Building a Strong Remote Startup Culture with Rachel Korb | DistantJob - Remote Recruitment Agency

Building a Strong Remote Startup Culture with Rachel Korb

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Gabriela Molina

Rachel Korb is the People Operations Manager at Re:Coded, having previously worked at Devex as the Global Team Lead for People Operations. She is also an organizational and leadership coach with over five years of working with startups. She works at the intersection of coaching mindfulness and the growth mindset frameworks.

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Luis:

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the DistantJob Podcast. I am your host Luis, in this podcast that’s all about building and leading awesome remote teams. My guest today is Rachel Korb. Rachel is the People Operations Manager at Re:Coded, having previously worked at Devex as the Global Team Lead for People Operations. She is also an organizational and leadership coach with over five years of working with startups. She works at the intersection of coaching mindfulness and the growth mindset frameworks. Rachel, thank you so much for being in the show.

Rachel Korb:

Thanks for having me.

Luis:

It’s my pleasure, really. And let’s start talking about remote work because that’s how work is done these days, right?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

Fortunate for me that I belong to a company that’s all about remote work. So there is a silver lining in everything. Tell me a bit about what was your initial experience with remote work? I already asked this question to someone from the business that you’re currently at, the Re:Coded, but I guess I’ll extend it to you. How does remote work contribute to making Re:Coded better as a business?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, well, I think there are a few things. So one, for those of you who don’t know Re:Coded, we lead online boot camps for youth who have been affected by conflict, who normally don’t have access to this kind of education to get jobs in UXUI, as well as in front end and back end. So when you think about growing a team, we’re serving individuals, largely in the Middle East, but we want to be able to expand to different markets and make sure that we’re able to impact more lives around the world.

Rachel Korb:

And I think what’s really important when you think about remote work is we’re going to be located across a lot of different locations as we grow. And we also need to make sure that we’re attracting really amazing talent who believes deeply in our mission, who aligns with our values, right? I think the topic that we talk a lot about in remote is, when you’re just in one place you can only attract talent locally. But when you’re remote, you can attract people from across the globe so that gives us more access to top talent. But also what I think is important is thinking through like the diversity piece of that and making sure that our team is represented and also the communities that we’re serving as we’re extending these courses across the globe.

Luis:

Yeah, that’s definitely something interesting. And that’s not talked often a lot about the diversity aspect, right? I usually joke, and my American friends get mad at me, but I usually joke that in your companies diversity really just means different shades of Americans, whereas in my company, I have people that actually hail from one end of the globe to the other one. Well, I guess that one end of the globe to the other one would be the same end of the globe because the globe is the globe, but you get what I mean.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, exactly.

Luis:

So that’s definitely interesting. Tell me a bit about what is Re:Coded setup today. It’s been almost two years since I first talked to Marcello, and we had a great time in the podcast, so tell him hi for me, my best.

Rachel Korb:

I will.

Luis:

And how has the company grown in the meantime? And how is your current remote setup?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, so we’re established as a nonprofit in the United States, but funnily enough, we have no office in the United States. We have an office in Erbil in Iraq and then we have an office and Istanbul in Turkey. And so before COVID started, we were largely between those two offices. Once COVID hit, the question of how do we move online as quickly as possible happened. And this was not only within the team but also to offer all of our education programs online because our students couldn’t actually attend the classroom anymore.

Rachel Korb:

So we moved to an online education model. We still have our two offices but we’ve become a hybrid remote. So I’m based in Barcelona, Marcello is based in Lisbon. We’ve got team members in Egypt, in the UK, we still have people in Iraq and Turkey. We have our first employee in the United States and we’re going to continue to grow. So we’re really looking at this hybrid remote model, that might change a little bit depending on what happens post COVID, but we know that we’ll always be remote first. And everything that we’re designing now is for people first and remote first cultures.

