This is the third and final artifact in a series around hiring a VP of People at Reforge. At the time, we were looking at doubling the size of the company twice in the space of a couple years, which tends to be a common inflection point for late-Series A to Series B companies that have product-market fit and are really starting to crank the machine. When you’re in this position, you’ll see some fundamental changes in what you need from your org’s People function. Up to this point, I’d basically run everything myself through Gusto: set everything up, handled payroll, etc. But as we scaled up, things quickly got a lot more complicated, so we knew that we needed to find a People leader and this is the job description that I put together.

When I was describing the role, I was trying to accomplish a few key things. Obviously the first is to simply describe what we’re looking for. But I also wanted to establish some social cred by dangling some carrots that show how this is an exceptional position. And I also wanted to address some of the typical questions or objections that a lot of candidates have right out of the gate. One of the really key things that I learned during this process is that there are a lot of founders and CEOs who tend to view the People function as something that’s nice to have, but not a critical need. This tends in particular to be the case with founders who have come through a background in product, engineering, or design, which means that they haven’t really spent much time close to the People function. When this is the case, they’ll often hire people and then just shove them off to the side and not really involve them in the strategic conversations around the direction of the company. To get out ahead of this, I made it clear that this is a role that would report directly to me as the CEO, and that our VP of People would be working directly with the entire leadership team to shape our philosophy around recruiting, hiring, brand, culture, employee experience, etc.

Rather than just describe the org in my words, I find it really useful to provide some testimonials from our actual users, which can really help candidates understand what we’re doing from a user perspective. I find this goes a long way in making the role click for people.

Brian Balfour

I created this job description for our first VP of People to differentiate Reforge from the competition while ensuring that candidates knew exactly what the role would require.

Remote as long as on time zone that is PT or within +3 hours.

The VP People role is an opportunity for a strategic people leader to make people a competitive advantage in a fast growing, 8-figure revenue company, funded by tier one investors. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will work across the leadership team to create our recruiting, hiring brand, culture, employee experience, and HR plans.

As part of this role you will be integrated into our community of technology leaders that helped build companies like Slack, Pinterest, Credit Karma, LinkedIn, Facebook, Spotify, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, Thumbtack, and more.

Reforge was founded by Brian Balfour (former VP Growth @ HubSpot, 3X venture backed founder). The team bootstrapped the company to a profitable, 8-figure revenue company. We 

 from Andrew Chen and Anish Acharya at Andreessen Horowitz along with a group of 100 C and VP level leaders. Our executive team currently includes Matt Greenberg, CTO and former VP Engineering at Credit Karma and Fareed Mosavat, VP Programs and former Dir Product Growth at Slack.

We are a remote first company and welcome team members based in the US. We offer competitive salary, health benefits, 401K, flexible vacation, minimal travel requirement, professional development support and more.

Our professional world is changing faster than ever. This accelerating change creates more opportunity, but how we as professionals capture this opportunity is lagging far behind. Professional development and masters level education is a lifelong endeavor, however there is a growing gap of what professionals want/need and the existing options available.

Our mission is to help motivated tech practitioners do the best work of their careers. By distilling the hard-earned insights from the top leaders in tech, offering a supportive community, and providing key guidance, we enable our participants to drive real results, increase their impact, and lead with confidence.

We work with the leaders of the fastest growing and most innovative companies such as Uber, Pinterest, Atlassian, and HubSpot to teach frontier topics to today's emerging leaders. Our programs focus on:

Going deep, rather than skimming the surface

Continuous learning, over static expertise

In just a few years, we've built a thriving community of emerging leaders solving problems at Airbnb, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Amazon, Facebook, New York Times, Peloton, Stitch Fix, and many more. 

Here are just a few comments from our alums:

“I got my MBA at Berkeley, but this program has been more transformational for me then the entire two years I spent there. Thank you!”

“Reforge has easily been one of the best investments of time and money I've ever made in my professional development. I love how the course codifies what I've been doing for the last four years as VP of Marketing.”

“Reforge is easily the highest quality professional skills program out there. If I had to choose between attending an unlimited number of industry conferences, versus going only to the Reforge, I'd choose Reforge without hesitation.”

 Reforge is an 8-figure revenue, profitable company, average NPS of 70. We have a lot of fuel in the tank. Our success is not dependent on funding round to funding round.

 Be part of a 10X path by helping us go from an 8-figure to 9-figure company over the next 3 years.

 You will have the opportunity to build your function from a blank slate in the way you always dreamed of

**Reforge Network -**The role will be plugged into both our community of experts (VP's at top tech companies) and the Reforge alum community (PM's → VP's in Series B to public software companies).

 Reforge has a top tier reputation within the technology community. Former employees have gone on to roles at Google, Stripe, and other leading companies.

Work with the leadership team to build a vision and strategy that makes people, talent, and culture a competitive advantage for Reforge as we 10X the size of the company over the next 3 years.

Facilitate the documentation and adoption of our values and culture. Design and implement creative ways to build a climate within the organization to grow values and culture.

Build and lead a talent recruiting engine including hiring a talent team, implementing a differentiated candidate experience, and designing new employee onboarding experiences.

Champion a thoughtful strategy to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Help define and evolve our performance management, recognition, and compensation processes.

Help us practice what we preach on learning and development by embedding training, learning and development at the center of the employee experience.

Be at the forefront of remote people and culture methodologies.

Build and manage scalable infrastructure for payroll, HRIS, benefits, on-boarding, off-boarding, visa and immigration, employee policies and handbook, and employee communications.

Executive team - You'll work closely with the executive team including CEO, Brian Balfour, CTO, Matt Greenberg, and VP Programs, Fareed Mosavat.

Directors - You'll spend time cross-functionally with the various directors including Helen Sims, Head of Product, Brendan McCook - Head of Program Development, Sara Caldwell, Head of Program Ops, Dan Wolchonok, Head of Data, Elise Cappadona, Talent Lead, and others.

You think strategically across the lifecycle of the people experience including hiring brand, candidate experience, onboarding, employee experience, and off-boarding.

Experienced facilitator of group decision making at the leadership level, helping identify key tradeoffs and synthesizing the most important questions to answer.

You have leadership experience in a fast scaling technology company within People/HR/Talent teams.

Skilled at growing and nurturing a team, as well as being a hands on operator. You should have a roster of former direct reports who have made meaningful professional strides while under your management.

A style and approach that is proactive, thoughtful, empathetic, organized and actionable.

VP of People Job Description at Reforge

VP of People - Reforge Job Description

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