Recruiting Corner: Executive Assistant Edition with Janette Levya and Rachel Chavez

We are live with Cloudflare TV. Welcome to another session of Recruiting Corner. My name is Roshni Hundel and I'm a recruiter out of the New York office. I've been at the company for four and a half years. This session is our Executive Assistant Edition and we have a couple of amazing EAs with us today and we're going to get to know them a little bit better. Janae, on to you. Hi everyone, I'm Janae Frischer. I'm on the People, Some Places team. I work closely with all the EAs and I'm sorry, just totally blocked out and I work out of the San Francisco office. I just realized I didn't say what office I was and I would like to introduce one of the EAs for on the Executive Leadership, Rachel Chavez. Hi, my name is Rachel Chavez. I support our CEO and co-founder, Matthew Prince. I work out of the San Francisco office and I've been with Cloudflare for a little bit over more than four years and now I'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Janette. Hi everyone, my name is Janette Levya and I'm one of the Executive Assistants working out of the San Francisco office. I've been with Cloudflare for almost two years and I currently support Joe Sullivan, our Chief Security Officer, Janet Van Hise, our Head of People and Nitin Rao, our Head of Global Infrastructure. Awesome, well thank you for introducing yourselves. We are very excited to have our first edition to introduce our admins and so I'd like to kick it off with our first question. How did you hear about Cloudflare? Rachel. Okay, I could go first. So I actually found out about Cloudflare from one of my mentors. I was looking for a role down about January 2016. I had reached out to her because she was early on my mentor and we had stayed friends ever since and I just said, do you know anybody that's looking for EA roles in this area? And she had mentioned that her boss literally just asked her if she knew any good EAs looking for a role. So she actually did an email intro to me and Michelle Zatlin, who is our other co-founder and our COO of Cloudflare. And up until about two months ago, I actually supported both her and Matthew Prince. So once I got chatting with her, I kind of researched a little bit and learned a little bit more and then that's when I came in for some on-site interviews. Awesome, Jeanette, how about yourself? I found out about Cloudflare through LinkedIn a little over two years ago and it just so happened that Janae was my recruiter and she got me in touch with Rachel and I was going through a transition from an administrative assistant role and looking for the next step into my career, which was the executive assistant role. And Rachel sold me from day one and I have never looked back since then. So good to hear both of you mentioned a couple of our sources, you know, referrals and LinkedIn are a wonderful way for us to get candidates. All our jobs are posted on there and we love encouraging referrals as well, so that's really great. And the next question would be, what do you believe makes a good EA? Jeanette, how about you? So I believe there are specific characteristics that make up a good EA and I'm going to start off with the first one being compassionate, being able to treat every employee, it does not matter who it is, who their title is, being able to treat them with the same respect that you would treat your neighbor or your best friend goes really a long way and also developing those strong core relationships in the workplace. My second one is going to be patience. I think being an executive assistant requires a lot of patience because you just never know what day you're going to get, you never know on what side you're going to be thrown on in a project, in an event or things like that. And really having the patience to be empathetic and understanding of everybody's situations as well as their calendars, as well as their daily lives, really just goes a long way. And my last one is going to be flexibility. People often say that they don't truly understand the executive assistant role because they just don't know what it is that we do. We have our hands in almost every pot that you can think of and it really just ties into our core responsibilities as well as the skill set that we have and it's us just being flexible. It's us being able to bend this way or that way and it can be for the smallest task, the biggest ask or it can just be in our everyday schedules. Great. Rachel, how about yourself? I have to agree with everything that Jeanette said and additional to that, I think there's something to be said about somebody that could do the EA role and who is successful at it versus a great EA. I think to be good at being an EA, you have to have some of the qualities such as being able to multitask, being efficient, being able to be flexible, being able to calendar, schedule, travel, expense reports, and all those things to be successful at the job and be good. I think what makes a great EA is human relationships. So, I think it's really important that you come in and you recognize that you don't only just represent yourself, your executive, but you also represent the company that you're with. So, understanding those core values, understanding what's important to the company as well as what's important to the executives, and then just as a whole, like my biggest thing in life, as corny as it sounds, is be a good person, be kind, be empathetic, and treat people the way that you want to be treated. And I think that you are a successful and great EA when you take the time to build those relationships with people that you work with, when you really try to be flexible and don't just think about your executive's schedule. You also think about what's best for the project as a whole, what's best for the company. Can I be flexible? Can I move these things? Is it, you know, is it something that I could do this favor? And then down the line, you know, when I really need to not be able, when I can't be flexible, like then they're going to bend those things for me. So, I