Head of Talent

About Motion

Project management systems today are great at letting companies record their tasks, but place all of the burden on human project coordinators. These tools don’t know about the team’s time and resources and don’t have any intelligence — someone has to manually match tasks against their assumptions about the team’s capacity. Not only does this process waste precious company resources, it’s also error-prone and leads to overwork, missed deadlines, miscommunication, and micromanagement.

Motion is building the world’s most advanced project management system — one that doesn’t require a project coordinator manually tracking each task, but rather an intelligent system that can make sense of hundreds of tasks across dozens of projects and automatically coordinate them across every person on the team. Motion allows companies to focus on the work they need to do rather than wasting up to 50% of their resources on overhead.

Our users give us data on their workload (e.g. projects and tasks) and resources (employee roles, calendars, and schedules). Based on all this information, Motion makes intelligent decisions about how tasks should be executed — better than any human project coordinator. Teams that use Motion know what people are working on at any given time, when each task will be completed, and whether any tasks will fall behind schedule. The moment something changes, instead of the coordinator having to figure out all the cascading effects, Motion instantly creates a new optimized plan for the team.

Motion is the project management system of the future. We are growing extremely quickly, trusted by thousands of customers, have millions in revenue, near-infinite runway, and an exceptionally talented team.

Location: North America (Remote)

Compensation: $175k-$225k base salary, plus equity compensation

About the Hiring Manager

Hi, I’m Ethan, Motion’s co-Founder and COO. I truly believe that exceptional companies are built by exceptional teams, and at Motion I’m trying to build the most talented team that’s ever been assembled. Before starting Motion, I began my career as a software engineer at WhatsApp and Facebook, where I saw firsthand how tiny teams can achieve outsized outcomes and learned how great tech companies operate at scale. I was a consultant at McKinsey, where I learned about business and operational best practices. Then, I joined the world of quantitative trading at Citadel and DRW, where I learned how to compete in the world’s most competitive profession, and helped build a trading desk from scratch where I evaluated and hired traders making 7-figures. These experiences taught me a lot about what world-class teams and operations look like, and when I started Motion I wanted to build something even greater.

At Motion, I wear many hats. For the first 3 years, I mainly wrote code for the product, and to this day I’m still very involved with engineering (I write code every day and run a small engineering team). I oversee our marketing and customer operations teams, and I built our data analytics stack which powers all our business operations. I personally lead all recruiting at Motion. My proudest accomplishment is how I hired most of our 50 employees, which ranged from me personally doing first round phone screens for entry level positions to closing senior execs over months of conversations. After I make a hire, I’m deeply invested in their development and find every opportunity to push them to grow faster - I mentored my first two business generalist hires into becoming Head of Growth and Head of Customer Experience at Motion respectively, and I mentored the youngest software engineer at Motion into becoming an engineering manager. For all three people, this growth happened within 1 year of them joining the company.

I believe Motion is at a pivotal moment in its trajectory. Revenue is growing, the product roadmap is clear, there are too many great opportunities to pursue, it’s starting to feel like we are “winning”, and we need to accelerate our hiring plans. This will inevitably cause growing pains, and it’s my mission to help Motion navigate this next phase smoothly. How can we accelerate hiring without lowering the bar for candidates? How can a larger team collaborate without becoming inefficient or misaligned? How do we keep the urgency and not become complacent after raising a huge round of funding? We need to be extremely vigilant to not let our company fall into chaos. In this role, we will have a great adventure together building an exceptional team that will win.

About the Role

I’m looking for someone to be my partner in leading our hiring efforts across all business units. You will work closely with me, department heads, and hiring managers within the company to attract future employees for Motion. We are looking for not just the most exceptionally talented people, but people who are low-ego, accountable, hard working, and ambitious. See How Motion Operates for the type of people who would be culture-raisers at Motion. We’ve assembled the highest talent-density company I’ve ever seen, and I set an extremely high standard for every employee at Motion.

The ideal person for this role is someone who has led a business unit or founded a company and hired 10+ people for their own team. A background in professional recruiting or HR is not necessary or relevant for this position. I’m looking for someone who has hired with skin in the game and has experience maximizing the performance of their own direct reports. You won’t be hiring to meet a rubric, but to find the best person in the world to fill any given role. You must understand the difference between exceptional vs good, and have a strong intuition for what excellence looks like in any field.

Exceptional candidates require exceptional effort to close. You must get your hands dirty and personally interview every candidate that comes through Motion, deeply understand how Motion can become the best career opportunity for them, and inspire them to join our team. Today, I do the first-round interviews for most positions at Motion. This is highly unusual and leaves a very positive first impression on candidates. I’ll expect you to leave a similarly positive impression on candidates, and you’ll need to compensate for not having the advantage of being the founder of the company. This role will be incredibly challenging, but it’ll be your opportunity to build the most exceptional team in the world.

Motion is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone is treated with respect and given equal opportunities. We do not discriminate based on gender identity, race, ancestry, disability, religion, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our job openings. 

Helpful Links:

How Motion Operates: https://motionapp.notion.site/How-Motion-Operates-1331471137eb8011b9d7f4064af7e505

Motion Culture: https://motionapp.notion.site/Motion-Company-Culture-21bd766b1f864764b0db2fa72529b182

https://www.usemotion.com