Luis:

Right. Okay. I don’t want to pigeonhole you, but the things that I’ve read from you that have impacted my thinking the most have mostly been about company value and building culture and making the… I think that the actual article, and I may be getting this wrong, but I think that I read an article of yours which is about making the workplace more human. Did I get that right?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

That’s the problem of having guests in advance, I read this stuff and then I have some notes but I miss some things. So I read it a while ago, and I guess what I want to ask is, what challenges did you feel when it comes to keeping people in sync and filling parts of that whole being of a company? How would you feel remote has increased that challenge? And what are some ways that you have found to make it easier?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah. It’s a good question. It can have a really complex response but for the sake of this conversation maybe I shouldn’t make it so complex.

Luis:

I might not be so smart but the audience is, so please go ahead.

Rachel Korb:

When I say complex, I mean long. I think when we think about how do we help people feel connected and make this more human, what it ultimately comes down to for me always is communication. If we don’t have effective communication we can’t really function as a team. That’s how humans engage with one another. And so communication is what allows us to connect and I think it’s really important to look at, how do we want to intentionally build a culture around this?

Rachel Korb:

And I’ll give some examples because that’s kind of an abstract response. So I think there are multiple ways to do this. One that’s really simple and straightforward is having a platform where you track engagement and then performance management. So this is something that we’re implementing at Re:Coded. It’s something I implemented at Devex, which is also a hybrid remote company where we help people connect in different ways.

Rachel Korb:

So in terms of like feeling connected to the organization, it’s what are our goals as an organization. How does that actually drill down into the goals for each team? And then as an individual, what are their goals? And then there are two goals within that. So what are your development goals? How do you want to grow as a person? How do you want to grow as a professional? And then there’s kind of the performance goals. So those are contributing to the team goals which contribute to the organization.

Rachel Korb:

And what I think is really important, which I talked about and this is going back to the why, so we always have a why. The why is the mission of the organization but each individual on the team also has his whys. So it’s really important to understand what that is and to connect it to the organization. So I think the goals is one way, especially having these personal/professional development goals that allows people to grow. I do not believe in this differentiator like, hi, I’m work Rachel. Hi, I’m like human Rachel. Like I am Rachel, what happens in my life affects me in work and what happens in work affects me in life. It is all connected. So I think that is one way.

Rachel Korb:

The other piece, and what I rely on heavily, is we have like polls engagement surveys that go out. So it’s three to five questions that go out every other week. And they rotate through a question bank that’s usually around 100 questions and it assesses on different categories. So it could be around fairness, it could be around mental health, it can be around including relationship with your peers, relationships with your managers, etc.

Rachel Korb:

And so what I look at over time is what are the trends that we’re seeing on the teams and understanding like what are we doing really well? But then where people feel like experiencing pain points, drilling down into understanding what that is, and then prioritizing what we’re working on in people operations and connecting this back to the business goals of, okay, what improvements can we make to make sure that we’re improving as a business but also we’re making sure that we’re caring for our people because the reason why we exist is because of the people that make up the team. So those are two ways, and there are a lot more features that go into these kinds of platforms.

Rachel Korb:

But I think that has been one that’s been really, really beneficial because it facilitates communication. Some of it is two way communications or like one-on-ones and check ins, others it’s more so like just making sure that we are constantly giving everybody a space to have a voice. And I think if we want to get really, for me, like to the philosophical level, everyone just wants to feel heard, they want to feel acknowledged, they want to feel cared about, they want to feel accepted for who they are.

Rachel Korb:

And when you can understand that, it makes it a lot easier to build a workplace where people can thrive because you can tap into what makes you human, what makes you feel loved, what makes you feel accepted, what makes you feel like you’re doing something greater than yourself because we also want this sense of purpose. And so when we can design the experience kind of around this really human aspect of what all makes us human, that’s what allows us to feel connected regardless if we’re in an office or if we’re spread across 30 different countries.

Luis:

All right. But that does seem to be a key difference, right? As you said, the feeling of shared humanity is a key of that process. But I find, and I’m not alone in this many people have reported that, when you’re working online versus working on the same place, it feels much more transactional. And it takes some extra effort to think of the person on the other side of the screen as an actual human being and not just a worker bot let’s see, or a worker bee or a resource, right? Necessarily, it takes some extra thought, I think.

Rachel Korb:

100%.

