Blackbird is looking for a People Programs Specialist to supercharge great talent at scale into our startups. 

Finding great people is one of the biggest challenges our portfolio founders face which is why we have a goal of filling 5% of portfolio roles in 2022, and have built our first hiring platform, the Lilypad. Our vision for the Lilypad is to have an ecosystem-level impact on the future of the startup workforce. Through the Lilypad and our other People programs,  our ambitious goal is to fill thousands of Blackbird portfolio company roles and help thousands of people grow their careers in startups over the next five years. With almost 90 portfolio companies and 1300 open roles and climbing, the People Programs Specialist has the potential to make an outsized impact on the success of some of the best companies coming out of ANZ. 

If this challenge and mission excites you, and you’re ready to be one of the first employees of a new team then we want to hear from you!

The Role

In this role, your mission will be to funnel great people into the Lilypad platform at scale in innovative ways. You will build functional communities and programs, events outreach, and strategic partnerships, and become the go-to person for junior to mid-level talent in the startup ecosystem.

You will be a super-connector across all functions, from product to engineering, to go-to-market to finance and operations - strategically prioritising which functions to design programs for and which partners to engage to increase Lilypad sign-ups and hires.

You will be encouraged to experiment, test, learn and fail with new pilots, and empowered to scale what’s working. We’re looking for someone to bring their creativity, curiosity and boldest ideas to help our portfolio companies solve for hiring. 

To be successful in this role, you will need to create new and diverse pipelines for talent into start-ups (from universities, hospitality, retail) and meet people where they are. How you do this is up to you, whether through programs and partnerships, function-specific community outreach, social campaigns, virtual symposiums, or epic IRL events. 

About Blackbird

Blackbird is a venture capital firm whose mission is to supercharge Australia and Aotearoa’s most ambitious founders. We do this by raising venture capital funds, investing in the best startup companies and helping them succeed. We have over a billion dollars under management and a portfolio of over 60 companies, including some of the most successful Aussie and Kiwi startups such as Canva, Zoox, SafetyCulture, Dovetail, Partly and more. 

We aim to be a generational owner of the companies we invest in, long after they grow beyond the startup stage. We are inspired by investment firms such as Berkshire Hathaway and Bridgewater Associates. Like the companies we back, we want to build a business that lasts for decades and produces excellent returns for our investors. Most of all, we want to support our region’s most talented founders to build category-defining technology companies.

We’ve written a lot about who we are and what we love at Blackbird - so head to our blog if you want to learn more and read about the Lilypad and Forage launch!

Key Responsibilities

The People Programs Specialist will report to our People Lead, Nell and work closely with our Product Operations Specialist and the wider Founder Success team. You will spearhead new programs, products and events, and manage existing ones (such as our graduate work experience program with Forage and the Blackbird Sales Academy). 

The existing products and programs you will work across include;

• Lilypad: A product connecting our portfolio’s open roles with talented people ready to leapfrog into a startup

• Forage Partnership: A virtual work experience programme for graduate Software Engineers

• Sales Academy: A program five week to re-skill BD and sales account managers and find them roles in startups  skills to do sales in a startup

Some responsibilities include:

• Running our existing Forage Partnership 

• Assisting on the outreach, marketing and operations of the Sales Academy 

• Using available data, creating events, programs or partnerships with impact 

• Reporting of your outreach metrics and its impact on the Lilypad to ensure we are on track to achieve our OKR of filling 5% of Blackbird portfolio roles

Skills we are looking for:

We’re looking for someone as passionate as us about building an iconic investment business, and joining Blackbird’s Founder Success team. It’s our team's mission to help build, support and connect generational companies right from the beginning. We do this through creating programming and products for founders and operators in our portfolio and the ecosystem. You must have a high ownership mentality and the ability to take responsibility for goals and outcomes. This is a full-time role based in Sydney or Melbourne. 

Your background is less important than the key skills, which include:

Project management: We’re looking for a hyper-organised, proactive person who thrives on independent project management.  This means you’ll be process-driven and detail-oriented. 

Creativity: You favour originality, get excited over unique ways to solve challenges, and like having full license to bring your creativity and ideas to the table. 

Super connector: You’ll be someone who loves meeting new people and making connections, and building relationships.  with a love for people and relationships.

Reporting geek: The programs and initiatives you create will live or die by how they contribute to us reaching 5% of roles filled. To measure this success you’ll need to be ruthless with tracking and reporting. 

Learn-it all: The only limits are the ones you put on yourself. We’ll encourage you to up-skill in customer experience, programme building and product management and support you to take on more ownership in line with your development.

Ownership mentality: You take full ownership of your successes, failures, and outcomes. 

Hospitality Mindset: In our dealings with founders and investors, we take a hospitality mindset. We serve our founders, not the other way around. We are about people, not companies. Similarly, we treat our colleagues with generosity and respect: one team, one dream.

Working at Blackbird:

We believe that building a diverse and inclusive team is critical to Blackbird’s success. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We use Applied to ensure every applicant gets an equal chance of success.

We offer:

• Flexible working: Whether it’s working from home or leaving early to pick up the kids from daycare or school.

• Generous parental leave: We know family comes first and we are proud to offer generous parental leave - 16 weeks for primary carer and 6 weeks for a secondary carer, subject to a 12-month minimum tenure. This includes a continuation of KiwiSaver payments while on unpaid parental leave and a supportive return-to-work policy.

• Learning & Development Budget: Our team is hungry to continuously learn and you’ll receive a budget to spend on whatever you’d like to learn - from coding courses to meditation, to enable your continued learning & self-development.

• Unplugged weekends: We work hard without letting work get in the way of life. We’ve implemented no Slack or emails on weekends, so you can switch off and enjoy yourself.

• A share of Blackbird’s success: We think it is important to share successes with the whole team. All Blackbird employees receive carry in our funds and are owners in the management company.

Blackbird is a Pledge 1% member — we pledge 1% of our time, equity and profits to help not-for-profit causes in our community, with a focus on greater gender diversity in STEM education.