think building those relationships and making sure that people enjoy working with you, that you come off as approachable is huge on being a great EA versus being successful at your job. That's awesome, Rachel. And Jeanette, you both touched on what we are trying to encourage at Cloudflare, especially on the recruiting team, which is our Cloudflare capabilities, which is having, you know, empathy, getting work across the finish line, being kind, being goal-oriented, being curious, and learn to grow, and that you are understanding of situations. And a personal experience I've had with both of you is sometimes candidates, last minute, they cancel on interviews or something comes up, and both of you have really shined through on that and said it's okay and always give, you know, people second chances. So, we're always in line when it comes to that. And so, it's really nice to hear that both of you think that's a really good EA because that's also in line with how Cloudflare and recruiting and whole things. On to the next question. Jay, I've always wanted to know this. We kind of talked personally about, you know, this whole COVID, having kids at home and balancing the career. You have three executives that you support and three kids. I would like to know, how are you handling all that? How are you balancing it? You know, I ask myself that question many days, but in the beginning, I will admit that it was extremely hard. I'm not going to say it was easy because it was not. We were so accustomed to a schedule that we had in place, meaning myself and my kids. I commute for a living, so there was just this set schedule where it was like by 6.15, you're awake. By 6.45, your teeth are washed. You have your backpack. Seven o'clock, we're out the door. You know, it turned into, oh, 7.30, 7.45 is here. Let me roll out of bed and ask my mom for a Pop-Tart and not pay attention to none of my classes. You know, it was a constant juggle of learning where the balance was. I think one of the things that a lot of parents have agreed upon that being remote and then having the kids, you know, you had to be their teacher. When do you turn off your laptop? Like, how do you find the time to take away? Because you feel like if you dedicated 30 minutes to their schoolwork, you got to dedicate an extra hour to your actual work. You know, and I have three barely busy executives that are in three completely different orgs, so the needs are completely different. There's some needs that are very early in the morning. There's some that full-on hit like between the hours of like noon to five, and there's others where, you know, there's late-night requests that are coming in that essentially become morning tasks as well. It took me a while, but I had to get into a rhythm of studying a routine again at home. The kids weren't on board with it because they knew that they didn't have a school to go to, so they were like, well, we can wake up until like 8.25. That doesn't work for me. I'm ready and kicking away since 5.30 a.m. every single day, so I had to really push myself and the kids, and the kids stuck with the 8 p.m. bedtime. I gave it a little bit of flexibility after three weeks of 8.15, but I put them on a routine, and then I put myself on a routine where I would not look at my laptop before the hours of 7.30, and I would not look at it after like 5.15, like 5.30, depending on how hectic my day was. I can honestly say, though, in addition to that, that having three executives that are extremely supportive and understanding of COVID, you know, and how it's affected my house life because I have three kids that I'm teaching, has gone a long way. Joe and Janet both have three children of their own, so we've come to an understanding, and it's been definitely an interesting story time every week when we share stories of, well, what did your three kids do this last week during school work, you know, and exchanging, you know, the little like horror parent stories of like kids having meltdowns, of like them not wanting to do this, but they understand it, and I think that is what that has helped extremely my relationship with them in regards to them knowing that I will always get my work done, no matter what time of the day it is, or no matter how urgent it is, I will always get to it right then and there, but also being able to give me that balance of saying, you know, you have the kids, like take whatever time you need. I can say that they've, I tried to encourage me to take PTO, I don't know how many times, I've lost track of it. It's like on a weekly basis. Goodness, thank you so much for your answer and your transparency of how you can balance three kids and three executives. I only have one, so I can't even imagine, and Rachel, so you were supporting both the co-founders when COVID -19 happened, and I'm sure things have to shift in your work life and your, the balance of, you know, supporting executives virtually, and I just wanted to hear more about your experience, and you know, is there a turnoff time for you, and how have you been supporting, and how have you been handling it all? I think that at the beginning, when COVID first started, that it was kind of like, okay, well, we're not going to be at work for two weeks, and this is going to be okay, and everything's going to be fine, and so when you first go into it, you know, it kind of felt nice to not have a commute and different things like that, but then the longer it went on, the more you had to adjust to this new normal that was going on, and it does feel different to, you know, if your executive is late to a meeting, and you get a chat from somebody that says, are they showing up, to sit there and be like, I can't run to a conference room right now, or I really don't know what they're doing right now, and things like that, so I think keeping communication is key. Luckily, we have things like chat, we have texts, we have email, all those things to help us keep in contact, and I think doing the video conferences with different people that we work with on a day-to-day is important, too, because losing