and more than 150 of them are located in the South.

The Escape Game, downtown Nashville

Which brings us to The Escape Game, an escape room founded in Nashville, Tennessee, by Mark Flint and Jonathan and James Murrell. Since The Escape Game launched in April 2014, the immersive puzzle game has become Nashville’s No. 1 tourist attraction. Max Magura, marketing coordinator at The Escape Game, says the attraction brings in a wide variety of people, from families to bachelorette parties to corporate groups. “We attract anyone who wants to have an interactive entertainment experience,” he says, “someone who wants to be the game, not just watch it.”

“The Heist” game room

My husband and I recently had the opportunity to play our first Escape Game with a couple of friends to celebrate a birthday. We reserved our spots for “The Heist,” one of seven games available.

We arrived at The Escape Game and learned we’d be playing with our friends, David and Kelly, and two other couples we’d never met before. I wondered if playing alongside strangers would affect our performance. However, I had no time to dwell on that question; after a quick exchange of names, it was time to begin.

We were ushered into a room that resembled a small art gallery where we were briefed on the rules of the game. Sixty minutes appeared on the clock, and then the countdown began. We immediately started to scour the room, finding clues and keys that would lead us to the painting we were required to “steal” to fulfill our objective.

I quickly realized that working toward a common goal made the hesitation of playing alongside strangers dissipate. We were suddenly a team, shouting discoveries to one another and wracking our brains in an effort to determine what each clue meant. Puzzle after puzzle was eventually solved, and with a only few minutes remaining, we had the combination that would allow us to “escape.”

The victors and our spoils

After the game, we snapped photos to commemorate the event. Then we went our separate ways—but not without exchanging a few victorious high-fives with our teammates.

The Escape Game has been used as a team-building exercise since its conception, and it’s easy to see why. The game has the power to bring co-workers together in a way that a ropes course or cheese tasting never could. It forces them to think critically as a team and solve problems using limited resources, all within a fun, low-risk setting.

Big companies with locations across the South including AT&T, Bridgestone, Disney and the Tennessee Titans, have used The Escape Game as a way to build community in the workplace. Co-workers are able to build trust with each other, while employers learn which of their employees are good leaders or creative thinkers.

But whether you play the game during a company outing or for a birthday party, one thing is for certain: if you don’t learn to work as a team, you won’t succeed. And that’s a lesson that extends beyond the game room.

The post The Escape Game: Team-Building Exercises Just Got Interesting appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Kudos!  If your recruiting process was the Oregon Trail game, you have managed to identify everything you need to purchase at the general store by building a strong role description. Your conestoga wagon is hooked up to your oxen team and ready to roll west, but now you need to know where to hunt for buffalo. You need to find food for your reserves before the dysentery sets in. You need a sourcing strategy.

Until 20 years ago, sourcing was a straightforward process driven by the three F’s: Family, Friends and Favors. Have an opening in your finance department? Cousin Jimmy knows how to count to 100, so just hire him. Need a salesperson? Old neighbor Withers once loaned your dad some cash, so it’s time you repaid him with a job!

Gradually over time, as jobs differentiated, skill sets specialized and our workforce grew, companies realized there was a wealth of prospective employees out there beyond their immediate social circles. Rather than grant favors, employers shifted to asking for referrals of great people who would be an asset to the team. Career centers and alumni networks from colleges and universities started receiving more funding, and with that funding came preview days, resume books and internal career advisors who often acted as unpaid double-agents for companies using their positions to recruit from the inside. However, despite these broadening mindsets, a rolodex and a phone remained the tools of the trade.

And then the internet happened.

Referrals, networks and career centers continue to play key roles, but now the sourcing landscape has been redistributed. The earliest manifestations of this were company-specific job pages and the advent of the job board. All major advancements in candidate sourcing since have been driven by our good friend the internet.

So how does this impact your sourcing strategy? Well, as the internet was changing, so were the processes companies use to identify candidates. The world wide web opened up a communication channel previously unavailable to these companies. Rather than focusing solely on candidates who were eager to land a job, these new internet tools allowed companies to look for candidates who were not actively looking for work. It was not so much the rise of the digital job board that changed the way we source. Rather, it was the rise of access to passive candidates that has changed the sourcing game.

