Business Operations Associate
New York, NY /
Operations /
Full-time
/ On-site
About Incandescent
Incandescent is a strategy consulting and venture development firm. We conduct research, advise leaders, and collaborate with entrepreneurs. As advisors, we serve as thought partners to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, founders of early and growth-stage ventures, and to visionary leaders of philanthropies and nonprofits.
Founded in 2013, we’ve been building a small team, slowly and carefully. Each team member plays an integral part in developing Incandescent as a firm that discovers better ways to create, build, and run organizations.
Essence of the Role
As our Business Operations Associate, you will play an essential role at our firm by managing the core processes that support Incandescent’s day-to-day operations and growth. This is a role that “wears many hats,” from designing and maintaining knowledge management systems to creating recruiting processes to organizing and running firm culture-building experiences.
The Business Operations Associate is critical to the smooth functioning of our business and constantly seeks opportunities to optimize systems and process design. Responsibilities span many domains of the firm, including tech, operations, HR, recruiting, and culture building. In this role, you will be owning discrete streams of work, building and improving the ways we operate as a firm and community. This is a central role within the firm – in time, becoming the go-to person on a myriad of matters.
Experience/Background
We’re looking for someone early in their career who can jump in to play a major role in the operations of our growing, entrepreneurial firm. Experience working with corporate and venture operations, leading internal initiatives, and wearing multiple operational hats are all desirable for this role. However, we care most about drive and the ability to learn, as the right candidate will be someone who can quickly learn to do things they have never done before.
Areas of Responsibility
- Business Operations:
- Help build and maintain our systems of knowledge management, including owning our firm’s operations manual
- Office owner, alongside managing the office manager, you take responsibility for creating a beautiful and effective office environment
- Tech lead, helping the team solve their occasional tech issues, while also maintaining the firm’s tech infrastructure and being the point of contact for our tech vendors
- Legal support, liaising between our team and our legal counsel, owning smaller legal tasks while working through our legal counsel on larger tasks
- Culture carrier, keeping firm culture front of mind and with others, designing and executing culture building practices and experiences, including owning the firm events calendar and coordinating the firm’s annual offsite
- Process and efficiency catalyst, supporting the team to be more efficient and effective across a wide range of projects and streams of work
- Manage vendor relationships, serving as a liaison between the firm and external contractors and vendors
- Support and own special projects relating to firm operations
- Human Resources:
- Support various people-related functions, maintaining confidential personnel files and other HR responsibilities
- Own the recruiting and onboarding processes, working with hiring managers and team members to run effectively add and onboard new team members
- Future:
- Finance: Managing day-to-day financial work streams such as A/P and A/R, maintaining financial models and being a thought partner to the COO and CEO on the financial drivers of the firm.
- Venture: Working with the COO and CEO both on the firm’s venture portfolio as a whole, how we think about building and growing the portfolio, and advising founders within the portfolio, especially as that advising relates to operations.
- Advising: Becoming a consultant, shifting from internal to external thinking, working with our corporate and systems change clients as an Associate.
While what is described above will be the bulk of the role in the near-term, as someone in this role develops they will be able to take on more responsibility in areas of the firm where they show interest or aptitude. Those areas may include:
Attributes
- You take ownership. You seek out problems that might not otherwise have a clear owner, and constantly see ways to optimize processes and improve efficiency. You are on the look out for opportunities to make a difference and are comfortable taking the first steps to get there. You’re comfortable managing complex projects independently and tracking streams of work with long time horizons.
- You have a high level of integrity. You are a responsible team member entrusted with handling sensitive and confidential information.
- You have high standards for your work product and excellent organizational skills. You sweat the details and are able to develop systems and processes to reinforce accuracy throughout your work. You’re attentive to knowledge management and highly detail oriented.
- You have a positive, roll-up-your-sleeves mindset. You possess humility and grit, willing to take on both “lower level” and “higher level” work based on what needs to be done.
- You are perceptive and practical. Your working style is about creating order and planning ahead. You think systematically and establish elegant processes.
- You have excellent judgment. You have the rare combination of being able to make quick decisions with your gut and measured decisions with your head. You can rely both on strong analytical abilities and good instincts to make the right call across a range of decisions, from small to important.
- You are empathetic. You have the capacity to imagine how the world looks to others and to build bonds of trust even in difficult circumstances. You love being part of a team and thrive on being able to take initiative and contribute in group settings.
- You are driven to learn. You are committed to honest self-examination and open feedback from others. You are willing to take risks and fail and invest in doing whatever it takes to grow into an exceptional performer.
$70,000 - $90,000 a year
Salary for this position is commensurate with experience. The typical range for our Business Operations Associate total compensation (base salary + annual bonus) is between $70,000 and $90,000, approximately 15% of which is variable compensation.
Why the Role is Compelling
In this role, you will be right at the heart of the firm, learning what makes an organization tick, playing a cross-functional role that will quickly develop business acumen and an understanding of how to build and run a business. There is no fluff in this role, everything you will be doing directly impacts the firm’s day-to-day and long-term operations. Incandescent team members are exposed to an unusually wide range of people and issues in the business and social sectors, the internal infrastructure and operations of a growing company, and the firm’s thinking and research. Our team members develop a broad set of professional skills, honing them to the level of excellence in a demanding environment. We are building a diverse team in which each individual is exceptionally strong and everyone is committed to rapid development of themselves and others. In this role, you’ll be exposed to myriad types of work, with the opportunity to explore consulting, finance, operations, and the startup world. Previous Business Operations Associates have gone on to be strategy consultants, operational leaders, and entrepreneurs.