that human interaction, I know for me, you know, I don't have the challenge of three children at home, or even any children at home, I just have a dog, and my husband's going to work every single day, so I'm spending the days pretty much without human contact, and also going through a remodel, which makes me a lot of times start my conversations with apologies if you hear drilling right now, but I think for me that the best thing that I did for myself was I started to create a routine, and so once I figured out, okay, this isn't going away, I went and I got my monitor, I went and got my, speaking of the dog, I went and got my monitor, and I went and got my mouse, my keyboard, and my chair, and I set up an office within my house to have a space to work, and then also just, you know, I would get up at 6 30 in the morning like I used to when I commuted, and just got up, had my coffee, did a workout, get on email early, I forced myself to, you know, get out of the house once a day to walk the dog for lunchtime, and I do kind of force myself to a little bit have a logout time in a sense of around 5 30, I try to be done with being in front of my computer at my desk, and of course, you know, just out of habit, and because of who I support, I monitor my email throughout the rest of the night, but I do find that I need definitely more breaks than I used to. I forget about how the fact that riding a train for an hour in the morning actually is your downtime and your time to think and kind of wake up, and then also at the evening, it's your time to decompress, and I was somebody who always set boundaries as far as I never worked on the train. I am a huge reader, and so that was my time to read my book and kind of like be collected, so when I got home and had turned the wife hat on and do the house stuff, like I was ready to go, so I think routine during this time is huge, and then also just, you know, making sure that you're staying in contact, whether video conferences or communicating with the people that you work with and who you support is super important, and then as far as hiring for the role, it did lead to such a different experience because you, I've never had somebody come work especially so closely with me and never met them before, so it's not the same, but I will say things like Zoom and video conferencing does help get that kind of face-to-face interaction, and you still get to see how quickly somebody responds or how they think on their feet and stuff like that, so it is helpful, but it is very different to hire somebody that you know is going to be kind of your counterpart and never have met them. Yeah, you know, I've had a hard time drawing those boundaries, and then also like it's just so amazing to see how quickly recruiting switched the switch on making every interview virtual, all our onboarding's virtual. We've had a huge help from our HR and our IT teams, and we wouldn't be able to do it without them or without you guys either, and I know it's been a huge adjustment for everybody, and so it's just really awesome to see how well we've come together with it. Moving on to the next question, I would really just want to understand, you know, what is part of your job that you do today that most people might not know that you're involved in or that you're doing? Jeanette, what are your thoughts on that? So we're involved in everything, I'm just kidding. We're involved in a good amount of things, and I think it depends on the org that the executive assistant is supporting or providing internal support to on some of the projects and some of the things that we're involved on that people don't know, but I think my biggest one is going to be Cloudflare TV. A lot of people don't know that the executive assistants are actually part of that little group. We help facilitate the live questions. We actually coordinate with the presenters. There is a lot of cross-functional communication that goes on and with the presenters in addition to us, you know, and anytime that something new gets rolled out with Cloudflare TV, we're kind of the first ones to know in addition to the rest of the employees that had helped onboard all of this when we first kicked it off. It's been a very exciting thing to be a part of. It's even cooler to say that I'm actually part of a segment, even though I didn't want to because I was nervous. You know, it's different when you're on the other side of the screen. I'm so accustomed to being able to warm people down and tell them, you know, like, let it all out now. Like, let's do some fuzzy warms, like, warm fuzzies in the air, you know, to be able to relax them a little bit, and, you know, I get to see everything on the back end. I think that's been one of the coolest things in addition to staying connected with the rest of our workforce. Like Rachel said, it's definitely different when you have to meet with somebody like your counterpart, and you're like, I've never met you in person. I've met people on my teams, on the three different teams that I support, that I've never met in person because ever since we've been work from home. So it's definitely been a great experience to be able to stay connected with the company that way, and also it's a joyous thing to be able to see a new face, be able to get to know who they are. What do they do for the company? What's their role like? What are they presenting on? You know, Cloudflare TV isn't just like an engineer -based platform. It's entirely for anybody and everyone. I had a fellow peer from one of my teams who actually did an entire segment about the best eating habits for COVID, during COVID for work from home. It was the most awesome segment I've ever seen. I thought I had it done with DoorDash. She went, like, had all the resources available, you know, and it was great, and we got so many questions, and I think that is really what makes us being an executive assistant at Cloudflare so sweet, because we get to be a part of some of the coolest things that we're rolling out. Rachel, what about you? Yeah, what Jeanette said, everything with Cloudflare TV has