Your sourcing strategy should target both active candidates—those who come to you—and passive candidates—those bison of the Oregon Trail you go out to hunt. And how will you hunt them? Let’s look at a few options.

Post to and Mine from Job Boards

Job boards remain an excellent source of both passive and active candidates. Most job boards allow you to post your role for a small fee.  In exchange, they will leave your role visible to anyone who accesses their site for a set amount of time. Further, many of these job boards now take a cue from those college career centers, providing recruiters access to a treasure-trove of resumes submitted by candidates looking for work and other savvy candidates who have their feelers out “just in case.”

Recruiters can also use job boards to see what roles other companies are trying to fill, and therefore go chase down those previous employees with the skill sets they need. This data can also be used to poach candidates from other companies who may have the skills sets you seek. After all, larger companies’ role descriptions are usually designed after their top-performing current employees.

If you need a few suggestions to start your job board efforts, I recommend the following boards.

• LinkedIn: The best-known job board, though many recruiters find their recruiting tools that allow access to passive candidates more beneficial than the actual job board feature.
• Indeed: Job seekers love Indeed because it is one of the few job boards that allows the seeker to limit job postings by pay without having to purchase premium access.
• Simply Hired: No resume database means passive candidate searches are limited. However, Simply Hired will post your role on their own board and push it to several others without your having to do the grunt work.
• Idealist: Is your company a service-oriented company or social venture looking for like-minded souls? Then Idealist is your go-to job board.

Data Mine the Interwebs

Put all those years of Google-fu to practice, and apply the same principles you would use to “borrow a movie” from an open directory to your sourcing strategy. Boolean searching is an excellent way to find candidates. Just add in your search terms and appropriate operators, and off you go with real-time results. Need a refresher on those terms?  Google is here to help.

Another trick of the trade that builds on Boolean searching is called flip searching. Find people who link to sites that you found in your planning to be of interest to the type of people you are seeking. If it sounds complicated, it is actually quite simple. For example, using these parameters (link:startupsoutherner.com AND title:resume) I can find people and organizations who link to Startup Southerner. I assume they link to Startup Southerner because they are interested in entrepreneurship. Therefore, if I’m looking for someone with that mindset, I just found over 1,000 leads.

Get Social on Social Media

An extension of networking in the digital age, social media tools allow recruiters to expand their networks and target potential applicants with low to no overhead. Sponsoring Twitter posts or using targeted Facebook advertising are just two of many available options that should be part of any recruiter’s’ toolkit.

Slack, the current darling of employee communications, is also a great outlet to post jobs and find talent. Many Slack channels exist to build communities of like-minded people that want to discuss lifestyles, tools, careers and more. A quick search will help you identify those Slack channels that may fit your needs. Then, it is just a matter of joining and posting.

One note of caution: If you join a Slack channel or other community like a LinkedIn group, be prepared to give as much as you take. Contribute to the overall goals of the group, and do not just use these communities to solicit or source. You risk damaging your and your company’s reputation among the very people you are trying to woo.

Go Long

Many early roles in startups are location flexible. While there are some disadvantages to bringing a remote workforce on early (i.e., culture is harder to maintain), there are tremendous benefits to expanding your sourcing horizons.  Here are a few recommended job boards to start your sourcing should remote work be an option for you.

• Remote OK
• Flexjobs
• We Work Remotely
• Working Nomads

Congratulations! While you haven’t quite made it all the way to the Willamette Valley, your food reserves look much more promising for the rest of your time on the Oregon Trail.  Next up, we will explore how to bag the big game candidates while avoiding that snakebite or random broken arm that will plague your party, err, I mean, company down the road.

The post Talent Management for Startups: Sourcing Employees appeared first on Startup Southerner.

