I am redoing this review and deleting my old one as there are several things that I left out in the first.
First, I should've looked at the red flags of the reviews before me. There was a lot of talk of layoffs and that's exactly what happened to me and another individual after seven months of high stress in trying to create a functional department from nothing and with nothing.
Myself and another individual were laid off due to budget cuts the day before my birthday.
I have several statements from other employees and my supervisor talking about what a great job I did- not to mention that I constantly asked for feedback and was only ever given positive responses. So this was very surprising. There was no marketing person for 5 years before me and I was trying to make headway with no support, no budget, no prior procedures or automation and no tools.
There was not a current content marketing program, The SCO program that had been implemented by an agency was not even targeted to their niche market, there was not the tools or foundation for an email marketing program, there was no social media management strategy, and the website ended up being the bane of my existence there. I was never told about the state of the website.
Their website would have been sunsetted, as in it would've been taken off-line, in the early fall as it had not been updated or maintained in any way. They would've lost their website because it wasn't even under their control at the time. So instead of actual marketing, I was forced to prioritize a new website from scratch in a new environment with no migration. Not to mention, I had zero design assistance so I designed and developed a website from scratch, although I had a glorious Contractor developer- otherwise it would've taken even longer. I am head of marketing so expecting design fluency and internal IT fluency was just one way that this was just a complete mess. I was expected to handle backend IT stuff by one of the CEOs when it came to the website when typically, you hand that off to your IT department. But there is no IT department. Everyone complains about it.
Not having HR really promotes a toxic environment. Some departments, like sales and marketing, had nothing but constant pushing and stress for more sales while other departments were barely supervised. Sales and marketing are in the business of making sales but you don't just create something that works and something that is sustainable and scalable from nothing in no time. And this is what the management team wanted. The backstabbing, if you will, talking about management by others and by management itself about other management was unprofessional and caused tension and concern.
When I started, All the teams needed marketing support , So it was a deluge of asset creation and just learning the niche. And for the first three months there, I was supporting two different businesses, ticketing and payments. One marketing member managing two businesses, one of which had a failing website. Not sure what they expected.
Even speaking to the interim CFO, he never expected results until the fall because he understands how real businesses work. Having to create a brand new, sales-supporting, full-funnel website, touching almost 400 pages, re-creating and redesigning almost 100 of those pages from scratch in less than 3 months.. derailed any progress that I could've had in the first few months.
Outside of all of those red flags, which I should've listened to but I thrive on a good challenge, another was the fact that they wanted me to give four days notice to my previous employer. It was obvious they didn't care after I brought it up with the Recruiter.
They didn't realize it but I sure did work 80 hours the first two weeks so that I could give proper notice to my employer and I'm so grateful that I did since I have a glowing reference from them. This was one of the most stressful employment situations I've ever had.
Another red flag was the Recruiter they used, Yoh. She was incredibly flaky, wouldn't call back until it looked like I had a shot and was not good about giving updates until the end. She said it wasn't her job to send or forward thank you notes. Typically recruiters don't want you to contact the company by yourself but I got the impression that less work was better for that Recruiter. I almost said No midway through just because of that. So if I've learned anything, go with your first instinct. Follow your gut.
Also, everything happens for a reason and I am so blessed and look so forward to whatever is next.
We all get what we put into things.
