Mandissa Marshall, Talent Acquisition Lead
You have been a part of Formic for 3 months now, how would you describe your time here so far?
It's been a blast coming on board, even unexpecting. I didn't realize how collaborative and team oriented everyone is internally. I've been really blessed to have so many team members on site share so much knowledge and insight, helping me get up to speed on everything. Everyone is always happy to jump on a call, so not only are we saying that we have an open door policy, everyone's living by it. Recruiting requires a lot of internal collaboration, so it's amazing that it's not something that I have to work to implement. It is already here.
What attracted you most in joining this company?
Again, the collaborative environment, but also how it exists in our leadership from the top down. Having conversations with Saman, our CEO, really impressed me. He asked me where I was looking to go and how he could help me achieve my goals. To hear that from our senior leadership is really, really important. And not only that, when I interviewed with other team members, that openness and collaboration reflected all across the company.
Another selling point for me too, is the fact that we're looking to grow and expand talent across the United States. We have that flexibility with regards to the workplace and we're not so rigid and looking to be in an office. We are living a new normal, so to speak, and it’s important for people to reflect on how they want to achieve their work life balance, whether that is working on a hybrid schedule or fully virtual. It also just makes recruiting that much easier. Now I can source talent all across the U.S., which makes my job really exciting.
How would you describe the community as well as the company culture here at Formic?
Being at a startup, everyone plays a big role within the organization, so it is important that everyone's doing their part. You can't have anyone either operating independently or just kind of taking a backseat. We must all come together for a greater mission. You get that sense here at Formic, that we're all coming together and that your role is very critical in the overall success of the company. With us growing and scaling, we need that startup mentality, someone who is gritty and doesn't need to be micromanaged. We promote independent thinking, and we promote new ideas internally.
As our new and amazing lead recruiter, how do you hope to improve the experience of incoming employees?
I hope to make the process quicker and more smooth. Really communicating what the process is going to look like, who they're going to be meeting with, what each interview is going to look like. No candidate likes to be in the dark, so I think it's really great as a recruiter that I can give someone an insight to each hiring manager's personality and their perspectives and what different items for them to focus on in those conversations to help them have a really great interview. I want to give everyone a fair and equal opportunity and a shot to move forward and join an organization such as Formic.
It'll also be really critical in my role moving forward to help hiring managers have access to seeing diverse candidates and a large pool of candidates that are in the market so they can make really good decisions.
What kinds of candidates are you looking for in this new season of hiring?
Anyone with robotics experience! I feel like that's so crucial for us. It is a learning curve and in certain roles, it's not needed, but it's always great to have individuals with that robotics background. It definitely has leverage in our organization, just because it does take some time to learn how the industry works, who the industry leaders are, and make sense of the technical space.
As the company continues to grow in size, how do you hope to see our culture shift and grow as well?
We want to kind of hold on to our startup mentality, of course, but as we grow and scale, we will also get more structured and focused in certain target areas. In a startup, people are wearing multiple hats, acting more like a generalist and doing a little bit of everything. They'll get to focus on a certain segment and build up teams and divisions. I think that'll take a little bit of weight off of some individuals that are operating in this dual-hatted position. So long term, it'll be really exciting to see individuals grow in divisions and learn new skill sets, learn new challenges if they're moving into more of a leadership role, and build those teams as we scale. We will always take a look at where individuals are passionate to be sure that we're placing them in the right area for them to grow internally with us.
Mandissa Marshall
To learn more about open positions at Formic: https://jobs.lever.co/Formic