definitely been an adventure for us during COVID, and something I think that's really fun for us to work on outside our normal stuff, and again, as she mentioned, it really just depends on what org you are, on what kind of project management you're doing, and different things that you're working on. I think one thing as a whole that people don't really understand is kind of like what the simple things actually, how much more complex they are. For instance, you know, putting a meeting on a calendar that involves 10 different executive schedules, and also just looking at a calendar, and then we see this as this, like, beautiful game of Tetris that we constantly play, and if we, you know, have to move this person here, how does that affect this project, or if we move this sync from this time to that time, you know, when's the last time this person has gotten a sync with my executive, because those communications, especially right now when there's not that human drive-by of a desk thing, are so much more important, and also looking at the calendar and seeing our bosses as human. You know, a lot of times you get the message that's like, well, your boss has 30 minutes of space there, and it's like, yes, they do, but they also have four hours of meetings before, and they have three hours meetings after, so maybe they might need to take a breath, take a moment, have something to eat, use the restroom, you know, things like that, and there's just so much more complexity that comes from the simplest tasks, and you can, you know, associate that with even travel, or even expense reports. We get a pile of receipts, and we're just supposed to know what they're for, and so it's knowing our bosses, knowing how they work, understanding what their, their, you know, their, what their trip was for, and yeah, we could fill in those blanks, but it's just not as simple as I think people kind of list it out to be. There's just a lot of human side that goes into it, and we're always thinking 10 steps ahead. We're not just thinking of, let's move this meeting to the next day. There's a ripple effect that happens, and we have to handle all those ripples. That's awesome, Rachel. I love to hear that about how you look at Matthew or Michelle's when you're supporting both, and saying, well, they've had four back-to -back meetings, like they need a break, because maybe they might not know that, and you're in charge of their schedule, and just the whole Tetris part of it all, and Jeanette, I think it's so amazing that you're part of Cloudflare TV, and I think a lot of people don't know that the admin student, I, I certainly did know, and so it's really cool to see this all come into play, like having this segment with you guys, and learning so much more about, especially about Cloudflare TV, and I don't know if this is like a segue to say to people, they have questions about Cloudflare TV to reach out to you, but I do think it's awesome that, you know, the company is more aware that the little projects inside things that you guys do that we might not know about. Your roles are so interconnected, and so important. I think those little details are what people tend to forget. It's definitely something recruiting can relate to as well, and, you know, recruiters and coordinators are right there with you. We would love to also know, with all the difficult tasks that you tackle on a day to day, what is the best way to support you, and make your lives easier? What is your preferred way of communication? What are some big no -no's that, you know, that frustrate you, and that, you know, make your job difficult? How can people work better with you, and partner with you? How about you, Rachel? I think the biggest thing to know about EAs is we love details like so much. You're never going to bore us with details, so if you're sending a request over, we want to know what's the time frame, what's the have to have by date, how long the meeting has to be, who else needs to be in the meeting, and what the context is behind the meeting, just because that just helps us be able to prioritize it. We always want to make sure that we're not giving you times that aren't within the time frames that you need them, so it just helps to not waste back and forth. Like, I'm somebody who loves efficiency. If I can make things more efficient, the better it is, so tell me right away. I'll send you one email back, confirmation done, calendar invite sent. So, for me, it's just more details than you even think I need or necessary. I don't mind reading. Like I said, I love to read, so send them all over to me. I always prefer email. I don't love chat. I don't love text. I didn't even really love drive-bys at the office, mainly because there's so much going on that I could sit there and say, like, yeah, I'll get that on the calendar, and then you walk away, and something else happens, and I might have forgotten that conversation for a second. So, I prefer email. It's my checklist. If I file it, if it's deleted, that means it's done off my head, and as far as chats go, a lot of the times, I just sometimes will miss a chat, and so then people are following up and then wondering why you're not as responsive, and it's just because maybe I picked up my phone, and it recognized my face, and it deleted the chat, and I didn't even realize you sent it. So, unless it's super urgent where it's something needed within an hour, I prefer email always, number one communication. I think biggest pet peeve is probably if you don't hear the answer you don't want to hear, and then you copy my boss expecting a different answer. That's a little frustrating. I prefer just the open communication of, like, hey, I hear you, but I really need this by this date, and to work it out with me, because I guarantee you nine times out of ten, Matthew's going to write back, work with Rachel for the calendar, because that is, I own the calendar, and he knows that there's a lot of different things that I'm working on that he doesn't even know that I'm working on. That's my job, so it's always going to default to what I put on the