Setting sail for the future of work with Nowboat
The sequel to a Jobbatical story that spans the globe
As you may remember from an earlier interview, Nowboat is a booking platform for sea adventures and boat charters. An unquenchable thirst for adventure is what serves as the unifying thread between the company’s mission and the people who work there. Almost a year ago, Joaquin—an intrepid digital nomad—joined Nowboat as their e-Commerce Manager. Since then, he’s gone from being hired through Jobbatical to hiring through Jobbatical, further strengthening his team with some adventurous flair from around the world. We’d be lying if we didn’t think this was the bee’s knees, so of course we had to investigate the recent 200% increase of jobbaticlers at Nowboat.
Since our last episode…
What’s new with Joaquin? Geographically speaking, he’s still living it up in Bali, working his magic in a co-working space (we can’t blame him—have you seen what Bali looks like?).
Professionally speaking, things have escalated since we last caught up with him. “The business is going really well,” says Joaquin. “The company is growing, so we are getting more partners, more captains working with us. We are growing as a team. Before I was managing the whole platform myself, and now it’s impossible to manage by myself, so I needed some people.”
Enter Jobbatical. Nowboat recently took on two interns to help manage the growth of their platform: Luis from Mexico and Century from the U.S. Joaquin confirms that, much like the rest of the team, the new additions are bursting with globetrotting spirit. “Luis is in Mexico right now, but he’s moving to Europe, to study in Austria. Century is currently in Spain.” (It’s worth noting that there was also a third Jobbatical intern at Nowboat. She managed to complete her three-month stint before our news van arrived on the scene. She is now running her own business.)
Keeping up with a team spread out all over the globe has been nothing short of a miracle of logistics: “I have met with the founders and the technology team,” says Joaquin. “I’ve been with them in Italy, I’ve been with the founders in Hong Kong, and I’ve been with the founders here in Bali as well.” The next Nowboat team meet-up in the physical space will take place in Europe in October.
The balancing act of keeping a remote team together
As far as Joaquin is concerned, remote work is the way to go. “I think the more people start to work this way, the more people are gonna like it. And once you try it, it’s difficult going back to the routine of working in an office.” The benefits don’t stop on the talent side. “As an employer, you get access to a pool of talent everywhere. It really opens a lot of opportunities. The flexibility is definitely one of the biggest advantages.”
Having a distributed team does come with its own set of challenges, so it’s all about finding the right balance. “When it comes to drawbacks, I would say that the personal touch is always very important,” says Joaquin. “You can keep up relationships over the internet, but not like actually sitting down with somebody and talking face to face. I do believe that when people are together in the same place, communication flows much faster. It’s good to combine both sides a little bit, just to have that human factor.”
“It gives you a lot of flexibility, but you have to know how to use that power.”
Nowboat and Jobbatical sitting in a tree, R-E-L-O-C-A-T-I-N-G awesome talent
Nowboat is a great example of a company with their own ideas about what the future of work should look like. That’s probably why they’ve had such success using Jobbatical to put a team together. “What I love about you guys is that you get people together with the same mindset,” says Joaquin. “Somebody applying for a job on Jobbatical has something in his mind that tells him it might be a good idea to apply here and not somewhere else.”
It works both ways. “The companies putting their job listings on Jobbatical are more modern, looking for talent from anywhere.” The platform also acts as a filter for people with interests such as travel. “Jobbatical gives us a lot of people with the right mentality that fit in the culture,” says Joaquin. “People willing to do something different.”
Having made the transition from Jobbatical’s talent side to the employer side of the table, Joaquin has an excellent overview of the complete Jobbatical experience. “I would definitely recommend this experience to people looking to hire,” he says. “The people you find on Jobbatical are people looking for a change, for an adventure, for a new experience. You just have to make sure that they fit the culture you have in your company.”
Will Nowboat continue to use Jobbatical to find people for their team? “When it comes to me, every single person I hire will be through Jobbatical,” says Joaquin.
“I like you guys because of the vision you have and I share. And hopefully in the future, this will be the norm.”
Speaking of the future…
“We don’t take this world from our parents; we borrow it from our children.”
For all its benefits, making a remote team function efficiently would probably be next to impossible without a shared goal. Nowboat’s mission extends beyond an aspiration to bring more adventure into the world. “We want to enjoy the desire for adventure, but in the sense that it’s sustainable,” says Joaquin. “We don’t work with big cruisers—these massive boats that host a thousand people—because it’s not sustainable. Those things damage the environment, so we like to work more with sailing boats.”
The team is very conscious of the impact their business has on the world. “And our way to compensate that is to donate to NGO’s. The traveler, when he books his package, gets to select the local NGO he wants to donate to, and we donate in his name. We want to set that kind of a standard that hopefully people will follow.”
“We think that if we get to work in an environment like the ocean, and we take things from there, we have to give something back.”
Looking to hire adventurous talent for your team? Head on over to Jobbatical! Looking for an adventure of your own? Take a look at these gigs! Thoughts or questions? Leave a response!
