Josh Talks - Chief Of Staff

Immediate Joining

Role: Chief of Staff

Type: Full Time

Reporting to: Supriya Paul, CEO

Location: Gurugram

About us:

Josh is on a mission to unlock human potential by creating tools that effectively nurture each individual's potential. We started out in 2015, giving Bharat's youth access to relatable role models in regional languages through the Josh Talks platform. As the next step, we expanded to provide affordable, employability-enhancing skills through our Android application, Josh Skills. Our flagship offering, the Spoken English course, has generated strong user feedback with industry-leading course completion rates, unlocking employment opportunities for our users.

As of January 2024, our content has accumulated over 3.32 billion lifetime views, averaging 110 million+ monthly views across platforms. Josh Skills has more than 9 million downloads with 435,000 paid users. To find out more information about our work, visit joshtalks.com.

Awards & Recognition:

Forbes India 2020: Most Powerful Self-Made Women

National Media Award 2019: President of India

Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia: Media & Marketing

In the Media:

Fortune India:

https://www.fortuneindia.com/macro/india-inc-reacts-to-budget-2020/104067

Economic Times:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/new-energy-1-5-million-pre-series-a-round-to-help-josh-talks-go-international/articleshow/74334163.cms

The Hindu:

https://www.thehindu.com/society/skilled-for-life-with-josh-talks-and-nsdc/article30024016.ece

EconomicTimes:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/why-josh-talks-has-the-energy-to-be-bigger-better-than-ted-talks/articleshow/55936596.cms

Position Summary:

The role of Chief of Staff at Josh Talks is a strategic and operations-oriented position that addresses both the present and future business requirements of the organization. This role entails close collaboration with Josh Talks' CEO, Supriya Paul, and involves overseeing cross-functional activities to ensure the seamless and successful execution of operations.

What would your day look like?

Finance:

- Collaborate with the finance manager to facilitate the annual budget forecasting process.

- Ensure alignment between budgetary figures and real-world operational scenarios.

- Evaluate financial models created by the finance manager for accuracy and relevance.

- Conduct a thorough analysis of budgetary performance, comparing expected versus actual results.

- Identify and comprehend variances, investigating underlying reasons for discrepancies.

- Develop solutions to address and rectify budget variances, ensuring financial goals are met.

- Formulate actionable insights based on comprehensive budget analysis.

- Work closely with cross-functional teams to implement corrective measures and optimize financial outcomes.

- Identify key areas to increase efficiencies and reduce costs- Assist the founders to implement strategies to increase team efficiencies

Strategy:

- Run comprehensive research models to identify new market/product opportunities

- Identify cross-functional synergies to help reduce the TOT of both internal and external projects

If required, lead restructuring initiatives to increase output, tap new opportunities, and decrease overall costs, Find areas of growth, and assist founders in allocating resources (Financial & human capital) to double down on the same.

HR & People operations:

- Establish a systematic hiring process for all positions at Josh, defining clear Roles & Responsibilities and required skills for each role.

- Collaborate with the Talent Acquisition team to standardize job descriptions, ensuring consistency across positions.

- Create a uniform application process to streamline candidate submissions and enhance efficiency.

- Design standard interview questions and identify the interview panel to maintain a structured and fair assessment.

Build Recruitment Pipeline:

- Review yearly hiring needs, identify talent pool, assist in networking, and support employee branding for recruitment.

Training and Performance Management:

- Develop a training process for all Josh positions, identifying needs, standardizing documents, appointing trainers, setting timelines, and defining assessment criteria for new hires.

- Provide guidance to the Talent Acquisition team in creating a streamlined process for employee referrals.

- Assess current performance Review System :identify improvement areas, collaborate with teams for enhancements, and ensure replicability.

- Monitor PRS Implementation: Connect with the HR team to oversee the implementation of the performance review system.

- Standardize Training in PIP: Review PIP process, define standardized template, establish performance metrics, consequences, and timeline

Cross-Team Collaboration and Target Monitoring:

- Prepare Quarterly meeting agenda, share data points in advance, and moderate discussions accordingly.

- Collaborate with different teams to monitor the achievement of targets for each team

- Review team targets regularly, creating intervention plans if needed

- Standardize exit interview format and gather feedback from key position exits.

Process excellence:

- Collaborate with process Manager for scaling scholarship vertical

- Conduct revenue and lead generation review meetings, collaborate with tech team for student experience.

- Ensure counselor's NPS is consistently above 9, managing escalations with student success teams.

- Monitor partner course NPS, collaborate with student success to address dissatisfaction, escalate through partner communications.

- Collaborate with partners communications manager to handle partner escalations.

- Discuss cases of ethics breach by the counselling team with the audit team.

Investor & External Relations:

- Manage & maintain relationships with all current and potential investors (angels & institutional)

- Support the partnership development team in securing positive collaborations.

- Negotiate contracts with external stakeholders to secure favorable terms.

- Oversee legal contracts to prevent potential threats

- Ensure the maintenance of all required legal compliances

Essential skills you need to have

- Analytical bent of mind - extremely comfortable with numbers and data

- Ability to get work done, without direct control (it's not as easy as it seems!)

- Super strong communication (verbal and written) and presentation skills

- MS Office Ninja - Excel

- Ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced working environment

- Sound judgment and problem-solving skills

- Super organized and meticulous

- Solution based approach

- Effective time manager

- Basic legal acumen

- Strong negotiation skills

- Ability and willingness to work with people at all levels and different backgrounds

- Available to travel occasionally

- Insane intuitive taking skills

- Willing to step up and take responsibilities other than those mentioned above

Culture: The Josh core team is composed of people who are ambitious and intend to create something that is bigger than themselves. Things that will last forever and will go on to impact and change the world. We have big dreams that are backed by our relentless pursuit to achieve them.

Our Philosophy : All you need is Josh.