People are the core of any business, and startups are no exception. When the idea strikes, we often wrangle resources that are nearby or acquaintances we know who can partner up to get things started. College roommates or former coworkers, for example, often find themselves embarking on a startup journey together. Non-technical cofounders are also frequently matched with technical expertise to kick-off their company. And then, all of a sudden, your idea has legs and you need even more person-power to move the company from proof of concept into a scalable future. You have to hire Employee No. 3.

Piece of cake, right? The general consensus is that opinions on recruiting are like opinions on public school transformation.  Most of us went to school, so therefore we are all experts on schools.  And so it goes with recruiting: “I was hired once, so I know how to do it.”

What if I told you that implementing scalability in your talent management processes beginning with hiring employee No. 3 will pay off significantly down the line? What if I told you traditional criteria like references or non-traditional but ever-increasingly popular methods like handwriting analysis is merely noise in a world where we have a pretty good idea how to sharpen your signal?

Then there are those of you who have no idea where to start.  You may even have a few people in mind with whom you would want to work, but you just don’t know how to move that ball forward or you might not realize those people are going to make terrible employees. While it’s true that we don’t have recruiting science down to 100% effectiveness, we do have proven processes that work even if you are hiring employee number three, four or forty. The first step is creating a hiring plan:

Start with your Foundation: You might not know exactly what employee No. 3 will be doing day in and day out, but do not use that as an excuse to just look for someone “cool” or “who gets it.”  You have a unique opportunity at the beginning of your venture to develop a culture that can make your organization thrive. Use your mission, values and any other elements you have already identified as a foundation to your talent management plan.

Fit the Right Piece to the Right Puzzle: A simple way to think through who you should be looking for is by looking at fit. Take a moment to identify a few key competencies you, your cofounder and all future employees should be able to demonstrate. For example, you might find that all employees should be able to communicate well in written form because you will utilize online tools for both internal and client communications. In this case, one of your competencies for organization fit should be “excellent written communication.” Often in startups, identifying these key competencies and hiring for them will provide enough context for you to move forward.

If you do have a general idea of the responsibilities of the role this hire will play in the organization, then you can also assess role fit. Perhaps you have identified that you need to hire a coder. Not all of your teammates from here out will need to have coding skills, but this specific role most definitely will need the requisite training and experience.

There is a third level of fit sandwiched between the organization and the individual, and that is called team fit. While team fit isn’t applicable to early hires, it’s worth noting that future team leads should begin thinking about how they would run their team and start putting high-level thoughts around their team’s sub-culture. This way, when it comes time to build out teams, you’ll be ready to address organizational, team and individual fit.

This concept of fit is very closely related to organizational culture. Often, new managers and leaders have a hard time identifying the illusive components that compose the culture of an organization. Using fit instead allows you to operationalize the culture into observable behaviors, and therefore into criteria more suited for selecting new employees.

Compile your Competencies: If you run into challenges for scoping out competencies appropriate for the role and your organization, do not fret. There are multitudes of resources online to assist you with this process. For example, one quick way to find excellent competencies are to search for similar job titles on job banks like LinkedIn or Indeed. You can often find relevant competencies, knowledge and skills listed that can be repurposed for your needs. Another great and free resource is O*net Online (www.onetonline.org), a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. You can search thousands of job titles and find ready-made lists of the knowledge, skills, tasks and other factors that make successful candidates for your roles of interest.

One note of caution here, however. Do not fall in the trap of simply going to these sites as a first step. Do the homework early in identifying the factors that make your organization unique, and only use these resources to help wordsmith or identify gaps in competencies you have identified as key to your company and to the role in question.

Put it On Paper: You have identified what drives your organization, and you have researched and revised the competencies needed to do this job well. The final step in planning is writing your job description. Be sure to start off with a brief description of your company and what you do. What is compelling about your business that prospective employees would want to hear?What do you do, sell or provide? Quickly and succinctly explain your value in a way that grabs the attention of prospective employees.

Next, share as much as you can about the role. You may know a specific programming language this new hire must know, or you may only know this person needs to show up ready to address any client service issue that comes up. Use your second paragraph to introduce the role and the specific competencies (and knowledge, skills, etc) you have identified for it. Be sure to highlight any travel that will be involved, location restrictions you have for the new hire, and whether relocation will be provided.

