Head of People Operations

At Virtual Internships, we ‘dare to be different’. After all, our mission of guaranteeing internships for any learner, anywhere… at scale is something that no-one else has solved (as far as we know!). Hence we are looking for a Head of People that will continue the “always find a way” ethos we have at Virtual Internships, whilst simultaneously evolving our culture and people ops function so we become even more  performance-minded and innovative!

This role is perfect if you are already overseeing the People Function at an early/growth-stage startup or if you are a People Partner/People Manager who is looking to "step up" and take on their first people leader role at a VC-backed startup. 

Your Impact

Over the past 3.5 years our org has grown to 100 employees across 20+ countries, in a remote-first setup with the majority of VI-ers based in Vietnam, India, South Africa, UK and the US. As we’ve scaled, we’ve implemented a Company Wiki, a Compensation Philosophy, a Career Progression Framework, a Performance Review Framework, an open source “VI-P Guide”, Working From Home Budgets, Employee Pulse Checks… we’ve even won awards such as the 20th best organization in the world to “Escape To” … so surely it means there’s nothing left for you to do? Definitely not. Like our product, we are always iterating. 

As such if you become our Head of People Ops your impact will be to take what we have and evolve it in line with our culture. Rather than list the “regular” responsibilities of a startup People Ops Leader - we’d rather share some key things to figure out within the next 12 months. Reporting to our COO, and working closely with the leadership team, you’ll help us figure out how to:

• Evolve our culture so it has two new components : i) Being high performance-orientated ii) Having an “always be learning” lens. Why? We have some world-class VC investors and we are Education Technology. We want our culture to embrace both these aspects. How? We hope you can help us with that!

• Balance business needs with employee needs. This might be the toughest part of being Head of People (we get it!)...you don’t want to be a “Yes” person to leadership but equally you don’t want to always align with employees and inadvertently create an “us vs them” divide. How you do this will be very much down to your People leadership philosophy

• Navigate compensation across our geographies. We have a compensation philosophy, but like anything we know it could be better!

• Navigate our operational, compliance, payroll & benefits setup of having a remote-first org but with three entities

• Bring best practices from other growth stage startups into VI - learning is in our DNA

• Help colleagues understand ‘who does what’ now that we’ve crossed that threshold of having more people than can be fed by two pizzas (credit Jeff Bezos)

Whilst this might be bold (again we want to do things a little differently), we do want to share a few things where this might not be a fit:

• If you’re currently spending more time on writing diligent strategy documents instead of hands-on execution. Put another way…if you’re currently leading a team, when someone is OOO you are the one who can step-in and cover without needing a manual. Ideally you were involved in creating the manual!

• If you’re not comfortable with tech and data- we are an EdTech startup after all, but also our remote-first setup leans upon various tech stacks and processes to ensure operational efficiency. Iterating our Notion Company Wiki, recalibrating our HiBob HRIS, analyzing our E-NPS data … you’ll need to be able to do this yourself without needing to “ask IT”

• If you think resilience is overrated. Building and scaling startups is hard, a common trait amongst our best VI-ers is their ability to show resilience whilst delivering results. It’s not easy, we know. But as our Head of People, we hope you’ll be another bastion of this resilience value

• P.S. the secret password is “3Space”.

One of our core values at Virtual Internships is transparency. That’s why, we’re giving you the opportunity to ‘try before you apply’ in our “VI-P Guide” which includes our values, how we operate, how we build our packages, and how we interview.

To give you an example of some of our perks and benefits:

• Flexible working hours - Start earlier, leave earlier, take a shorter lunch or leave a bit later, it's totally up to you.

• Remote first - work from anywhere, with a budget to support your remote setup

• Learn from the world’s best - access to exclusive content including how-to guides and playbooks from Sequoia/500Global backed organizations

• Swag - delivered to your door

• Birthday leave - go enjoy yourself on your birthday without needing to use your annual leave

• Impact - we’re still at an early-stage, so your impact is magnified. You will likely be solving something that hasn’t already been solved or you will be taking something to an entirely new level !

• Meritocracy - a culture that prides itself on internal promotions and meritocracy. The majority of our managerial team have risen up (quickly), including our COO, CAO, CFO, Head of Host Companies, and Head of Intern Experience

Your Attributes

TLDR Version? You like the idea of a high–performance culture whilst  being super creative and resourceful

As for the long Version….

• Performance Orientated - you’re comfortable with the idea that data can determine performance (most of the time). You’re driven to be the very best version of yourself, and this manifests itself in what you say and do

• Prefer a lean team - You like to find quick and clever solutions. When you need to solve a big challenge your instinct is to look at (re-engineering) process, introducing AI, taking a first-principles approach instead of “throwing people” at the problem 

• Tech-Enabled - you know your traditional “HR Tech Stack”, but you also consistently use no-code/easy to use platforms (e.g. Notion, Zapier, Loom, Canva, AirTable) 

• Bias For Action - you don’t need complete information to act, you don’t always need a green light from your manager. Your instinct is to make something happen

• Creative - you have a “second brain” of notes/resources that you keep with ideas you‘ve picked up from webinars, podcasts, videos, articles. You tap into this to give you inspiration when coming up with new solutions 

Your Experience

Organizational Experience:

• You have worked at a remote-first or hybrid/remote organization with employees across multiple countries  AND

• You have worked at an early/growth stage startup (10-150 people and/or Seed to Series B)

Role Experience:

• You're "Ready to Step Up"- you are currently a People Partner/People Manager who reports into the leader of the People Function, and you’d like your chance to become the #1 OR
• You've "Seen The Movie Before" - you are currently the leader of the People function

“Dare To Be Different” Experience

If you don’t meet the role experience criteria (but you do meet the organizational experience criteria), then this role might fit if you’ve got:

• 3+ years experience as a Head of Operations or Chief of Staff OR

• 3+ years experience running your own startup/business with at least 10 full-time employees