Luis:

The impact your operations? And what were some strategies and tactics that you’ve used to deal with if so?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Like this is always the problem, right? The sense of isolation and if you’re not really intentional about cultivating these relationships they can feel transactional. It starts with recruitment but I feel like where you really develop it more deeply is in onboarding. So we have a practice at Re:Coded which we adopted from 15Five which is called the Best-Self Kickoff. So this goes over some of the performance metrics, but really, it’s kind of this 60 to 90 minutes meeting with your manager, where you talk about things about you. So we have different prompts to learn more about the person, but also to go in what motivates you, what inspires you, what helps you feel like you have purpose, what is your communication styles, is there anything from like your culture that we should know. And it goes into some other areas.

Rachel Korb:

And this is something that the new team member fills out but also their manager, and it becomes this two way conversation where you’re able to really get to know one another. This is something that could take weeks or months, we actually put this as like this is something you do in your first week and you dedicate one to two hours just to have this conversation.

Rachel Korb:

Another thing that we do is for all new team members is they do wha’s called a YOU. So we have town halls, we’re a team of 36 and so when new people join the team they do their You. So they talk about who they were when they were young, they talk about where they’re from, so their origin, so youth, origin, and then You, something unique. So that could be a hobby, it could be a superpower, whatever they want to talk about and they pair it with pictures. And then we have notion which we use as part of our onboarding tool and we incorporate everything around our values. And we kind of introduce them of different things that need to read around information but then also like tasks of different people that they need to reach out to.

Rachel Korb:

Now, with that said, there are still areas we need to improve upon. We’re really young, I came in just about a month ago to Re:Coded and we’re building out a lot of these processes. But we’re already talking about virtual retreats, in-person retreats, starting in January we’ll be putting together different kinds of activities that we do online with the team. And I’ve already sent out a survey to get feedback from the team to understand what would help them feel more connected, what kinds of activities are we doing, and then those will be things that I facilitate for the entire team. So those are just a few examples of what we do but we also make sure that the teams have their weekly team meetings and also that they had the regular one-on-ones which are really, really important.

Luis:

Great. I have to wonder if among the activities you’re planning some Among Us. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. It’s a pretty popular game right now, right? Have you heard about it?

Rachel Korb:

No. Wait, is that the like apocalyptic one with zombies? No.

Luis:

No. So it’s a video game that’s kind of clue where there’s a murder and then there are several spaceship and stuff like that. So everyone gets a task, but one of the others get… So you have to do your tasks while trying to figure out who is the murderer and the murderer has to do their task and murder everyone else without being found out.

Rachel Korb:

Oh, that sounds cool.

Luis:

Yeah. Well, I am undecided because the people… I bring it up because the people at DistantJob like to play it quite a bit but I think it has also ruined some friendships along the way. So you never know.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

Let’s say that we found out that some people are really good murderers.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah. So one thing I’ve always seen whenever I’ve like facilitated games is you learn who are the most competitive people on your team, like games are the most direct way to learn that really quickly. I’ve seen it with like holiday trivia or Halloween trivia. And teams got like cut-throat intense about winning trivia.

Luis:

Yeah. On the other hand, if you do that with your team, if you ever need to get rid of a body, you know who to call. Like you learn precious information like that.

Rachel Korb:

Oh, so true.

Luis:

Okay. So we talked a bit about onboarding, but I want to get back to hiring and recruiting because that’s something that’s also very interesting to me. So what would you say are the key factors if you want to look for recruiting to people that, as you say, are in with their whole being instead of just being transactional?

Rachel Korb:

You mean like attracting the right candidates?

Luis:

Yeah, and specifically for remote, I guess.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah. So like what I look for in the people that we’re interviewing?

Luis:

Yeah.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, so I always start with mission and values alignment. I’m a big proponent of culture add, not culture fit. But making sure that there’s an alignment with values, if there’s not an alignment you’re going to see a lot of conflict and, typically, that doesn’t turn out. So integrity is a really important value that we have at Re:Coded. So if a candidate openly expresses examples and things that they have done that goes against what integrity means, that’s a red flag for us.

