The following is an excerpt from a June 2021 FutureFounder Innovator Giovanna Cikos's blog post on her work experience as part of the FutureFounder StartupReadiness training. FutureFounder Innovators create a Digital Portfolio in efforts to secure a work experience at a startup. To see more of Giovanna's work or learn more about her experience working at a startup, check out her Digital Portfolio.
Working outside Your Comfort Zone: An Innovator’s Reflection
My experience with FutureFounder (Check my blog: iComo:The App That Will Help You Consume Less Red Meat ) has been effective based on my goals since the beginning. I wanted to gain some experience working at a startup, in a different environment, different language, and different culture – the only thing I was not expecting is that I would work in a field different from my field of studies. I am a food engineer and I do not work with food; I work with optimization and, therefore, engineering.
I work at SplitSpot, which is a startup that takes the pain out of locating an apartment and finding a roommate, drastically improving the renting experience for everyone. SplitSpot gives renters back the power, offering comfortable shared homes, flexible leases, and much more (click here to check).
At SplitSpot, I am able to apply the knowledge I developed during my training with the FutureFounder StartupReadiness program, such as time management and remote work. Now I’m working full time on 3 projects, in which my basic tasks are related to process optimization and project management. I coordinate and plan tasks for the team members within the projects, including using an app called Clickup, reaching out to people, scheduling meetings, and working interdepartmentally.
My 3 projects are:
Zendesk automation project: My role here is to manage the project and make sure my leaders and our customers get what they need from the team members. That means basically planning the team member’s tasks and organizing the information from our side to present to the leaders, and sometimes training the support team to use the automation tasks developed by the team. I also do a lot of research within this project on how to use Zendesk features such as automation, triggers, macros and Zendesk Explore, which is the feature that creates the reports. I have a long-term project for this last topic, which is understanding how to use Zendesk Explore data to improve our customer experience. Zendesk Explore provides dashboard reports, and I want to analyze and use them to keep optimizing the process.
Expansion project: My role here is to bring an innovative way of thinking to develop a playbook for company expansion. The team is researching cities to expand our services and creating a system to decide where to expand and how to do it. We’ve come up with the city's evaluation for expansion based on available data and our goals as a company. Now we are working on metrics to evaluate the success of a new city expansion, and we will be working on tracking these metrics for the new efforts. Later on, we will combine everything to develop the comprehensive expansion playbook.
Cold outreach tracking: As part of the expansion project, we have decided on which cities to start exploring, and now I’m developing a system to track the positive responses from the cold outreach process. It involves several team members and requires me to have good interdepartmental communication and analytical thinking.
I like to work in an environment without too much supervision, as it allows me to think by myself and reflect on my actions and tasks but also requires discipline to deliver results. I have a tendency to be a self-leader and proactive, and indeed these are skills needed to be where I am.
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