Please briefly describe your background prior to Haas
I was born and raised in Taiwan and my undergrad was in business administration. My background prior to Haas was in management consulting (~3y), ops / BD at a fintech startup (~1y), and early stage venture capital (~2y).
I decided to come to Haas with two major goals (1)location pivot (2)move from advisory roles to operator role.
What industries and functions did you recruit for and why?
I have been focused on tech from the start of my journey at Haas. Initially I was most interested in product management because how that feels like sitting at the core of tech companies and requires a super high level of cross-functional collaboration. Given the tough job market, I also tried to cast my net more widely to include other roles that better match with my consulting skill sets such as strategy, BizOps, etc.
Briefly describe how you approached recruiting. Anything worked particularly well for you?
Again, as an international student I tried to cast a wide net. I was pretty company-stage-agnostic and ended up applying to ~200 internship roles. The largest portion of interview invitations I received were strategy-related roles, and the takeaway for me was that companies would still prefer candidates with relevant prior experiences, especially in a tougher job market.
I also noticed information on internship openings can be spread out across many sources (some examples) and sometimes it becomes overwhelming to try to catch up. Therefore, I believe a great strategy is working with a group of peers with similar career interests and crowdsource the work of compiling the roles from different sources by maintaining a spreadsheet/notion page/airtable page together.
Briefly introduce your internship company and your team
I interned at Faire, a wholesale marketplace connecting independent brands and local retailers (e.g. gift shops, home decor stores, and many more). The company raised series G funding in 2021 and currently has ~1,000 employees.
I interned with its Strategy & Analytics Team focused on retailer acquisition.
Briefly describe your summer project or job description
The broader Strategy & Analytics team at Faire has roles that vary in the level of technical requirement. My role was more focused on BizOps / go-to-market type of work and was on the lighter side in terms of technical requirement.
My summer project was about acquiring new retailers, particularly those that just opened in the past year or are about to open, onto Faire’s marketplace. The project was divided into two major parts: (1) Laying out touch points throughout new retailers’ life journey and prioritizing a few areas Faire should act on (2) Proposing what Faire might be able to offer in these areas, designing pilots to validate these hypotheses, and actually executing the pilot ideas. Specifically, I built a landing page using some quick-and-dirty tool, ran some google ads to see if the page visitors resonated with the content, and summarized the fundings into recommended next steps.
Fun facts about the company
- Faire has a very strong culture of memo-style document writing as opposed to using Power Point or Google slides (likely inspired by Amazon). A ton of great documents are available in the internal Notion which are extremely helpful for understanding context of how things are done in the company. These memos are also the most common format of deliverables for analytical teams, including the Strategy & Analytics team.
- Faire also has a very strong culture to be customer-centric. A quick example of how it is manifesting: In biweekly company all-hands, every presenter starts their presentation by sharing what their favorite local retailer is. There are many small things that constantly enhance such a culture.
Thoughts / reflections on your internship
- It feels pretty incredible to work with people who care a lot about the company mission which you also resonate strongly with.
- I think BizOps type of roles can truly be a great fit for people with prior experience in consulting but want something more tangible. I very much enjoyed being scrappy and actually bring some ideas to life and would love to pursue roles with such a hands-on component as opposed to purely giving mid- or long-term recommendations.
Closing thoughts or advice
(1)Find a group of people of similar career interest and go through the process together (2)Keep an open mind and try to learn about different roles before deciding to laser-focus on one thing