Content Production Specialist
Founded by the creator of the YOU DON'T KNOW JACK® game series, The Jellyvision Lab, Inc. creates virtual teachers, advisors, and salespeople who make online learning and decision making delightful. In all that we do, our goal is to make complex topics simple and boring material interesting using a combination of great design, unexpectedly funny content, and serious technology.
Of all the virtual people Jellyvision has created, the tallest and least afraid of bears is ALEX® (www.meetalex.com). ALEX helps companies talk their employees through the tricky choices they’ll have to make, like picking a health insurance plan, deciding how much to put in their 401(k), or whether they might want extra life insurance. Our customers love ALEX because he helps their employees figure out what’s best for their personal situations, which, in turn, saves our customers a boat-load of time and money—everybody wins! As we sell more and more of ALEX, we need more and more nonvirtual (i.e., real life) people to keep the virtual ones amazing. That’s where you come in.
THAT’S GREAT, BUT WHAT’S THE JOB?
Here’s our elevator pitch:
“What I love about being a Production Specialist is that I have the opportunity to engage with a huge range of disciplines. Working on ALEX, I’m an engineer, a bug-buster, a customer service rep, a project manager… whatever the situation calls for. I do my best work in high-pressure situations, and I thrive on figuring out solutions to problems that haven’t yet been solved.”
More specifically, Content Production Specialists manage the production and delivery of customer-specific versions of ALEX. Pulling it off involves the following:
- Organization, communication, tools, and triage. Making versions of ALEX involves a ton of quick yet careful coordination. You need to master several internal tools and work closely with many other departments.
- Bug-busting. ALEX has many moving parts, and those parts sometimes break. When bugs pop up, you’ll track down exactly what the problem is, then fix it or quickly and courteously get coworkers to help. (Unless it’s a spider. Then you’re on your own, pal.)
- Customization management. Sometimes we build new features just for a certain customer. You’ll work with the Account Management and Core Production teams to ensure that all customizations are built exactly as the customer wishes (and, of course, that those wishes are granted on time).
- Amazing attention to detail and amazing commitment to quality. You need to know everything that’s unique about each customer’s version of ALEX, expertly document those differences, and make sure ALEX doesn’t have any spinach in his teeth before his big close-up.
- Some customization building. A separate team handles the production of most customizations, but new Content Production Specialists will learn a few customization skills using our weird software.
- Getting it perfect and out the door. Then doing it again tomorrow. Our busy season—August, September, and October—is very deadline heavy, with some long nights. Think accountants in tax season, but in a more creative and less accountant-y environment.
WHAT KIND OF SKILLS DO I NEED?
The Production Specialist of our dreams doesn’t have to come from any specific career or educational background, but some close fits include project management, editing, content management, and quality assurance. And though Production Specialists don’t talk directly with customers, some customer service experience is a plus.
But in general, we don’t care who you are, where you’re from, or what you did, as long as you love making great stuff, hitting deadlines and have the following skills:
- Crystal-clear communication. You need to communicate politely yet efficiently with the many teams who help make ALEX, plus write out detailed specifications for our tech folks to implement.
- Logical thinking and problem-solving. When a bug pops up, you must quickly figure out what’s going wrong and how it might relate to bugs you've seen before.
- A great eye. You’ll make sure customer-specific features fit beautifully into the existing product, plus provide an extra layer of quality assurance. So you should have an eye for design and layout, and you should love spelling and grammar so much that you constantly doodle their names in your notebook.
And you and ALEX will be perfectly in sync if you have these traits:
- Quick learning. We work in the employee benefits world, populated by exciting acronyms like FSA, HSA, HRA, SSNRA, HMO, and PPO. You must quickly pick those up, plus master our complex production process. A track record of learning new subjects fast (benefits or otherwise) would be excellent.
- Software savvy. You don't need any particular tech training or experience, but you need to be comfortable with technology and confident that you can quickly learn our internal tools and software. Mostly, you need to be bright, curious, and persistent.
- GIFs that keep on giving. We're engaged, passionate people whose philosophy is summed up by the random gifs we send: efficient communication, humor, and a touch of whimsy. While we take pride in our work, we try not to take ourselves too seriously.
- Detail orientation and a practical mindset. In software, one typo can kick off the self-destruct sequence, and one flawed delivery can make our BFF customers say TTYL. We need perfectionists who can meet deadlines.
