Associate Product Manager
JELLYVISION NEEDS AN AMAZING ASSOCIATE PRODUCT MANAGER
We here at Jellyvision are the proud parents of ALEX®, an interactive employee communications platform that happens to share some DNA (and a sense of humor) with the smash-hit trivia video game YOU DON’T KNOW JACK®, created by Jellyvision's founder. ALEX makes navigating tricky decisions—like choosing and using employee benefits or improving your financial wellness—easier, faster, and more helpful, not to mention entertaining. The success of the ALEX platform has exceeded our wildest dreams, (except for the part right before we woke up where our mom was riding a giraffe), which is why we need Talented folks like you to help us help ALEX take over the world…er…continue to grow and succeed.
THAT'S LOVELY, BUT WHAT'S THE JOB?
We need someone to start taking over the hands-on aspects of working with our engineers to build and maintain the tools and frameworks that make up our platform for interactive conversation development. In this role you’ll be a key part of supporting Jellyvision’s new product initiatives and supporting your co-workers across the organization in being awesome at their very different jobs.
With the support of a lead technical product manager, you’ll gradually take on more and more of the day-to-day responsibilities involved in defining and planning the work to be done. We’re looking for someone who can eventually graduate from this more tactical focus and start contributing to and driving the vision and strategy behind achieving our team’s goals.
SO WHAT WILL I BE DOING ON THIS TEAM?
- Work with users, stakeholders, and engineers both on and off the product team to define and document what needs to be done (and why)
- Build and maintain positive relationships with the people who are uniquely impacted by of these tools and frameworks
- Gather data and generate product insights through informal and formal user testing, analytics reports, data queries, and simple conversations
- Help prioritize incoming requests and defects across multiple tool and system backlogs
- Combine those multiple backlogs into a single, tidy development backlog
- Drive work forward towards completion
- Plan and manage releases
- Communicate updates and changes to stakeholders and users
- Evaluate the impact of your work through surveys and analytics
SO WHAT KIND OF FOLKS ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
- Technical: You will be working with products that interact with key parts of the ALEX ecosystem under the hood. Even if you haven’t been a software engineer before, you’ll need to understand that technical context to work with the team, translate for less-technical folks, and make good decisions. Speaking of which…
- Decision-maker: When you’re deciding what and why and when to do (or not do) something, you’ll need to analyze and weigh a lot of different hard facts and squishy feelings. You also have to come a single, clear decision that you can communicate and defend (then maybe change when you learn something new).
- Diplomatic: As a product manager you also have to be able to lead by influence rather than org chart authority. And when many of your users are also your co-workers, you’ve gotta let people down gently when you explain why their request isn’t getting attention (otherwise waiting to fill your water bottle or passing on the too-narrow stairway will get pretty awkward).
- Analytical: You’re gonna get asked to do some big things, and you’ll find big things you want to take on, too. You’ll need to break those big things down into a lot of smaller pieces for a bunch of good reasons: mitigating risk, showing progress and delivering value sooner, learning faster, and more easily changing direction when necessary.
ANYTHING ELSE? 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.
ARE THERE ANY PERKS? Yes, we love perks.
- Competitive pay, 401(k) with matching, and benefits. 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/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.
- Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free healthy snack foods, and we have a catered lunch every other week to give people a reason to hang out and eat together.
- Easy transportation and lots of love for folks who bike to work. We’re really close to the North/Clybourn red line stop and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the Apple Store and Mega Whole Foods too), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses. A number of our employees like to bike to work, so we also have bike storage, showers and lockers in the office. And for those without their own bike in the city, we offer free divvy memberships – complete with Jellyvision bike helmets you can borrow from the office.
- Did we mention our yoga and meditation class? We bring a pro instructor right to the office. Fully subsidized by Jellyvision and fully optional, btw.
- Oh! And we have a massage chair. Not just any massage chair, my friend. It’s the Renew 2 Zero-Gravity Massage Chair by Brookstone®. Feeling a little stiff? Sit down. Relax. Feel better? Good. Okay, back to work.
AND HOW DO I APPLY?
We look forward to hearing about you and what you do. Make sure your application includes:
- A cover letter that highlights three reasonsyou think you’d be great for the gig, focusing on how your past experience has prepared you for this kind of position. Writing is key to all we do, and we weigh cover letters heavily. We love a cover letter that really shows us your personality (check out our company bios to see the wide range of personalities we’ve already got in house), but don’t stress if you’re not a comedian. You don’t have to be funny. Just be yourself. We’re mostly interested in learning who you are, what you love to do, and why you’d love to do it here with us.
- Your resume
You will receive an auto-reply confirming that we've received your application.
Please know that every single application we receive is read by a real live human being. However that kind of thoughtful review takes time, so it may take us a little while to get back to you (but we will, we promise). In the meantime, NO FOLLOW UP PHONE CALLS OR EMAILS, PLEASE. It’s not that we don’t love hearing from you. It’s just that time spent responding to follow ups could be spent…well…reading your application. Please rest assured that if you received a confirmation from Recruiting Robot, we’ve got your application, and will get back to you really soon. We knew you’d understand.
If you still have pressing questions in the meantime, please feel free to check out our handy-dandy FAQ page!
Thanks for your interest in Jellyvision!