Thursday 20 September 2012

Join us

We have just crossed one year into existence this August and the journey has been quite enlightening. It started with all the cliché stuff with people highlighting all the ways this was not a bright idea, or at least the flaws in the plan. We’re not still sure if it is a bright one, but I guess we could do without bright as long as we get to read all we want.



We experimented with a lot of stuff and iterated along the way. This has now left us with a basic understanding of what works and what doesn’t and the problems that need to be solved.

The paths that are in front of us right now are in the verticals of marketing, expanding collection, helping people read, financials, design, book recommendations and community creation. All of these claim their own time and effort.

This requires an expansion from the present 5 member team, which bring us to the present recruitments.
We highly value a good team. Passionate people who love books and share our vision of making more and more books accessible to people and hence helping them read more.  More specifically, here are the qualities that we look forward to:

1. Love for reading: This is the glue that gels us together. Improving a service that we use and cherish ourselves is one of the biggest drivers.

it's not something everyone relates to and we need people who do



2. Work ethic: To get books fast to people who want to read, one after the other, day after day greatly challenges your inertia and you need to be fast to react to events. Applying new strategies is time dependent and requires skill as well as swiftness. Hence the importance of completing work (and more) within deadlines.

3. Critical thinking: A good analytical thought process to contribute ideas and challenge those of others.

4.  Leadership / Sense of ownership: This is what saves us the time of supervision. We try to build a team where everyone assumes the ownership of swift functioning and development of bookshelf.



It is very hard to judge one’s work ethic and such on just the basis of interviews, so we will be following a two stage procedure: 

1. Interviews: People will be having one or two rounds of interview for basic introduction and regarding their application forms.

2.Projects: Those who clear the interviews will be drawn into stuff we are doing with bookshelf for a small project or two. This will give them a chance to decide which problems are they interested in working upon and passionate about, if any. It will give us a chance to see if the candidate is a suitable fit or not for our work culture and ideals. The final selections will follow the performances in these projects.

So what can you look forward to working with us: 

1. Books, collections and readers, lots of them
2. Editorial
3. Design
4. Marketing  and publicity
5.Operations

If any point on the above list looks vague I assure you that NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM has been mentioned lightly, you can read the list again. And once you are settled in the team, you can venture on new directions if you want as well.

We prioritise a good team above everything else and will be willing to do as much P&C as needed to get the right mix.

Looking forward to meeting amazing people.

IIIrd year, Industrial Engg.
Loves reading