- Organization and time management. A typical day for a Production Specialist is getting six deliverables to customers and another five to Quality Assurance—and merrily making sure everything meets our extraordinary quality standards. Producing work that’s on deadline and on budget and perfectly made is a delicate art. It takes a lot of color-coded nested folders to get there.
- Moxie. In our fast-paced busy season, the days get long, but they’re made so much better by coworkers who are amazing at defusing stressful situations. You should be world-class at quickly and constructively problem-solving with a team. Calmness under pressure, grace in giving and receiving feedback, resilience, self-sufficiency, a sense of humor, comfy pants, and kindness are all key.
WHAT WOULD MY DAY LOOK LIKE?
9:17 AM: Grab some fresh-ground coffee and a granola bar from the office kitchen. Check your email and job queue, and see that you have 36 tasks. The vision module is showing a picture of teeth. A customer wants their name to appear in ALL CAPS. The premiums in the medical module are twice as much as they should be. And 33 variations on this theme, all due today. Better start coordinating!
11:02 AM: With all bugs sorted out, turn your attention to editing three customers’ entries in our database. Triumphantly catch an error that would have made part-timers ineligible for benefits. Tell your coworker Patrick that “eligibile” isn’t a word.
12:21 PM: Run to Whole Foods with Jeff and Jill. On the way, make a joke about FSAs that everyone actually finds funny. What have you become?
1:06 PM: Burrito achieved. Look at Customer A’s version of ALEX and make sure the audio for that retirement customization is finally coming through at the right volume.
2:15 PM: Check on that customization from the art department. Turns out it’s a good thing you did; it’s due tomorrow but the work order said it was due next week. Crisis averted!
4:11 PM: Get Customer X’s version back from QA. Verify for the third time that the tax savings module stopped freezing. Celebratory Panda Cam break.
7:03 PM: Approve Customer Y's deliverable—the medical customization looks great! All your deliverables for the day are out—and so are you.
ANYTHING ELSE? Yes. We share a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere, so we only hire nice, bright, funny people who are willing to work hard. Our credo is a simple one: be helpful. And we think we can be most helpful if our workforce is as diverse in thought, perspective, and culture as the people who use our products. We are looking to add amazing folks to our team who will bring diversity across many lines, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity, sex, and country of origin.
Do you jam sweet air guitar riffs when you cross items off your to-do list? Do you adore festooning cats with tiny saddles before herding them? You’ll love this gig. Creating a leading-edge product that helps people make important decisions in their lives—and doing it in an environment filled with hilarious, hardworking, kindhearted folks—rocks even harder than you and that air guitar.
ARE THERE ANY PERKS? Yes, we love perks.
- Competitive pay, stock options, and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance for our employees (as long as you qualify for our tobacco-free discount; if you’re a tobacco user, your medical premiums will be higher than $0). We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Casual dress and a flexible schedule. Come in a sweatshirt, jeans, whatever, like everyone else here.
- Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of intelligent, talented, and innovative folks. Although most hours the place is deathly quiet (we're a focused bunch), this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment, which makes a nice way to spend the day.
- Easy transportation. We’re really close to the "L" and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the Apple Store, Mariano’s, and the Mega Whole Foods if that’s your kind of thing), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses. Since a number of our employees like to bike to work, we also have showers and lockers in the office.
- Did we mention our yoga class? We bring a pro instructor right to the office. Fully subsidized by Jellyvision and fully optional, btw.
- Oh! And you should know that we have a massage chair. And not just any massage chair, my friend. It’s the HumanTouch HT 5320 WholeBody™ Massage Chair. Feeling a little stiff? Sit down. Relax. Feel better? Good. Okay, back to work.
- Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free healthy snack foods, and we have a “hot lunch” catered once a week to give people a reason to hang out and eat together.
INTERESTED?
Great! Here’s what we need from you: 1) Your resume. 2) A thoughtful cover letter that highlights three reasons you think you’d be great for the gig, focusing on how your past work experience has prepared you for this kind of position. Writing is key to all that we do, and we weigh cover letters heavily.
If you decide to apply, please know that every complete application will be carefully reviewed. Seriously! We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application, and we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us awhile to get back to applicants, so please NO PHONE CALLS. The time we spend responding to phone calls and emails inquiring about where we are in the process is time that we could be spending actually moving the process along—so please be patient with us.
Thanks for your interest in Jellyvision!