Rachel Korb:

Collaboration is also really important. So if we have a candidate that says I don’t like to work on a team, we also know that that’s not going to work well for our team. I’ve heard culture described this way, and I can’t remember where, but when you think about culture especially when you’re talking about recruitments, your team is kind of like a Petri dish with bacteria, and each time you introduce something new, whether that’s a new team member or like a new initiative, you add in a new bacteria. And if it’s the wrong bacteria, it can be toxic and then can kill the rest of the Petri dish. So I always think about it from that standpoint.

Rachel Korb:

So going back to your question, missions and values alignment is really important. Someone who is independent though, right? Like remote you’re not going to want to bring in someone who needs you to walk them through everything, you want someone who is resourceful and can figure things out on their own. They’re driven, and ways that you can see that is typically a lot of them have side projects, whether that’s a business or just passion projects and things that they work on and we’ll talk about that.

Rachel Korb:

Good communication skills, I’m always assessing for that, verbal as well as written. Like I said, if you don’t have effective communication it’s really hard to work on a team whether if you’re remote or not. But when you think about remote, you’re also mixing in a lot more people with a lot of different backgrounds and probably native levels of English. And so we operate in English, that can be a really big struggle. And if we have someone who’s maybe struggling a little bit with English and they’re close, but we feel that they’re really great in other areas knowing that for their like learning stipend that we could put that towards English to help them develop their skills.

Rachel Korb:

So I think the other piece is when we go back to mission driven, especially for the stage that we’re at because we’re still younger. So we’re just under four, I don’t know if I mentioned that. Having people who feel very connected to what we do because a startup, like there’s a lot going on, it’s beautiful because you get to create a lot but it can be chaotic, it can be messy. And knowing that this person can come in and say like, “I am so committed to education and the impact that we want to have on this.” But like when I have those frustrating days, it’s okay because I’m super energized by education. So I think those might be the top.

Rachel Korb:

I also think energy and focus management is really important. And what I mean by that is time management. So are they able to prioritize their work and get the things done that they need to get done because when we hire people we trust them. We don’t focus on the hours that they work but rather their output and that they’re able to hit the milestones that they have set and the goals that we have set. And I think what goes along with that is also organization. That they’re able to organize themselves as well. So those would maybe be my, I think, top five that I mentioned.

Luis:

Yeah. I think that’s about it. So I want to target a couple of those. So first, let’s talk a bit about communication, right? About the ability to properly communicate in written and spoken forms. How do you usually evaluate that? What are you looking for more specifically? And what are some kind of, I guess tricks is not the best word, but I have mine, right? When I test people for positions, I usually also pay special attention to written and spoken communication. Let’s say that when I do a job description for someone to read before the interview, then in the interview I ask them questions to figure out if they read it properly. And also I do callbacks to their cover letters and, etc, to figure out how well they communicated what they wanted to communicate with me and stuff like that. So I’m interested in hearing about your approach.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, so for me communication, how I assess for that may vary depending on the level that the person is coming in. So if they’re a director level, what I’m going to look for in terms of communication specifics may be different than if it’s an entry level role where someone has maybe never had experience before. So I guess maybe I’ll just highlight a few things that I look for in people.

Rachel Korb:

So when we talk about spoken and written communication skills, what falls under this for me is listening as well. It’s not just what they say but what they don’t. That they’re actually listening to what I’m saying, that if they don’t understand something they ask for clarification. Clarification is a really important piece, but also when they communicate they’re able to be relatively concise and clear. So I understand if I ask, for example, for a candidate to tell me about a time where they had to manage a project and the outcome of that project. I want to be able to walk away from that understanding what were their responsibilities, what actions did they take, what was the outcome because what I find happens a lot is candidates will just kind of go all over the place and I don’t really know what they did in that project. So making sure that they’re able to give these clear examples.