In your third section, circle back to your organizational fit competencies. List them here with a preface that your organization is driven by these concepts. This is your chance to really let the passion for your culture and your product or service shine, and for the prospective employee to determine if he or she will fit in with the organizational expectations.

The output of this entire planning process should be a single-page job description, two-thirds of which you will be able to utilize for all future roles. If you put in the effort and get it done early, then you will already have the tough decisions out of the way when you start to onboard more and more employees.

Next up, sourcing candidates.  Sometimes, the people you need are right next door.  Sometimes, the people you need aren’t going to come find you.  Stay tuned to find out where and how to find those unicorns.

The post Talent Management for Startups: How to Plan for Employee No. 3 appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Eventbrite is one of those cool tech companies that has planted some of its West Coast roots right here in the South. What started as a customer service outpost in Nashville, Tennessee, has grown to also include engineering and sales. “The talent and drive of the people we’re seeing here in Nashville is awesome,”says Bryan Mayes, Nashville head of engineering. “That’s leading us to continue to lean into the opportunity of expanding our presence here.

And they’re just getting started. Eventbrite, the world’s largest self-service ticketing platform for events large and small, is hiring to expand its sales and engineering operations, and some of those positions will probably be filled from within the company.

“We’re constantly trying to build career opportunities for people on all of our teams,” Mayes says. “Eventbrite is all about helping people grow personally and professionally, and are highly supportive of internal mobility.”

That’s just one glimpse into the kind of culture Eventbrite lives and breathes every day, and it’s reflected in its product. Mayes says the Eventbrite culture “seeps into the product.”

“If you have a great culture of transparency, respect and honesty, then that is reflected in the products and services you build, and the support you provide to your customers,” he says.

The culture is also built around assembling a team that reflects the wide spectrum events on Eventbrite—musicians, marathon runners, foodies, fundraisers. But they vet for these interests specifically during the hiring process.

“Usually when you find people who are passionate and driven, they naturally live really interesting lives with unique backgrounds,” Mayes says. “We are looking to build a diverse culture in every way, and I think when you have that as your foundation, you’re going to build a group of people that embody a wide spectrum of interests.”

Of course, every startup wants to hire the best person for the job, but Mayes says that should go beyond just hiring the best coder or sales rep.

“Personally two of the most important traits I look for are people who demonstrate that they are self-motivated, and are always looking for personal growth. That curiosity and drive is not the only path to success, but I believe there’s high correlation between those who learn and build on their own, and those who become the highest performers.”

Mayes says it’s important to have a clear idea about what your company stands for, and to be deliberate about how that manifests in every decision you make. “The reality is that the DNA of Eventbrite founders—Kevin Hartz, Julia Hartz and Renaud Visage—are at the heart of our culture, even 10 years later. Clearly communicate those values to the team, and they will embraces and embody them.”

As the company’s presence in Nashville continues to grow, Mayes suspects a little bit of our culture—you know, that Southern one—will be seeping into Eventbrite’s.

“Nashville has affected Eventbrite by re-energizing the San Francisco team with a startup spirit influenced by our motivated and mighty team,” he says.  “On a lighter note, we shouldn’t forget that we’ve also created a deep appreciation for Nashville Hot Chicken. I think most of the Britelings (Eventbrite employees) that visit from our offices around the world are fans of Pepperfire.”

This post was made possible by support from Sifted, a Nashville-based startup.

The post Inside Out: How Eventbrite Matches Product to Company Culture appeared first on Startup Southerner.

From the food at Nodevember and PyTennessee code conferences to the indoor s’mores table at Nashville Technology Council’s holiday party, many in the Nashville tech community have encountered the delicious food made by Sifted. And for those who work at iCitizen, Stoke.d, Emma and others, Sifted has been a regular part of their team members’ lives. Within a year of founding the business, this Nashville, Tennessee-based company on a mission to serve pop-up lunches as a perk, had found itself linked to the tech culture, without being a tech startup itself.

