Team profiles with a twist
I just found this in my Google docs. Some people profiles I did for a Berlin startup, AdvertileMobile (makers of AppBounty). The CEO was very visionary and wanted his team profiles to have more personality than usual: to show the real people behind the positions, and the human side of the company.
Here's what we did:
Questions: I came up with some questions to get people to open up about themselves a little, and get closer to their likes and loves (e.g. What's your home-screen picture? What's your most wished for superpower? What's your Berlin tip? That last one gave some great answers that could be used for other content.)
Interviews: I interviewed each team member, for 20-30 minutes. Usually it took 10 minutes or so for people to start easing into it. Then the good stuff started coming.
Setting the tone: It helped so much that Jens, the CEO, had such a clear idea of what he wanted. We worked on one team member's profile for quite a while to fix a tone, balancing work with personal, and in a way that made each team member look good.
Copywriting: Or just 'writing'. Once the tone of voice was fixed, it was easy to roll out the rest of the profiles and put them online.
As often happens, the page has been redesigned since, and it's no longer online, but here's the copy. It's nice to remember work like this, even if it no longer exists. I enjoyed working on this very much:
Jens
Our all-knowing, always-smiling leader. The C in CEO stands for curry, coffee and climbing: his three biggest obsessions. The E stands for eternally busy – he’s able to perform incredible feats like juggling three Skype calls while holding a planning meeting and flicking through 30 open tabs on his browser. And the O? Optimist. He believes that for every problem there’s a solution.
Jana
Motorbiking Berliner, Jana, loves photography, urban exploration and road trips in the US. Her clever code helps us build new features and solve problems and she says really enjoys her job “because it’s never boring.” A part-time gamer, if you see her on her phone, it’s because she’s playing Jelly Defense or Plants vs. Zombies.
Manuel
Manuel is our sun-worshipping psychologist. He’s the one with his fingers in all the pies, putting out fires – and starting some new ones. You can find him every day in the local Vietnamese place, dreaming of Spanish beaches and hiding from the German weather.
Sam
Sam lives in a world of memes, gifs and social media marketing. A car restorer turned growth hacker in the making, he enjoys golf, sleeping under the stars and making people laugh. He came to Berlin with a one-way ticket, so there’s no going back – which is good because there are still one or two nightclubs he hasn’t been to yet.
Patrick
From Minnesota, to the world, to Berlin, he’s been around has our Patrick. He’s one of the Advertile originals, first founding our customer support, then kicking off our marketing efforts. An economist by training, he has a head for figures, and now takes care of all things money related.
David
A lobster-loving Frenchman with a love for German efficiency, David’s super power would be teletransportation. This would be useful as he needs to be in many places at once, finding new people to fall in love with our apps. Say hello to David when you visit us. He's a friendly chap and likes to chat.
Marta
Polish-born, Chinese-speaking Marta is the office ray of sunshine. She knows how to get the best out of people, and spends her days making our affiliate partners and customers smile. When she’s not here, she’s either in her favorite Vietnamese place, Chay Viet, walking her black labrador, Deo, or watching TV show The Mentalist.
Sebastian
There’s one word you can’t avoid when talking about Sebastian: organized. Whether racing down a Swiss mountain on his snowboard or telling our marketing team what to do, everything should be in the right place. It’s ok though, he also likes punk rock and can be seen letting it all out when listening to Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.
Lucas
The best burger in town can be found at Burgermeister, according to our email guru, Lucas. He’s obsessed with subject lines, sign-offs and spreadsheets but also has fun sometimes he says – swimming, watching French movies and eating chocolate. His claim to fame: he was the guy who put the button on our emails. We hope you like it.
Anton
A ruby (on rails) in the rough, Anton is a laid-back Muscovite with an American accent and the best hair in the office. He leads a charmed life making people’s dreams come true with his beautiful code. He’s into drum and bass, strawberries and sleeping, and hopes one day to invent “email that doesn’t suck.”
Claudia
We’re lucky to have Claudia heading up the product team as she’s hugely experienced and full of new ideas to improve the product and build our customer base. An entrepreneurial soul, she loves Lindt chocolate so much that she once tried to buy shares in the company – until she found out they were €40,000 each.
Taylor
Office charmer Taylor used to run a business in Canada with childhood friend, Sam (see above). These days he’s into understanding our user behaviour and polishing up our product. One day, he aims to run a business from a surf beach, and get a better memory. He thinks anything can taste good with a splash of Sriracha hot sauce.
Robert
Like a panda in the wild, Robert is one of the last remaining real Berliners. When he’s not working, he’s working, and when he is working, he’s drinking Club Mate and trying to weave bits of his personality into code. He believes the 90s is a decade best forgotten, and in this millennium likes to put on his helmet and jump on a motorbike to Croatia whenever possible.