Disappointing Experience - Anonymous employee Jumpwire Media Employee Review

I'm sorry that this person had a disappointing experience working at Jumpwire. I have addressed some of the writer’s concerns below. The CEO's style: Yes, I can be intimidating, as many CEOs are, and I've been told that before. I ask tough questions of my staff and my job is to ensure that our client's get the best service possible for the money they give us. That requires transparency and accountability. When you make mistakes you have to be accountable and in a boutique agency that can be difficult and overwhelming. We use a lot of technology and software to provide our clients with leading-edge real-time data and information on social media. We work with some of the largest brands in the world and the stakes are considerable as we are posting on behalf of someone else's brand. There is very little room for error. We have in-depth ongoing training, supportive mentoring system, continuous checks and balances, regular internal update meetings, and we run on Slack so that everyone can see immediately if someone on the team needs help. Many people who come to work at Jumpwire struggle with the pace and the amount of knowledge required to operate in the ever-changing social media environment. We do have heated debates and discussions. I want people who are passionate about what they do. However, isolating, making examples, and harassing employees is not something I or anyone at the company tolerates. It is okay not to get along but it is not okay to get personal. We have reprimanded and fired people who were bullies towards other employees. We work hard to ensure that people did not work more than 50 hours a week and that weekends are time off. I am a passionate person and this is my company. I think the person writing this is mistaking yelling for passion and crying for emotional release. It's okay if people cry at work. This is a very demanding job. In the two ‘crying’ cases I witnessed the employees were overwhelmed with their job and we worked on how to help them mitigate this. They came away stronger and better at their jobs. We hire very intelligent people who are able to change and adapt quickly and easily to a high-pressure environment. We spend a considerable amount of time training employees in the Jumpwire Social Media Method. It's why we are one of the best in the world at what we do. I do not recall ever forcing an employee to listen to an inappropriate conversation and without the details, it's hard for me to respond. For difficult conversations HR or a senior manager was always in the room as is standard procedure at most companies. Regarding our client list being my friends or acquaintances I would say that 20% of our clients are people I know from over 20+ years in the media industry. The rest are referrals from other clients or people in the industry. As for overpromising and under delivering the writer knows this is false. We routinely end client contracts if we feel we are not able to deliver value. There are many companies we want to work with so continuing to charge a company for social media services when it is providing no value to the brand is not a productive use of our time. Further, it leads to employees leaving Jumpwire as they want to work on clients in which they can make a difference. Turnover happens regularly at social media agencies and Jumpwire is no different but we have changed that by slicing our Jumpwire Social Media Method into very small parts and hiring expert freelancers to carry out the tasks. From passionate writers who are experts in a client’s particular sector, scheduling experts with legal and technical backgrounds, creative people who create significant value for our client’s brands with their talents, to our proofreaders with Masters degrees in English. Our turnover at Jumpwire was due to our hiring people with the incorrect skill set for our jobs. We hired generalists rather than specialists. Regarding the ability to scale and grow I would agree. Scaling knowledge-based companies are very difficult. However, we have made significant changes at Jumpwire since this person left the company by creating small bit sized packages, like our social audit or the platform optimization package, that new clients can purchase at low cost to build trust, get to know us and our methods without considerable investment. People set their own salaries at Jumpwire. Thanks to Salary Expert and Pay Scale we routinely ask people to tell us what they are worth and justify it. The writer would know that as we routinely give significant raises to people who are valuable to the company as well as purchasing mobile phones, high-end computers, and offering travel opportunities for long-term employees. Freelancers do not replace full-time staff. They replace a part of the full-time person’s job and in many cases do a better job. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Gavin