STORMERS BEHIND STORMERS
FULL DISCLOSURE: THIS IS A TEAM APPRECIATION POST.
Let me tell you a bit about myself. I started working with a startup called STORM Technologies last December 2012. I was initially hired as a recruiter. The only thing I remember about that time was that we were only 12 in the company and I had to at least double that number l because we were preparing for a massive pivot. That stint, while exciting, was something I wanted to get away from because I found myself exhausted every day after talking to many candidates (#introvertproblems). So I volunteered to take on a Marketing role. Soon after that, I kept trading in my current role for a new one as soon as I get the opportunity to do so — thanks to my wonderful, patient, and always-game-to-try-things managers, Peter and Pao. It was on my 4th year in STORM when it all came full circle. I was reinstated as the head of HR, now known internally as People Operations.
From recruitment to employee engagement, STORM’s People Operations (POps) Team is responsible for making the #STORMlife awesome. My #STORMstory did not start here, but I think it’s just right to write about this team first- the STORMers behind STORMers.
Now, let me tell you a bit about the team.
The first person you’ll see when you come to STORM’s reception area is Rach. Her smile brightens up our day. She’s been with the firm for 3 years and still her enthusiasm has not wavered. In fact, her passion just keeps growing and growing. Rach takes care of everything STORMers need to be productive and comfortable in the office. She manages all administrative and compliance duties very well. Her team is amazing — shout out to Kuya Bien, Kuya Boni, and Wes — and they all love Rach’s motherly management style.
And next, we have Regina. It is not a secret that I am grooming her to replace me within the next two years so I can move on to a different role in STORM. Reg is one of the most service-oriented people I had the pleasure to work with. Not only is she good at recruitment and employee success, she also LOVES dealing with the Philippine government (which is something I find really odd and amusing at the same time). Her niche is in government-related benefits and employee engagement. And she practically stood as the buddy of the two youngest members of our team so far.
Speaking of which, let me introduce the youngest person in the team — Alex. Her first big project in STORM is the Open House. She invited everyone we met from the Job Fairs to the STORM headquarters to meet-and-greet their potential mentors after a learning session on Design Thinking applied to life planning. This turned out to be super successful and led to us recruiting 12 very talented interns for STORM.
The person who facilitated the learning session at the Open House is Deirdre. She volunteered to take a tour of duty in the People Ops team because she wanted to learn more about people management by serving STORMers through culture building programs and communications. Deirdre was an Associate Product Manager for Flex when she took on additional workload. On top of helping develop our flagship product, she managed to co-build the STORM Scouts program (our very first internship batch program) and help out in many other culture building projects such as HANEP Metrics and the STORM summer outing!
Romeo is the STORM Scout that we got from the Open House. He is amazeballs! In just two months, he was able to (1) pitch a recruitment campaign for STORM, (2) execute the aforementioned campaign, (3) help out in actual recruitment, (4) execute an awesome culture program with the rest of the scouts, (5) participate in product design sprint, and (6) make process improvement recommendations in our recruitment process. Romeo’s Industrial Engineering background mixed with his passion for people development made it easy for us to choose him as the very first People Ops STORM Scout.
And last, but definitely not the least, we have Dexter. Arguably the best recruiter we have on the team now, he has brought in 40% of total hires so far and 37% of which are Tech hires! Dex is known to be the most (if not only) chill person in the team. He is quick to offer support to anyone who needs it. This makes Dexter a really good teammate on top of the fact that he is relentless and awesome.
We also have two honorary People Ops team members — Marco and Christian — who helped us with employer branding projects and two new people in the team that I will be writing about soon enough. We have a couple more positions we need to fill for the team. But for now, this is the team that makes the #STORMlife a bit more awesome than it already is.
Want to learn more about STORMers? Visit http://storm.tech/ or STORM’s Facebook page.