calendar. Jeanette, how about you? I cannot agree more. I agree 100% with everything Rachel said. My biggest no-no, and it always just, it never fails to make me laugh, not in a bad way. It just, I'm always like, oh, when will they learn? Is when somebody sends me a request over chat for a meeting that needs to happen within 30 minutes, and there's no context. It literally says, I need this meeting with Joe or Janet. Okay, thanks, bye. That's it. No context, like, no nothing. I've never met this person before. It can be somebody that's been at the company for years. Like, I have to go look them up on Painboard, which is our internal platform for our employees, for our workforce, and it just, the more that I ask them questions, they're like, well, they know what it's about. I was like, I don't know what it's about. I own the calendar. Can you please elaborate? That's a big no-no. Don't do that. It just causes more work for both of us, and in the end, you won't get that meeting within 30 minutes. Email is always absolutely going to be our number one favorite. It is the most requested and most preferred. I understand sometimes last minute things, you know, meetings that are all hands on deck, like, this has to happen now. I totally get that. Like, you can send me that over chat, and it's usually from people that I already work with very closely for Nitin, for Joe, or for Janet, and so I understand the need for that. You know, anytime that I have a finance team member reach out to me for meetings, you know, most of the time they're for Nitin. I already know it's urgent. Like, it has to happen within the next hour, so I drop everything for that, but when you give me that, okay, thanks, bye, with no context, no. It's not going to work out. That's when you say, okay, thanks, bye, in return. But it's like, okay, thanks, bye. Like, you're going to do it, and I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, you know, and it goes back to what Rachel said, is we own the calendars. Going through our executives is not going to get you the result that you want, guaranteed. At the end of the day, they will always cc us and tell us, can you please work with Rachel, or Janet, or my admin, and make sure that you get it on the calendar. My other favorite one is when they don't put the urgency on there, or they say that it's urgent when it's really not urgent, and it does not even belong to my executive. It belongs to somebody else in their department, but they would like my executive to attend, but they don't say that. They list them as a required one, and so you go through all this work already to get the calendar invite on there, and you have the context, you have the details just for the last minute. It's like, oh, they don't even need to be on there. Thanks. That's when you get the, okay, thanks, bye. Yes, Rachel. I know for sure I should be wearing the cone of shame right now, because I'm pretty sure I've done a couple of your no-no's, so it's very good for the company to hear what it is. I definitely know about the urgent. For me, something's very urgent with a candidate who might have an offer, but for you, it might be different, so thank you for letting us know the no-no's, and hopefully people will take this in and realize what the proper way, and one of the main things I've learned from this is to over -communicate with you guys. So we've only got a few minutes left. I just want to time check us here, so let's get one question in real quick. It's the best question. Okay, this is probably, it's an awesome question. What is your favorite part of your job? The people. Or Jeanette, sorry. No, the people, and that goes from the interns, to our amazing recruiters, to my fellow admins, to the executives that I support, to our leadership team, to the porters who help maintain and upkeep our offices, like Cloudflare is an amazing place to work at, and the reason I cannot envision seeing myself anywhere else, one was in part to you, second goes to Rachel, since she was my hiring manager to get me onboarded, but when I came to Cloudflare, it just, it blew my mind away at how much transparency, how much inclusion, and how much just openness there is. You know, nobody's, there is no egotistical culture there. It's all about, you know, how are you doing, you know, people that you've never even met just greet you with the biggest smile on their face, and that's something I definitely miss from the office, is I can honestly say, if I had an opportunity to put myself back on board, do the one and a half hour commute, and go into the office, it would make my day just to be able to walk into the office, and the amount of smiles you get, and it's like, hey, how are you? Like, how are you doing today? How was your ride in? You know, it's, for me, it's the absolute people. I love the teams that I get to work with. Everything about Cloudflare, it's the place to be. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, and fortunately, I have to agree with Jeanette, so I'm not going to say much different, but for me, it's definitely the people, you know, I sit there, and I talk to people, and they're like, well, isn't it so exciting? You get to work from home now, and you know, all those things, and I'm like, you know, there's some things that are more convenient. Obviously, I'm not going to lie about that, but at the end of the day, no, I miss going into our office. I miss the people that we get to work with every day, and as Jeanette said, from the porters to the leadership, everybody in between, even our board of directors. Matthew and Michelle have done, and our leadership has done a really great job with the people that we have on our board. They're kind. They're human. They are the nicest board I've ever worked with, and I just think it says a lot about Cloudflare and what we stand for, and that we are, you know, we're true to our mission. We want to make the Internet a better place, and we also want to do good things, and so we hire good, intelligent people. We hire people that I get to learn from every single week at beer meeting. Bye, everyone!