Operations - Talent Community

Curated Operations Teams periodically hire for a variety of different roles. Apply to join our talent community and be considered as relevant positions open up!

Operations Teams at Curated make sure that the right products make it into our customers' hands.

We could have the world's best business plan, the most user-friendly site, and the cleanest code base. None of it matters if we list the wrong product specs, mess up order shipments, and are unavailable when things go wrong. Our Operations Teams focus on these essential elements to ensure that our partner brands are successful and every customer has a great buying experience.

At Curated, we have three primary Operations teams:

Merchandising. Our primary goal is to ensure that products are accurately depicted on Curated.com. We inform customers and experts alike with detail-rich product descriptions and specs, enabling them to make smart, confident buying decisions.

Fulfillment & Support teams manage the post-purchase user experience, ensuring that customers get the right product and have a point of contact if issues arise.

• Fulfillment. Our inventory model is complicated. We fulfill orders from a variety of sources and it's critical that we identify the fastest, most reliable, most cost-effective way to fulfill each order. We also track any issues or inconsistencies that arise, enabling other teams to identify and resolve issues in our ecosystem.
• Support. Things happen. Incorrect orders are placed, items are damaged in transit, and customers get upset. Our mission is to eliminate buyer's remorse, and there's nothing worse in a buying experience than an incorrect or damaged item arriving at your door. As the Support Team, our job is to be there for our customers when things go wrong. We respond to order issues and help to resolve them.

Supply Chain. The Supply Chain team exists to delight the customer and extend the magic of Curated. We do this by having the right selection and depth of inventory, delivering perfect post order experiences, and making it easy for vendors to partner with us.

To ensure that we can procure the best possible product for our customers, we source inventory from three different models (marketplace, direct from vendors, and dropship). To support these inventory models, we currently have three key departments within Supply Chain:

• Marketplace: From ensuring frictionless Partner onboarding and deeper Partner integration, to implementing best-in-class operations across a network of dropship and 3P Partners, we build processes that support scalable growth for Curated.
• Inventory Operations: We build and improve processes to make sure our inventory journey is smooth from the moment a PO is placed with our suppliers to the moment it arrives at the warehouse. We work across three main pillars: internal stakeholders (general managers, planning, product, finance and data teams), suppliers, and warehouse (our 3PL partners).
• Inventory Planning: We set the framework for inventory purchases at Curated and are responsible for demand and supply forecasting to maximize profit.

Why you'll love working here

• Inspiring experts. Everything we do is to make our experts successful. When our experts are successful, our customers have an amazing experience and get products they love. Our experts are students, firefighters, teachers, stay-at-home moms, golf pros, authors, retired restaurant managers, and more.
• The product. When an expert and a customer click, the end result is magical.
• Fantastic team. Led by industry veterans with multiple successful exits under their belts, we're a small, tightly-knit team of innovators, creators, and builders.
• High trust culture. We seek to enable team members with minimal red tape. We operate from the assumption that our teammates are well-intentioned and chasing high-impact challenges.

How we interview

Our interview process varies by team, but we always commit to transparent and timely communication. We know that interviewing takes time, energy, and commitment, so we do our best to facilitate a fulfilling and high-context experience. For Operations Teams, our interview process typically goes something like this:

• Recruiter Screen. An introductory call allows us to learn about your background and interests, while also sharing a bit about Curated and screening for surface-level skills alignment.
• Hiring Manager Interview. A member of the hiring team conducts a deeper technical dive. You can expect to discuss past projects and often hypothetical problem-solving on these calls. These calls are typically 45 minutes to an hour long.
• "Face to Face" Interviews. Next, we'll typically arrange a series of 45-minute round-robin interviews. These technical interviews focus on different aspects of the role and often include relevant stakeholders from adjacent functions. We'll let you know who you're meeting in advance, and commonly evaluate the following:
• Business acumen
• Strategy
• Analytical thinking
• Execution
• Passion
• Communication skills
• Case Study. For many Operations roles, we conclude the process with a case study, in which you'll respond to an offline prompt with a small, self-contained work sample, and then present your solution to a small panel of team members.

From there, we typically take a more open approach to ensure that all of your questions have been answered and that our team is likewise comfortable moving forward!

Interview Tips

Here are a few general guidelines that will help you to be successful throughout your interview experience:

• Get to know our space. If you're not already familiar with e-commerce, gig-economy companies, or marketplaces, spend some time familiarizing yourself with these topics and exploring our platform. Don't worry about bothering experts for their time; they're compensated for conversations and will be happy to connect.
• Past projects can provide a ton of insight into your skills, expertise, and history of delivering impressive products or features. Prepare to go into detail on past projects that demonstrate your range of skills. How might you change your approach if you did the same project today?
• Think out loud. We're very interested in understanding your thought process - how you break down problems, set goals, choose success metrics, prioritize features, etc.
• Collaboration is critical at Curated. Be prepared to talk about experiences working directly with stakeholders with different perspectives; engineers, designers, executives, users, etc.
• Ask questions. A great way of demonstrating engagement and critical thinking skills is by asking poignant questions.

Skills and Qualifications

Job requirements vary by team and role, but we generally see a few themes among our strongest candidates for Operations roles.

• Culture and Values Alignment. Every new hire moves our company culture by one game piece, either reinforcing aspects of our existing culture or moving us in a new direction.
• Passion. We care a lot about our business, and we are looking for people who are inspired by what we do. Our goals are to eliminate buyer's remorse and to enable passionate experts to monetize their knowledge. We want missionaries, not mercenaries!
• Problem-Solving Skills. We're a startup, which means we have limited resources and big challenges, some of which are fundamentally unique. We look for people who prioritize high-impact opportunities and identify viable solutions to tricky problems. We've seen excellent problem-solving skills across diverse candidate backgrounds, including:
• Former founders and those who have successfully scaled startups through meaningful growth
• Business leads at larger companies, who have focused deeply on optimizing a particular space or solving challenges at a massive scale
• Depth. We look for proven experience and people who have "done it before."
• We are especially excited about candidates who have role-relevant strategic leadership experience, at scale, in retail, e-commerce, or three-sided marketplaces.
• Analytical Skills. Data informs almost every meaningful decision that we make at Curated. We look for people who are comfortable tying together datasets, building thoughtful models, and cutting through the noise to drive positive impact.
• Leadership. We have an entrepreneurial culture built on collective trust. Every employee at Curated is an owner and is the subject matter expert for some piece of the bigger picture. We look for people who take pride in their work.
• Collaboration. Most of our work is cross-functional, and we will only be successful if we continue to work well together. We are a low-ego, low-bureaucracy, flat organization, focused on coming together to solve novel challenges.