Rachel Korb:

What I also look for is things like reflection, are they reflecting back what I have said? Are they summarizing to show that they understand? Again, are they asking clarifying questions? And one of my favorite questions that I like to ask, which I think I got… Well, I got actually from when I got hired at Springboard, which was an EdTech startup in San Francisco, was I want you to teach me something in five minutes or less, you can teach me any topic you want. But you need to pretend that I know nothing about the topic. And I love this because it’s a great way to assess how someone will communicate with you.

Rachel Korb:

So how complex of a topic are they picking? Are they able to communicate it in that five minutes or less? Are they aware of how long they’re taking to speak? Are they like noticing my body language? So if I look really confused, are they going to stop and ask a question? Or are they, for example, I’ve been taught so many things through this question. One was how to say, I think it was hello in Turkish, and so like we would actually go through and practice it together. And I think it’s a really great way to replicate it because you can see how would they actually interact with me if we’re like working on something. I’m like, “Hey, can you teach me how to do this real quick?” Then I see what they would do in practice.

Luis:

Yeah, I think it’s a good one.

Rachel Korb:

That’s what I look for. And also I look at how they match the language that I’m using, just to see like what is their level of awareness around communication. That’s like for higher level, like for directors, but I’ll look like how much are you actually paying attention to the words that I’m using? What are you sharing? It’s not like against them if they don’t use the words that I have, but I also look for like the awareness under their choice of words when they speak, for the higher levels.

Luis:

Yeah. So those are some good tips. And I love the question, by the way. So I’m probably going to steal that, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to go through the interview without mentioning that there’s a very interesting part of your work where you intersect, let’s say, your coaching work and the coaching business work with the concepts of mindfulness, which I thought was very refreshing, right? And as someone who values mindfulness a lot in my daily life, one of the things that I am rather proud of and that has brought me countless good things in life is just the ability when I sit with someone for a coffee or for an interview or something, to be able to really be there with that person instead of all over the place.

Luis:

I find that I’m terrible at that over a zoom call, not so much a one-on-one like we’re having, I think I do okay on this one. Although I still don’t think I do as well as I do in person. But especially when there are like two or more people in the call, I feel that there’s a really huge drop off. Have you encountered this situation before? Is it something common? Is there anything that you usually advise people to do?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I struggle with it myself when I get into like the autopilot mindset, which we all have, of like, “Oh, I just need to get all of these things done.”

Luis:

Yeah.

Rachel Korb:

What I find helps with this presence is building it into your calendar before you have these meetings, like if you can do five minutes, great, if not, even 30 seconds. Is before that meeting like you’ve put down your phone, you have no distractions around you and you sit and you just breathe, like you breathe deeply to start to down regulate because normally what happens when we start moving this quickly we move into kind of this default state. Like it’s the fight or flight response is what’s happening. So we’re probably like in this fight or flight response. But what we need to do is we need to like chill out our body in the most physiological way. And the best way to do that is through breath.

Rachel Korb:

So taking deep breaths like five to six seconds in, five to six seconds out. And, like I said, if you’ve got five minutes to do that and just to allow yourself to really settle, it’s amazing. If you don’t, even if you can do it for 30 seconds before it. And then making sure that when you join the meeting you only have one screen, you don’t have your phone near you. Like you really remove the distractions and you allow yourself to be present. And there are still times where I’ll find myself or my mind starts to drift, and that’s when I come back to the breath. I really think the breath is a great anchor. And if you do have those five minutes, I’ll do the breathing work but I’ll also just look at, okay, what is this call? And like what do I want to bring to this call? What energy do I want to bring? What does like a successful session look like? And how can I be there for that?

Rachel Korb:

Like I said, I think it’s much easier in theory than it is in practice. But it’s the thing that if you try it every day it will start to become a part of your practice naturally over time.

Luis:

It definitely feels doable. Tell me, how did you come to this intersection? Tell me the story of when you figured out that this was something that, I’m not going to say that no one else is offering because it’s a big world out there, but it definitely felt unique to me and your work when I encountered it.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah. I think it goes back a lot. Like I started meditating in 2004, 2005 maybe. It was not something that people really talked about especially where I’m from. And I don’t know why I was attracted to it, like for less serious reason, I was kind of a hippie in college so that could be what attracted me to it. But what I ended up finding over time, and what I’ve really found since I’ve moved into my career, is that I struggle with anxiety. And mindfulness was something that allowed me to manage my anxiety in a helpful way because, again, writing anxiety or dealing with like elevated heart rate, maybe blood pressure, and when you breathe you can down regulate all of those things.

