Helpful (2)
I worked at Balsam Brands full-time (More than a year)
Pros
I worked at Balsam Brands for over a year. Among the great things at BB were my co-workers, in-season perks, WFH Wednesdays (before COVID), opportunities to grow and build the company. The Learning and Development team also did a fantastic job with regards to training team members as it relates to management, and personal development and understanding.
I can't stress enough how great most of my collogues were to work with. I worked primarily with our Boise, Dublin, and Manilla teams, and it was wonderful to have an opportunity to work with them. I genuinely miss having the opportunity to work at the office and having lunch with my teammates.
Despite the limited PTO, the work life balance was great and I was always able to take time that I needed.
Cons
Among the biggest "cons" would be the disconnected teams and long term vision. All companies have issues and looking back I think these could easily be solved with focus from leadership.
With regards to disconnected teams this could have been solved with a better overall understanding across functions/teams of an individual's role, assigned projects, and workload. While there is a PMO, there isn't the coordination or project visibility that I would expect to see when people are juggling operational issues and feature/horizon projects across the enterprise. This leads to ambiguity and self prioritization of work that seems like it may or may not have a place in the value stream. PM's and coordinators do a great job, but having project charters/visions/kickoffs would add some guard rails.
As far as the long term vision, the company does a good job of having town halls to communicate what's going on across the company. However, the goals and vision are more abstract than I would have liked to see. This causes ambiguity and leads to interpretation of what is important for the company to move forward.
Advice to Management
Balsam should continue to keep a focus on building relationships, as that does make it a great place to work.
Don't be afraid to define explicitly what you expect the company to be, or how you expect team members to show up. I would say the same thing as it relates to long term goals. "Remember the future" on how you want the company unfold over the next 5 years. With a globally distributed team, you can't have ambiguity or else time is wasted and efficiency lost.
Application
I applied online. The process took 7 weeks. I interviewed at Balsam Brands (Boise, ID) in August 2019.
Interview
The interview process for me was extremely long (over 7 weeks). Received my first email from Balsam on August 7th and didn't receive an offer until September 27th. Started with an assessment, then 3 video interviews, a 5 hour in office interview period, a 4th video interview, and then reference checks. The process seemed very long considering they kept reminding me I would be a late hire with their busy season quickly approaching. The interview process was initially explained as an assessment with 2 video interviews and a final in office interview and when I kept finding out about additional steps I became frustrated with the process. The actual interviews and questions themselves are not too hard, you just have similar conversations with a number of different people. All in all, I ended up getting an offer and accepting. They REALLY want to make sure you are a good fit into their culture.
Interview Questions