For Lyft, which provides catered meals a couple times a month for their team members, the consistent lunches have served to keep the team energized and engaged during rapid transition. “Sifted has gone above and beyond to meet the needs of our quickly growing team,” says Kristi Drenth, Nashville office coordinator at Lyft. “They have provided delicious food along with top-notch service with a smile.” 

This year, cofounders Kimberly Lexow and Jess Legge took their concept to Atlanta, where they signed Yik Yak as their first client in ATL. Within two months of the expansion, they doubled their business. And they’ve hit another milestone: $1 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) in under 13 months since launching the business.

In their own words, the founders share some of the lessons they learned in how they reached this milestone:

• 

  Kimberly Lexow

  We work with clients who are a cultural fit. Lots of companies bring in lunch, but it is important to us to work with companies who are using our lunch program as a way to consistently treat their staff. When evaluating companies, we look for a vibrant company culture, emphasis on personal growth and a startup mindset, no matter the age. When a company has these characteristics, they tend to enjoy our healthful, adventurous meals. And the consistency translates to predictable revenue for us.

• We’ve resisted building tech at this early stage. While all of our competitors have a tech component, we’ve focused on building an active client base. We’ve
  

  Jess Legge

  garnered client loyalty, and now, with feedback from our clients, we are working to build technology that would support our service. Building tech on the front end would have slowed our growth and distanced us from our clients.

• Organic growth and client referrals have allowed us to grow rapidly. Our clients are some of the fastest growing brands in ATL + BNA, so we’re growing with them. Eventbrite has almost doubled, and Lyft is busting at the seams in their current space.

• Having a unique model has also allowed us to reach this milestone. We own the process from start to finish, unlike most food delivery services. We control menu design (using client feedback), create all lunches and dinners and have a team of dedicated hosts and account managers. Because we have our own kitchen, we can create out-of-the-box experiences like a Rice Krispy bar for Lyft or sushi-burritos for Stoke.d.

The post How This Startup Hit $1M in Under 13 Months appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Andy Matthews

Andy Matthews, a senior software engineer for Eventbrite in Nashville,  Tennessee, grew up an only child. As a result, he spent a lot of time playing board games with his parents. “We had a great tradition of game night every week,” he says. “We’d play Rummy or Risk or other games like that.”

But while Matthews enjoyed playing games with his family, board-gaming itself never played a pivotal role in his life—that is, until a few years ago when he stumbled upon an article in Wired. The piece discussed popular Eurogames like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan. Suddenly, Matthews’ interest was piqued.

In 2015, he played a variety of games with his wife and four kids, logging titles as he went and purchasing ones that were recommended to him by friends. But Matthews soon discovered that some games, no matter how popular they were, just fell flat. “One of the most enjoyable things for me has been to realize that I have a style of games that I prefer,” he notes. “Now I can evaluate games I see in videos or on other people’s tables with a practiced eye and know within a few minutes if I’d like to play it, or even own it.”

Matthews and his family play Castle Knights

This year, Matthews continues to refine his taste by playing one board game a day for an entire
calendar year. As of April 11, he is already up to 226 plays. “Just this evening, my kids and I played a really fun game called CastleKnights,” he shares, “and the goal of the game is to work together to move blocks around a table by only grabbing them with a rubber band connected to 4 strings. It’s utterly ridiculous, and all four of my kids were laughing and cheering when we got it right.”

When Matthews isn’t playing board games with his family, he’s hosting game nights to bring other passionate board gamers together. “When some people at Eventbrite’s San Francisco office started talking about game nights,” he explains, “I hadn’t even considered something like that might exist for adults. I decided to host a game night at Eventbrite in Nashville and invited a few friends and coworkers. Now the game night I host brings in nearly 50 people every month.”

Matthews credits his newfound love of board games to TableTop, a web show hosted by Wil Wheaton. “Being able to watch people play these amazing looking board games, having fun and joking around was incredibly appealing,” he says.