Rachel Korb:

And I remember specifically one meeting, this was when I was in San Francisco at work, and there was a really heated conversation around some business decision we should make. And I was noticing myself starting to get really upset. And I was like, “You know what? You can just breathe.” And I did. And I was like, “Wow, I don’t need to feel upset about this.” And I think that was really my aha moment of, if we can just learn how to breathe and how to find the anchor that we have, we can come from this place of choice versus this place of reactivity. And so that’s what really got me into it. And I’m also a bit of someone who’s just driven by curiosity. So as I see things that I’m attracted to, I just do more and more of that. And I think that’s a little bit of what happened with mindfulness. I really think it was somewhat accidental in the beginning but now it’s become a part of what I do very much.

Luis:

That’s an interesting story. Thank you for sharing. So I want to wind down because we are running out of time. So I want to wind down with some rapid fire questions. The questions are rapid fire but the answers don’t need to be. So please feel free to expand as much as you’d like. So first, I’d like to know if you had $100 or euros since now you’re based in Europe, it could be euros, to spend with each person working with you. And the only rule is that you can’t give them the money or an alternative to money like a gift card, and you can’t ask them what they want. You need to give the same thing to everyone at a value around 100 euros. Essentially, you need to buy in bulk. What will you give to everyone working with you?

Rachel Korb:

Well, that’s such a hard question to answer. I want to say I want to buy a meal that we can all eat together, like a really nice one. Does that count because that doesn’t include fries?

Luis:

Sure.

Rachel Korb:

Okay.

Luis:

Let’s say that you can deliver a meal to everyone, right?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

And if what will you get?

Rachel Korb:

I don’t know, I would want to make sure everyone gets to eat what they like. I think if it’s 100 euro like you can get a little bit fancy. So I would want to make sure that everyone gets something where they feel like, treat yourself like where it feels really nice. But also that it gives options to people who might not eat meat or people who might not drink alcohol or those kinds of things.

Luis:

An offer for everyone.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

There you go. That seems noncontroversial.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, I just think food is such a great way to connect with people like this is what we’ve always done as species. And so to be able to share a meal together is really nice. Or maybe if it was 100 euro, it could be like something that we cook together. So we go on live and like we go through and like try to cook the same dish together. That could also be a fun one.

Luis:

Yeah. Nice. So what about yourself, what is something, and it could be more than 100 euro this time, what is something that you’ve bought in the past six months to a year that has improved your work productivity or work life balance?

Rachel Korb:

Hands down my climbing gear?

Luis:

Climbing?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, so I climb now. I used to be very afraid of heights and I started climbing a couple of years ago. And this year, I bought a harness so I can start actually like climbing higher. And it sounds like it’s disconnected but it’s really not. What I learned through climbing is it allowed me to take risks because if you try to jump for a hold on the wall and you fall, it’s terrifying but your rope will catch you. And the same thing happens at work, right? If you have a psychologically safe work environment, you can take risks and you realize you’ve got that rope but then I learned for the next time. And I think I climb twice a week before work and the days that I climb I just feel like, yes, I can do anything. And it makes a huge impact and like how excited and energized I am for the work that I do.

Luis:

Yeah, I definitely believe that. I felt something similar when I was skydiving. So it’s something like… Though, I think I would feel safer with the rope than with the parachute, sometimes the thing doesn’t open and that’s not .

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, I feel the same way.

Luis:

Okay. So do you usually gift books? Are you in the habit of gifting books?

Rachel Korb:

If people read.

Luis:

Okay. So what are your most gifted books?

Rachel Korb:

My most gifted books? So I’m trying to remember the exact title. I don’t have it on me. I think it’s the 12 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

Luis:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rachel Korb:

So I really like that one. It’s a philosophical take on leadership. I also like, I’m blanking on the title. I can’t remember it offhand right now. It’s going to drive me nuts.

