Top Companies Still Hiring — Catalyst
Today’s Top Companies *Still* Hiring article spotlights Catalyst! Like each company featured here, not only are they still actively hiring but they have not undergone any layoffs.
Thank you to team-members Brooke Lesner, Talent Acquisition Lead as well as Stacy Schmitz, Account Executive for sharing this intimate insight into the Catalyst team. To see which roles Catalyst is hiring for, please visit their Careers Page. They have a number of openings in New York City. To learn how they’re navigating COVID-19 and why they’re an all around fabulous place to work, keep on reading!
Despite COVID-19, Catalyst raised a Series B $25M round of funding in April. Not only that, but you’ve seen an uptick in usage and demo requests over the past few months. Why do you believe Catalyst has been gaining this traction recently?
COVID-19 has made our mission — to bring Customer Success to the center of the org — more important than ever before. As our customers are now particularly focused on retention, having a tool designed for CSMs, that allows them to focus on centralizing and organizing their day-to-day activities while collaborating cross-functionally (particularly while fully remote!), means they can more efficiently manage customers who may be facing difficult situations, professionally and/or personally.
Additionally, our recent round of funding further demonstrates that our approach to Customer Success is really working and resonating. We’re meeting a need by building the most innovative, intuitive customer success platform on the market. CS teams frequently just play the hand they’re dealt, doing their best to operate within platforms that weren’t specifically designed for their department. They may not even realize a tool like Catalyst exists! It’s a refreshing change of pace for CSMs, to use a tool that was built to actionably make their lives easier.
What have you been doing to keep your employees engaged and feeling supported during this time?
The way we operate as a customer-centric company absolutely inspires the way that we treat our employees: with a focus on both their quality of experience and on their happiness.
We feel strongly about providing our employees with the autonomy and trust that they deserve. We’re shown, top-down, that anyone at Catalyst can take the time they need because we see members of the leadership team — including our cofounder, Edward — blocking time on their calendars for “family time” or “baby duty.” The entire company took off on May 22 for a mental health day, and we’ve also instituted Summer Fridays.
Below are some specific ways in which we’ve kept our employees engaged:
- Weekly game nights, paint & sip night, poker night, a cocktail/mocktail class — trying to recreate the in-person events, to the extent possible- Providing a stipend for employees to purchase the equipment they need to feel comfortable working from home
- Investing in folks’ mental health, by providing everyone with a free month of Headspace and Talkspace
- Utilizing Slack’s Donut-bot to facilitate 1:1 conversations among employees who may not work together closely on a daily basis
- When we’re in the office, we receive free lunch every day and eat together as an org. We’ve kept a sense of normalcy by providing Seamless credit on Fridays, accompanied by a weekly Zoom lunch
- Our People team has been incredibly thoughtful with sending gifts for important holidays such as anniversaries, birthdays, and Mother’s Day (dog moms included!)
I was surprised to hear that Catalyst hired a Community & Events Manager during this pandemic: a time when many events-based roles unfortunately seem to be vanishing. Why was this a priority hire for you?
A commitment of ours has always been to building a future-looking Customer Success community, and we’re going to keep this up, regardless of where we live and work. We had begun this endeavor prior to COVID-19; for example, in February, we hosted 60+ VPs of Customer Success for an in-office event. It was exciting to bring together a group of leaders, and to give everyone the opportunity to knowledge-share and network with peers.
COVID-19 has not altered our commitment; we are continuing our efforts digitally. Our amazing Community & Events Manager, Ben Winn, has been strategically planning webinars, panels, and newsletters, and has also been brainstorming on how we can host events in unique formats that work with the current way of life — whether that’s incorporating families into events, or hosting additional networking opportunities — now virtually — to continue bringing CS leaders together.
Most of us in NYC have close acquaintances who have contracted COVID-19. At Catalyst, your co-founder Kevin Chiu not only developed COVID-19, but he was hospitalized for an extended period of time. He is gratefully recovering smoothly at this point, but his absence has absolutely required teammates to step up in meaningful ways. Could you share a bit more about this experience?
Many of our Sales and CS employees report directly to Kevin, and were only shortly into their ramp-up/onboarding period when Kevin was diagnosed with Coronavirus. We wanted to make Kevin proud and continue striving to hit our milestones, even in his absence, so Catalyst employees have really stepped up and taken the roles of subject matter experts for certain facets of the business. By analyzing each employee’s strengths and weaknesses (and by every employee being ridiculously self-aware and selfless), we’ve been able to lean on one another and accomplish our goals.
We’re tremendously proud of the way we’ve banded together during this time. We’ve even felt confident enough to hire on Kevin’s behalf, as we know the values with which Kevin leads and what it is that he looks for in new hires. We couldn’t be more excited to have Kevin back on board; we miss his compassion, grit, and humor!
Recent events aside, why is your company such a wonderful place to work?
If you’ve ever worked anywhere else before, Kevin and Edward are the kind of executives who you can’t fathom could possibly be your leaders one day — they honestly seem too good to be true. When they say that they care about us, they actually care about us. Businesses don’t always operate with genuine empathy and compassion for their employees, but Kevin and Edward are smart and capable enough to run a successful business while actually investing in their employees’ well being. They specifically shared that they wouldn’t let anyone go, as a result of COVID-19, no matter what. And it’s actually the truth.
If your tech company is actively hiring, you have not experienced layoffs, and you’re interested in being featured, please fill out this Google Form. I’ll reach out directly.