TableTop is also how Matthews got involved with International TableTop Day, for which he is hosting an event in Nashville later this month. “Last April I heard the parent organization of Tabletop mention this thing called Tabletop Day,” he explains. “I looked into it and realized that no place in Nashville was having an event. So I missed out on it. I promised myself then that I’d simply host the next one myself.”

International TableTop Day is an opportunity for board gamers to try new games, meet new people and have a great time.The event, sponsored by Eventbrite, is scheduled for April 30 at Emma. Drinks, snacks and lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. And, according to Matthews, guests will also have the opportunity to win some great prizes. “I’ve worked with a number of game publishers who have generously donated games as both prizes and to be played at the event,” Matthews reports.

The event is free, but attendees must register in advance. Space is limited.

The post Eventbrite Engineer Prepares for International TableTop Day appeared first on Startup Southerner.

A new college graduate begins her career in a field where she quickly finds that she is underrepresented. Not only does she feel displaced, but she is quickly questioned by people in her environment about her ability to succeed in the work field. The confusion comes into play when she learns that the measurement of her potential to succeed was not based off of her experience and education.

She is told that she is too loud, laughs too much and doesn’t fit the “norm” of the environment. Because of false perception and social misrepresentation, she was not seen as someone who had high potential in the beginning. The graduate felt insecure and did her best to adjust to the norm of her environment.

Her ideas, input and opportunities for improvement were limited because of her fear of being heard and included. This story is my story. Although years have passed since this experience, I still vividly remember how I felt. The disappointing part about this is that still occurs and is common with underrepresented minorities who seek to enter professional fields where there aren’t many of them.

So, what is the problem? The problem is that many companies today are mostly afraid of two words—change and diversity. Change in a culture that has been developed by years of traditional thinking can be one of the biggest challenges to take on and embrace. With change, the fear of failure comes into play and if anything has the potential to fail it is often overlooked.

With diversity, it gets even more complicated, because not only can it be uncomfortable to discuss, but it requires a cultural change and it requires inclusion. Is there a solution? Yes, there is! If companies want to grow and have a competitive advantage, diversity and inclusion is necessary to have in their strategic growth plan. There are three strategies, if implemented, that can help companies of all levels be on the path to having a competitive advantage.

Strategy 1: Be open to listen to feedback from everyone at all levels. A company that is open to hearing honest feedback from people of all background, and of a cross-functional approach, is a company that will yield higher success in achieving accomplishments. Learn about the ideas that people have for improvement,

Strategy 2: Develop and maintain a culture for diversity and inclusion. Let’s face it! Change is scary; there will be people who will not adapt as easily. But diversity only exists when there is inclusion. Identify a plan that optimizes the feedback you receive and act on strategies that includes everyone in your environment. Make it known that you care about what people have to say by taking action steps that are inclusive of their feedback.

Strategy 3: Celebrate your wins as a team. Show everyone in your company the successes of their effort of providing input and working on solutions. When having a diverse culture, a sense of belonging is the separator between why people stay or leave a company. People who feel like a contributor in the company are more apt to provide better solutions to help a company fulfill their mission and reach their strategic goals.

The post 3 Steps Every Startup Should Take Regarding Diversity and Inclusion appeared first on Startup Southerner.

This post was made possible by a sponsorship from Sifted, a Nashville-based startup.

In an effort to make up for not being able to provide expensive benefits like health insurance and retirement plans, startups look for both tangible and intangible ways to entice workers to join their teams. Perks like super flexible work arrangements, pet friendly workspaces, Nerf gun wars and beer on Fridays sound great, but do they work?

To answer that questions, we turned to Courtney Newman, the director of human resources and talent acquisition at SPARC, a Charleston, South Carolina-based small business that rapidly exited its startup phase thanks in part to an impressive company culture that offers a bevy of, you guessed it, lifestyle perks. The software development company, which was founded in 2009, now boasts 260 team members and was acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton last year. Here’s what Newman had to say about lifestyle perks and their role in helping startups find and retain top talent.

Startup Southerner: What are some of the lifestyle benefits offered to SPARC employees? Which of these are most popular and seem to get the biggest positive response?

