Lever Reviews

Pros

I joined Lever in 2015 as their first-ever intern, and when I graduated this year, I returned to join the company full-time. In the two years since I interned Lever, Lever has progressed in many ways from growing from 40 to over 100 employees to building a variety of new features.

Why did I come back? Here are a few reasons (in no particular order):

- The people are kind and thoughtful. Beyond that, there’s something special about people here that I can’t quite put my finger around, but in short, they're awesome.

- Cross team collaboration and empathy is a big one. During my internship, I had the opportunity to work with and learn from Leveroos outside of the engineering team, which helped me better understand how Lever operates. Also, cross functional empathy (XFE) is especially evident on in the way we recognize each other, celebrating small (and large) wins, and share knowledge.

- There’s an incredible amount of transparency across teams and also between the executive team and the rest of the company.

- Lever’s willing to invest in people development. They’re not just looking for skills, they’re also looking for potential.

- HR is an interesting and often overlooked space, and I like what Lever's building.

Other Pros of Lever:
- Catered lunches and plenty of snacks
- Action-oriented company values
- People regularly raising the bar
- Strong GIF game (To get a sneak peek, check out the February 2016 Lever blogpost)
- Openness to feedback

Advice to Management

- Lever has unique qualities and traditions that may be difficult to preserve as the company grows. It may not be feasible to keep them exactly as-is, but we should find the nuggets of each and be sure to keep those with us as we scale.

- The fact that Lever was built by first-time founders and has achieved so much in the past few years truly illustrates how incredible our exec team is (not advice, but a general comment).

- Lever’s in a tricky (yet powerful) position where people are looking to us when it comes to recruiting and its future. We should “leverage” that and not only raise the bar when it comes to industry standards, but we should set the bar and be the bar that others can reference and strive towards.

Pros

Lever's team is made up of some of the smartest, most intentional, and most empathetic people I've ever met. I feel so lucky to be part of this company and a culture that supports and pushes me every day to both "Know why" and "Raise the bar." We have an amazing product that I feel like I have a real impact on. And it feels awesome to work on something that I really believe in—in terms of quality and value we're bringing to the world. Working at Lever, you feel like you are part of something really special, in terms of the team and the product.

People here are really authentic and collaborative, and that includes leadership. I appreciate how transparent they are about goals and how we're stacking up against them. Which is another pro, the product itself. HR tech doesn't sound sexy, and frankly few people here were passionate about the space before they joined. But what you quickly learn is 1) hiring is a HUGE market and it's definitely heating up and 2) Lever is at the front of the pack of startups in the space, and the business just continues to grow. Our product is clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest when it's demo-ed, and our customers truly love us.

And because we're a company that is in the hiring space, that means we think A LOT about people. From the way we hire to how we onboard and build teams, it's all done in a really intentional way. For example, D&I has been an important part of the company since it was 10 people on the team. All of this also makes it an amazing place to learn and grow. Managers put a lot of trust in their teams, and it's a really supportive place to challenge and push yourself.

Advice to Management

As the team grows, it becomes more and more critical to get better at giving and receiving critical feedback. This includes between executives and senior management.

Pros

When I first joined, I was almost embarrassed to tell people how much I love my job. But, what the hell, I love my team, I love this company, I love what I do every day.

The people here are amazing. I'm constantly amazed by how intelligent, thoughtful, and NICE everyone is. That's what my friends always say when they come over for lunch and meet my co-workers, wow, everyone here is so nice! And it's true! People here really care about each other, and not just care about "did you get this thing done for me," but care about you as a whole person. It's a really supportive culture, and we celebrate sales deals, CS deployments, recruiting hires—we just appreciate each other a lot.

As part of that, people are encouraged to explore and try new ways of doing this. As a fast-growing startup, roles continue to evolve and specialize, and from day one, it's expected for you to ask questions, know why, and to suggest or try out changes if there's a better way. I really appreciate how much trust my manager has in me. I feel super comfortable bringing up issues that I'm seeing, and working together to figure out how I can continue to grow and challenge myself.

