Project Manager (1099 Contract)

What follows is a bit lengthy, but will give you a better idea of what we do, what this role entails and how to apply. 

We’re a boutique growth agency that gives a damn about our work, our clients, our people, and doing the right thing. We specialize in:

• user experience research and design
• full-service a/b testing and personalization (aka conversion rate optimization) 
• data analytics

If you would rather feel trusted to use your expertise and problem-solve than have your manager hawking over your shoulder micromanaging you, keep reading! Here at surefoot, we carve out time for you to get shit done and deliver real value to clients. Leave the wasted time, infighting with colleagues and finger-pointing to someone else. You didn’t become an account manager to deal with that stress mess day in and day out!

As a project manager, you’ll enjoy closing out tasks and collaborating with kind, supportive co-workers who respect you and your time – both at and away from the virtual office. You’ll be recognized by peers, leadership and clients for your organizational skills and attention to detail, which are critical to your success. In fact, disorganized, dependent personalities don’t last long here. Nor do people with “that’s not in my job description” attitudes. When smart people collaborate instead of compete and bring solutions instead of problems, amazing things happen. 

Speaking of collaboration, that’s something you’ll do regularly with our clients. We bend over backwards (but not forwards) to make sure they’re happy. Our goal is to be the best, most helpful agency they’ve ever worked with. To help us achieve that goal, we encourage you to share and celebrate your authentic self day in-and-day-out with co-workers and clients alike. Even if it means letting your “weird” show every once in awhile.

We’ll be honest; surefoot isn’t for everyone. We encourage and expect you to use your expertise, make decisions without a lot of oversight, go above and beyond to help a teammate or client, spend time to thoughtfully communicate asynchronously, and manage your own work schedule. If you’re a humble team player who likes to see and contribute to the success of something greater than yourself, then we want you to apply. Now. 

As a project manager at surefoot, you’ll ensure our client engagements stay organized and on track and serve as the primary point person for client questions and requests. You’ll need to be task-oriented and enjoy learning new technical concepts, and feel comfortable collaborating with co-workers and clients alike. Most of our clients are e-commerce, so an understanding of that world and experience in it are beneficial, though not required.

We’ll look to you to write detailed specs for designers and developers, triage client questions in Slack and email and move projects through our internal queue in a timely fashion. You’ll collaborate most frequently with strategic directors and work in tandem to ensure our clients feel heard, happy and confident in our work. Successful project managers are collaborative, organized and able to clearly understand and communicate technical concepts. Oh, and it helps if you pride yourself on delivering thoughtful, customer-centric experiences to end users.

• start your morning with a cup ‘o joe and fire up your computer to check emails, Slack, check-in on live test results, prep a call agenda, etc.
• it’s 10:30 CST, time for our team video stand-up to chit chat with teammates a bit, then talk about what you worked on yesterday, are doing today and any blockers.
• shortly after stand-up, you’ll hop on your first hour-long client call of the day (video camera on!) along with a surefoot strategic director, where you’ll start by talking with clients about anything other than the weather  Once you’ve chit-chatted a bit, you’ll walk the client through the status of tests in their pipeline and talk about the hypotheses you and the strategic director have prioritized for the upcoming month. You’ll re-iterate next steps and to-dos and bid your client friends goodbye ‘til next time.
• after a stretch break and a #self-care Slack post to enter the monthly gift card drawing, you’re back at your desk knocking out follow-ups from the call – Slacking the client a recap, adding new tests to their roadmap, getting those tests into our designers’ and developers’ backlogs, and making sure everything is on track for the next few weeks.
• a few urgent Slack messages come in from another client, so you take a break from call follow-ups to assure them you’re available and ready to help troubleshoot.
• you spend your early afternoon putting together the deck for an upcoming executive business review with one of your clients, building a content matrix for a test, fielding questions from clients and team members, or helping project manage various tests in Asana.
• around mid-afternoon, it’s time for your second client call. You’ll rinse and repeat the above, except this time you’re spending part of the call advising the clients on how to implement an update with their product feed that is needed to run a test. Fortunately, you’ve anticipated their questions and know most of the answers, but for those you don’t, you confidently admit as much and promise you’ll circle back after digging in some more. Adding those to your to-do list, you carry on with the call.
• after this call, it’s another round of post-call follow-ups, then perhaps a few email/slack responses and checking in on #watercooler to interact with teammates before you wrap things up for the day.

• 3-5+ years of professional experience in project/account management role, preferably with a digital agency or client-side in a digital capacity.
• 2+ years of e-commerce experience, either agency or client-side.
• the ability to relate to clients as peers and make them feel “heard”.
• top notch communicator with approachable, grammatically correct writing style.
• enjoy a fast paced environment and checking off a lot of tasks of different types in a day. You’ll hate this job if you can’t task switch or love endless back-to-back hours of “deep work” time.
• have exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail (e.g., if you found an error in this job description, it is still bugging you).
• experience running efficient, organized meetings.

• experience with tools like Google Analytics, HotJar or FullStory, Google Drive suite.
• cursory knowledge of HTML/CSS/JS and Chrome dev console.
• experience with A/B testing or personalization.
• experience creating low fidelity mock-ups.
• experience developing Google Slides presentations with a strategic focus.
• working knowledge of statistical frameworks and concepts pertinent to A/B testing, including Frequentist and Bayesian statistics, p-values, confidence intervals, minimum detectable effect, etc.
• experience with tools like Optimizely, Dynamic Yield, VWO, HotJar, Asana and Airtable.
• interest in the outdoors or staying active (many of our clients fall into the outdoors and active lifestyle industry).
• funny GIF library, good emoji usage, sense of humor

‍

The position is 1099 contract and open to U.S.-based applicants only. No Visa sponsorship is provided.

It will be about 10-15 hours/week and you must be available M-F for a few 'working hours' between 9-5 CST each day.

The hourly rate is $30-$40/hr, depending on experience.

Great, we’re looking forward to meeting you! To get the ball rolling, please submit your application and include:

• your resume (required)
• any additional materials like a cover letter or work samples (optional)
• your responses to this application exercise (required)

If you are selected to proceed in the process, you’ll move on to phase two which involves a Zoom video call or two to get to know one another a bit better. If we’re feeling good about that, we’ll contact your references.

And finally, if your references check out and confirm you’re not a stabber, we’ll ask you to do some actual paid work with us to determine fit for both parties. This “paid project” is a nice way for both parties to get a feel for one another’s work, communication style and more.

We understand that applying to jobs is a lot of work and that it’s a bummer to never hear back - we’ve been there, too. That’s why we try to respond to applicant, even if it’s a “no”. We value feedback and appreciate those who ask for it but we can’t always provide a reason for every decision. 

Per the above about not having an HR department, this is one of the tradeoffs we have to make. But rest assured we give careful consideration to every applicant because building a world class team is of utmost importance to us.