Newman: We focus on putting people first, first. We have created a flexible workstyle so our team can really achieve that work/life balance. All team members are completely mobile, so they can work from anywhere at any time. We offer core office hours, and team members are empowered to work from home as needed. Beer, dogs in the office and games are all fun and a part of who we are, but what our team appreciates the most is the trust and value we place in our team members.

Startup Southerner: As the director of talent acquisition at SPARC, you must have a good read on how these lifestyle benefits appeal to potential hires. How would you describe the general reaction?

Newman: Today’s talent market is highly competitive and the typical SPARC hire is not going to be wooed by Nerf guns and a cold beer alone. The things that I’ve found to always be the most sought-after benefits are the intangibles: a truly trusting environment offering the ability to work in your own way, the opportunity to work with an extremely intelligent team, a company that invests in its people, inspiring leaders and a culture of open communication. The rest is gravy and, don’t get me wrong, we offer plenty of it: no dress code (jeans and flip flops are the norm), onsite gym, daily happy hours, dogs in office each Friday, and free snacks, sodas, and coffee for team members.

There are plenty of successful companies that don’t offer those types of perks, but our perks play a central role in our culture. However, the perks that recruit people are often different than the perks that retain people though. We may have piqued someone’s interest with Beer30, Dog Fridays and a generous vacation time but what will keep our team members is always the flexible scheduling and flexible office arrangements, the people that they work with and build relationships with, and the opportunity to work on exciting projects.

Startup Southerner: The cliché is that all startups have foosball tables. Obviously, that’s not true, but what would your advice be to a startup that is looking to add lifestyle perks to its workplace environment? How do you decide what to start with? Do you choose lifestyle perks before you even have your first employee, or does it become clear as you hire what perks would be best for your particular company culture?

Newman: Workplace culture evolves over time. Let it be semi-organic. Don’t force culture on people. Most of our best ideas come from our team members who are then empowered to make them a reality. The most important thing is that the leadership supports an active and growing culture and provide the resource to do so. Incorporate things you and your team are passionate about.

The post How Important Are Lifestyle Perks? appeared first on Startup Southerner.

At Atlanta-based SalesLoft, company culture drives every decision made and interaction that takes place. It wasn’t always that way. Or, it was, depending on how you look at it. Originally started in 2011 by Kyle Porter, the sales development platform was all but shut down less than two years later due to poorly managed yet rapid growth. Porter regrouped at the beginning of 2013 with a new team and a new set of core values that come before anything else.

“We put culture at the forefront of everything,” says Brian Culler, director of engineering at SalesLoft. “In the course of running the business, if something could put the people and culture in jeopardy, we won’t do it.”

In addition to operating a results-only work environment, celebrating wins with a gong, and doing weekly check-ins with all 80-plus employees, SalesLoft boasts six core company values, which include always looking for the positive outcome, as well as being self-starting, empathetic and supportive of other team members. These core values come up early and often, with new hires hearing about them at their very first interview.

Culler says it’s a mistake for startups to not think about culture before hiring their first employees. “If you don’t start with it, then with every person you add it gets more and more impossible to put that culture in place,” he says.

But culture at SalesLoft is more than just a recruiting tool. It helps drive innovation and growth. The weekly check-ins are powered by 15five, a productivity tool that quickly helps managers identify what team members have accomplished, what they’re struggling with and how they’re feeling about it—all by answering five questions.

Culler’s team answers their questions by Thursday; he reviews and responds by Friday. Questions, concerns or praises he couldn’t address on his own he then “sends up” to Porter or Rob Forman, COO and co-founder. They take the weekend and respond on Sunday.

“You can tag people, which makes it have almost a social network feel,” Culler says. “It’s a really nice way to bring up issues that wouldn’t normally come up, It’s also a really great platform for shout-outs.”

In addition to using 15five, SalesLoft employees also meet one-on-one with their managers every week. It’s a big time commitment, adhering to this company culture, but Culler believes it’s also the key to SalesLoft success.

“There are always problems to solve in a startup,” he says. “Our culture allows us to overcome those problems as fast as we do.”

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