Luis:

Sorry about that.

Rachel Korb:

It’s Making of a Manager, I think is what it is, by Julie Zhuo. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing her name right. But I really like that. So that’s a good one for new managers. And it’s very practical. And I love that it’s a woman that’s writing a leadership and manager book because it’s mostly men that write them. So to have the representation is fantastic.

Luis:

All right. Okay.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

We’re going to do our best to search for them and include them in the show notes. And if we really can’t figure out what books are they, I’ll reach out to you for clarification. But thank you for the tips. So final question. This one is a bit of a longer setup. So please bear with me.

Luis:

So let’s say that you are hosting a dinner for the decision makers that’s top tech companies from all around the world, the CTOs, the CEOs, the hiring managers, etc. And the theme of the dinner is remote work in the future of work, right? So the twist is that you are hosting the dinner in a Chinese restaurant, and as the host, you get to pick what goes inside the fortune cookie. So when these people crack open their fortune cookies, what fortune will they read?

Rachel Korb:

They won’t read a fortune but they’ll read a question. And I want it to be something that’s introspective, maybe something like… Oh, I know what it would be. How do you want to contribute to this world?

Luis:

How do you want to contribute to this world? I like it.

Rachel Korb:

Yeah.

Luis:

I like it. So that is your fortune cookie question. Thank you so much. Rachel, it was an absolute pleasure having you here. Please tell our listeners if they want to continue the conversation with you, where can they reach you? Where can they learn more about your work and the people you work with?

Rachel Korb:

Yeah, I think you can easily find me on LinkedIn. If you just search Rachel Korb, I’ll show up. I also have a website, www.rachaelkorb.com. And then I’m also on Twitter with the handle Rachel Korp. So you can find me in any of those places.

Luis:

Well, we will include all of that in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for being here. It was an absolute pleasure talking with you, Rachel. Thank you so much.

Rachel Korb:

Thanks, Luis.

Luis:

And thank you listeners for listening in to another episode of the DistantJob Podcast. I was your host Luis in this podcast that’s all about building and leading awesome remote teams. See you next week.

Luis:

And so we close another episode of the DistantJob Podcast. And if you enjoyed the episode, please, you can help us out by sharing it on social media. That would be great. It’s how we reach more listeners and the more listeners we have, the more awesome guests I can get in touch and convince to participate in these conversations that are a joy to have for me and I hope they’re a joy for you to listen to as well.

Luis:

You can also help a lot leaving reviews on iTunes or your podcast syndication service of choice. Reviews are surprisingly helpful in helping the podcast get to more listeners.

Luis:

Now, another thing that you might want to do is go to distantjob.com/blog/podcast, click on your favorite episode, any episode really, and subscribe. By subscribing, you will get a notification whenever a new episode is up and whenever we get the transcripts of the episode up so you can actually peruse the conversations in text form.

Luis:

And, of course, if you need to find a great employee for your team, a great remote employee, you should take the whole world into consideration and not just look to hire locally, not just look to hire in your country. Look around the whole world because that’s the talent pool that contains the best talent. And to help you with that, again, distantjob.com is the perfect place to start. You will tell us who you need and we will make sure that you get the best possible candidate 40% faster than the industry standard.

Luis:

And with that, I bid you adios. See you next week on the next episode of DistantJob Podcast.

 

Building a startup culture in a remote setting is challenging, mostly for entrepreneurs who haven’t had any previous remote work experience. However, with the right strategies and processes, your team will be set up for success.

During this podcast episode, Rachel Korb shares her experience building connection in remote teams and establishing the right communication processes. She also reveals the importance of intentionally building culture and letting employees feel they have a voice.

 

Highlights:

  • The importance of having a why
  • How to build a hybrid culture 
  • Overcoming isolation in a remote setting
  • The importance of onboarding for a future employee’s performance
  • What skills to look for in remote candidates
  • How to evaluate communication skills

 

Book Recommendation:

 

Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE so you won’t miss all of the other interesting episodes that we have coming up in the next few weeks!

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