Pros

- growing extremely quickly.. lots of oppty for personal and professional development
- ability to make a significant impact on the company/culture/revenue goals/product roadmap at this size
- really supportive, fun, hard-working colleagues
- get to sell a truly kick-a$$ product

Advice to Management

- hold other departments more accountable (it's not just sales that has to meet goals)
- less focus on D&I (even tho it's great!), more focus on our go-to-market strategy

Pros

Hard work never goes unnoticed at Lever whether its from your own manager or other executives. I've had the opportunity to work closely with Sarah Nahm, CEO and she is such a fantastic role model for all employees. She genuinely cares about everyone at Lever both professionally and personally.

The company has grown from 60- 130 people in a year and the growth is going to continue. It still has a small company feel, especially as we all get to eat lunch everyday together. We also do an annual company offsite where we can to bond with teams outside of the ones we spend our day to day with. We also get the opportunity to work on issues that affect Lever as a whole which I really appreciate.

The biggest pro- the product is fantastic and our sales team never have to oversell our features. Performance speaks for itself especially when you look at the fantastic clients we have from SMB to Enterprise. Everyone at Lever believes heavily in the success of our product.

Advice to Management

Scaling is hard in general. Making sure we have best practices in place for training and retention are really important.

Pros

* Everyone is very invested in the company. We all share the feeling that things are about to take off and that energy is infectious.
*Every person is incredibly approachable and inclusive, there are no egos here. That goes up to the executive staff and leaders. I’ve never worked somewhere where the CEO was so authentic and open. Also, everyone is incredibly fun to work with and hang out with outside of the office. The team also hangs out cross-functionally, there are no cliques.
* “Champion Cross-Functional Empathy” is one of our values, and I see it come alive every day. Everyone is willing to jump in to help on a project or brainstorm. Working with Product, Engineering & design is so incredibly easy. We have executive leaders willing to jump in to help close a deal or work through a problem when we need it.
* Every employee has a say in the business, and everyone is really invested in the success. Decisions don’t feel like they’re being made “top down” without bringing people along with the thinking.

Advice to Management

Lever is the most diverse and inclusive workplace I’ve been a part of. Please continue on fostering that culture and not losing focus of hiring really well as the company grows. We’re growing really quickly, but shouldn’t do it at the expense of quality.

Pros

- Best & most innovative ATS product on the market
- Growth opportunities for people who work hard
- Working at a startup and getting to go through rapid & exciting professional development can often come at the expense of working with experienced professionals who you can learn from. Lever puts immense thought into hiring, but especially into hiring its managers, so while there are exciting growth opportunities, it doesn't come at the expense of learning from good people.
- The exec team is stellar and truly (from my experience) cares about its employees and wants to do the right thing.
- Lever has a softer culture than most tech startups that I have experience with. Very focused on diversity and inclusion and walks the talk (over 50% female, etc.)

Pros

I mostly tell people that when I was interviewing, I heard so many amazing things, and in a couple of my past companies, those great things turned out to be just a sales pitch. I can't tell you how I relieved I was that when I joined Lever, I found it to be exactly as described. People here are just really friendly, and it's almost like they try to find ways to help you both as you're onboarding and just doing your job on a day to day basis.
The company is growing extremely quickly but is determined to do it in a responsible way. A lot of similar-sized startups lately have taken big rounds of funding, hired tons of people way too quickly, realized they didn't have the product or the sales pipeline for those people to be successful, and then had to make layoffs. Lever is being very aggressive in driving growth, but sticking to the company's values and being thoughtful in how they grow the team. It is a refreshing approach in startup world!
Lastly, it feels really cool to be working with a bunch of people who also were able to get through a very thorough interview process. Lever trains you on the process when you join, and I learned so much about how to hire REALLY well. It's amazing to be working with a bunch of other amazing people who also made it through the process.

Advice to Management

Continue to listen to your employees. The employee survey (and talking about the responses with us) was great. It is clear there's an effort being made in listening to the broader employees so keep it up! Continue to be thoughtful, and even though we raised an amazing Series C, let's not compromise on the quality of the people we are bringing into the organization for the sake of speed.

Pros

- everyone works really hard to raise the bar
- extremely intelligent co workers
- fast paced, exciting environment
- great opportunities for growth
- committed to consistent growth and improvement

Pros

This team is devoted to building a fantastic product and a thoughtful company culture and it show. In addition to our incredible demographic stats (over 50% women) Lever continues to amaze me with it's emphasis on doing the right thing even if it means moving slower than other companies.

Advice to Management

Be open to changing as the makeup of the company changes. If you're not open to growing and being transparent about the ways we're going you're going to fall behind.