Strategist and Proposalist
A LITTLE INTRO TO THIS ROLE
Have you seen Mad Men? Well… the role is like that. Sitting around coming up with ideas and presenting them to clients. (We’re not always drinking and sleeping around though. So if that’s the part you like about Mad Men, keep on Googling.)
AN INTRO TO US AND A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THE ROLE
The Shelf is a fast-growing influencer marketing company and we’re looking for a crazy-creative person… Someone who has those light bulb moments throughout the day… and maybe takes them for granted sometimes too because brilliant moments are so commonplace for him or her now… Someone who loves thinking and brainstorming and reverse engineering (totally a thing) and poking the box. We want someone who thrives on impressing the CRAP out of people with the babies produced by their brains… You know what I mean.
We’re a team of 18.
We’re growing.
We just got a fun new office.
We have an office pug who’s the sitting President of the Welcoming Committee (as long as you’re not looking for a welcome and you see chill mode as open arms).
About half of us are really funny.
We’re currently working with some pretty amazing brands (eos, Famous Footwear, Pepsi, Neutrogena, Evenflo, a big chain of malls (I don’t think I’m allowed to say who), a big toilet brand (again… I don’t think I’m allowed to say who, but you probably sit on this brand every morning), Natori, Diamond Producers Association, Hickory Farms, Moosejaw… just to name a few).
The position involves 5 main components:
- Creativity
- Strategy
- Writing
- Presentation Skills
- A little math.
(in that order)
Extra Details
COMPENSATION + PERKS (IN ADDITION TO BASE SALARY):
- This is a full-time position with a salary (as opposed to hourly work).
- We want each of our employees to have skin in the game, so you’ll receive a meaningful number of stock options after you hit the 3-month point (ish).
- We provide the usual benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision.
- Many of our employees are remote, but for this position, we’d prefer you to be here… or Brooklyn adjacent. BUT, if you really are just SO amazing… and your work ethic is ROCK SOLID… and your ideas are FABULOUS, please still apply, we can make an exception.
- We work from home two days a week to cut back on commuting. Yay!
- You’ll be working closely with the founders. Both are super-cool.
- People who perform well, advance quickly.
- We’re dog-friendly. (As mentioned above, we have an office pug!! So if you like dogs, you’ll love him… if you don’t like dogs, he’ll most likely ignore you… he’s very adept at picking up on whether people want anything to do with him.)
- It’s a very fast-paced environment and there’s always something new going on. Constant learning! With a lot of room for career growth because we’ll let you take on whatever you can handle. Ideally, we like to hire our managers from within the team, so there is a very clear path to the next level (if that sort of thing interests you).
HOW TO APPLY
We’re a pretty down-to-earth bunch, so if you’re interested in applying, in lieu of an elaborate cover letter, you can email me at Lauren@theshelf.com and include a numbered list with the following info (no need to include my text, just number the points in the same order as below and I’ll figure it out):
- A link to your Linkedin profile.
- Your location.
- Your phone number.
- What job site sent you our way.
- It would be great if you can include the salary range that you’re looking for. If you don’t… I’ll probably email you and ask about it, and that’s just extra steps for everyone involved. 🙂
- Bullet points about why you’d be a good fit for this role. Please keep it concise.
- Not required but would be super helpful: if you can include a deck or proposal that you’ve worked on that demonstrates your out-of-the-box and strategic thinking, that would be fantastic to see. If you decide to include one, you can obviously delete sections and/or brand names that are confidential. (And I wouldn’t waste time with this if the role doesn’t sound right up your alley (more about the role below).
Applications that are submitted using a job site (instead of emailed to the above email address) will not be considered.
Pay attention to your writing style. We write in a colloquial one-with-the-people-while-still-being-basically-grammatically-correct style. (I kick out applications that are poorly written and/or have typos. #FunLittleTip: Install Grammarly. It’s a game changer.)
Also, you might want to check out our Brand Partnerships role if you’re wanting more of a client-facing role… we can discuss both on the call if that’s of interest.
COMPONENTS OF THE ROLE (FOR PROPOSALS AND NEW BUSINESS)
- You’ll be assisting our sales team in the creation of their proposals.
- You’ll first start by researching the brand… its goals, its current social presence, the vibe that it seems to be going after, and any specific selling points that may help influencers (and their audiences) gravitate toward the product.
- For each proposal you’ll be given a list of goals and campaign requirements collected by the sales person within the initial exploratory call.
- You’ll need to take the data that you discovered in your own research and merge this with the info collected by the sales person to produce a deck that’s downright magical… that knocks so many people’s socks clean off their feet… which might sound hard (and a little weird), but we have a pretty solid process in place to streamline said magic. Regardless though, you’ll need to be creative and have a good eye for what photos and images will really make an idea pop.
- You’ll be in charge of proofreading your decks thoroughly. No one likes grammar errors in a proposal that they’re getting ready to fork over a bunch of money toward. Who would?
- You might be in charge of presenting the concepts from time to time.
- In addition to the proposals, there are various other tasks that you’ll be helping our sales team on. These are all minor. But they consist of things like finding a set of 15 example influencers for a campaign that a client is considering us for.
QUALITIES
- Creativity and brainstorming are huge components of this job. We’ve seen the difference between people who like to think they’re creative and people who actually are creative is the ability to take some random image (any random image) and build an entire back-story to that image (that’s weird, and out-of-the-box, maybe quirky, maybe funny, maybe emotional, etc.). While that sounds weird, that could be a good test for yourself before applying for this role.
- You’ll need to have strong writing skills. And for this, we’re not talking about AP English exam style writing (save that noise for the term papers)… we’re wanting a person who can write in a conversational, quirky, out-of-the-box, intriguing sort of way WITHOUT excess marketing jargon. Additionally, your writing should be tight and concise (unlike this job description).
- If you are applying for this position, remote or otherwise, you must be prepared to treat the job as full-time. We are not looking for part-time or hourly employees.
- You should have some experience pitching ideas to a client. (If you don’t, it’s not the end of the world. But you should have some kind of presentation or public speaking experience).
- We’re looking for people who are active users of social media themselves, especially Instagram.
- This position requires balancing a lot of tasks at once, so it’s really important for you to be quick on the computer… you should be armed with a pretty fast typing speed (yes, that’s still a thing) and able to pick up new software and skills easily. We’re all keyboard-shortcut nuts here. Which means we go beyond the basics of Command C and Command V. 🙂 You should know more than those two as well. Again, not the do all to end all, but optimizing is fun! Keyboard shortcuts optimize the crap out of work, life… just about everything.
- You’ll also need to be organized as all get out.
- And finally, you need to have the always-be-learning attitude. We want people on the team who are looking to expand their skill set and really grow within a company.