VP, Chief of Staff to the Chief People Officer – Upwork
HR & RecruitingBookmark Details
Upwork (501+ Employees, 35% 2 Yr Employee Growth Rate)
10% 1-Year Employee Growth Rate | 35% 2-Year Employee Growth Rate | LinkedIn | $168.8M Venture Funding
What Is Employee Growth Rate & Why Is It Important?
Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to over 30% of the Fortune 100 with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.
Last year, more than $3.3 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers.
We are hiring a Chief of Staff to the Chief People Officer to partner with her & her leadership team for the Human Resources and Talent Innovation team. You will drive the CPO / HR partnership with other executives and teams , build strong relationships with the Upwork executive team & cross-functionally, and lead a portfolio of horizontal & function-specific strategic initiatives (including incubation of key bets for possible graduation & scaling throughout the company).
You will be a strategic thought partner and provide a sounding board while sharing perspectives with the CPO, HR team, and Upwork executive team. Over time, you will become a proxy as you make decisions and drive prioritization of time and effort through your relationship as a trusted advisor with her & the exec team.
Your Responsibilities:
- Extensive knowledge of progressive and innovative Human Resources organizations.
- Unquestionable ethics and integrity, a track record of impeccable judgment and doing the right thing even when nobody would know if you chose the easy alternative.
- Exceptional written, and oral communication skills that enable preparation of both numeric and narrative driven keynotes, BoD work, all hands, presentations, memos for a range of audiences.
- Track record of cross-functional leadership & comfort with partnering with Finance, Legal, Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering etc. to meet the organization’s needs.
- Outstanding financial acumen and understanding of short and long term implications of decisions to lead long range planning, budget creation and management, as well as ongoing resource allocation and projections.
- Consultative mindset to weigh the opportunities and costs of key investments throughout our HR team.
- Excellent program/project management skills with the ability to drive multiple complex strategic and operational initiatives simultaneously.
- Ability to think strategically from first principles while leading with a sense of urgency through ambiguities.
- Strong external network with which to benchmark, knowledge share, and glean actionable insights.
- Proven history of collaboration and positive cultural impact in a distributed team.
- Bias for action and a mentality that no job is too big or too small to be done the right way.
What it takes to catch our eye:
- Past experience in a similar role in HR orgs (bonus for having lead an HR function, or been the key strategy or finance partner to HR, and / or driven M&A)
- 7+ years of experience in management consulting, private equity, or equivalent experience in a HR or Business Operations role for a technology company.
- Experience in structuring and executing complex analyses to support strategy in a fast-paced, continually evolving environment.
Specific Responsibilities:
- Manage strategic planning and budgeting processes
- Work with leaders to develop OKRs, ensure alignment & support measurement
- Manage rhythm and cadences & optimize organizational processes, etc
- Maximize the time of the HR leadership team and the CPO
- Drive customer feedback loops & strengthen integration across the org
- Support continuous improvement in all people processes, tools, & cadences
- Support & champion continuous operational improvement and exploration. Partner with the LT to build processes and structures that can scale with the company & organization’s growth
- Identify tools that improve efficiency & alignment org-wide
- Incubation of new initiatives as appropriate and then spinning them off to other teams, or winding them down entirely and integrating our findings to future efforts.
- Advocating for all HR priorities, from L&D to DIBs to TA to Career Pathing to our Hybrid Workforce, especially when their leaders are not in the room.
- Sparring with CPO — pushing her to be a stronger leader, flagging blind spots, and advocating for key priorities.
Come change how the world works.
At Upwork, you’ll shape talent solutions for how the world works today. We are a remote-first organization working together to create exciting remote work opportunities for a global community of professionals. While we have physical offices in San Francisco and Chicago, currently we also hire full-time employees in 19 states in the United States.
Our vibrant culture is built on shared values and our mission to create economic opportunities so that people have better lives. We foster amazing teams, put our community first, and have a bias toward action. We encourage everyone to bring their whole selves to work and grow together through development opportunities, mentorship, and employee resource groups. Oh yeah, we’ve also got amazing benefits.
Check out our Careers page to learn more about the employee experience.
Upwork is proudly committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse and inclusive workforce. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.