Photographer @ Fun Ecom Co | Great People & Flexible Hours [CLOSED]

- Do you stare longingly at boring subjects because you know you can make them look amazing?

- Are you that friend - you know the one - who photographs every moment and has a curated social media feed with a coordinated color palette?

- Do you thrive in a high-stress environment filled with political infighting, bureaucracy, and corporate nonsense?

If so, then we are the place for you, except you might hate how nice of a company we have - filled with happy, generally competent people that don’t put up with jerks. Frankly, it makes me sick how nice everyone is.

We are remote full time, have very flexible hours, people are judged by their output, not by how much they suck up to the boss, and turnover is super low because the company believes that happy employees = happy customers = happy bank account. Simply disgusting, if you ask me.

--Is this a real job ad?--

Yup! Amazingly enough, we actually paid money to post this on a bunch of different job sites. And it’s not even a pyramid scheme! Plus, get this: the owner just started paying our 80ish employees with money instead of Pizza Hut coupons - we’re big time, people.

Our careers page is actually worth checking out to learn more about how insane we are (sidenote: it won a web design award in 1993 - we’re a pretty big deal):

http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

And check out our reviews on Google, Glassdoor, or Indeed to see that it’s not just the founder’s mother who says we’re cool.

--What do you guys do?--

Our business involves taking random products and then marketing the heck out of them, primarily on Amazon. We have hundreds of SKUs at the moment and are launching around 10-20 new products every single month. A small sampling:

- Bad Parking Cards (https://amz.run/5Eya)

- Cable Tie Mounts (https://amz.run/5EyY)

- K2-D3 Capsules (https://amz.run/5EyZ)

We want to launch as many products as we can. Our business is growing rapidly every year, and it’s our intention to continue that for as long as possible, which means we need good people to help us keep up with the growth.

--What is your company like?--

1. Full Time Remote/Flexible Hours. You will be working from home in your pajamas, on your schedule. And we don’t care if you work 10 hour days 4 days a week or want to catch up on the weekend. So long as you get a lot of work done, we’re happy campers.

2. Complete Work/Life Balance. If you’re routinely working more than 45ish hours, you’re gonna get a friendly talking-to. We want you to be operating at 100% capacity, which means that you need to rest.

3. You Can Be Yourself. You don’t have to put on a fake, professional face. You can just be yourself. You can talk smack to the CEO, and no one will think anything of it.

4. Major Opportunities for Career Growth. We are not trying to just be a small business. We plan to be doing $100 million annually in the next few years. We promote quickly once we identify talent. It doesn’t matter what your credentials are – it matters what you get done.

5. Strongly Anti-BS. Anybody in the company can (and is expected to) tell the CEO when he is wrong. There are no bureaucratic or BS rules getting in the way of getting work done.

6. No Micro-Management. Once you’re trained and have demonstrated you know your stuff, we are pretty hands-off. In fact, if you need external management to stay on-task and motivated, we probably aren’t the place for you.

7. Supportive Environment. We don’t operate via intense stress or unreasonable top-down deadlines. Everyone wants you to be successful – internal politics are at a minimum here.

8. No Toxic People Allowed. We try very hard to screen out mean people before they get in, but in case they slip through, we fire them quickly. Imagine never having to interact with toxic people at work - how nice would that be?

9. We’ll Invest in Your Training. We want you and everyone to get better constantly. You’ll be learning new things all the time, and are strongly encouraged to invest time every day to learn new things, improve your system/work process, and just generally try to make your life easier.

10. Four+ Weeks Vacation. We 100% want you to recharge, so having plenty of time off is absolutely worth it.

11. Self-Funded So We Can Do What’s Right for Us. We don’t have to answer to anyone but ourselves, so we can make the right decision for the long-term health of the company vs trying to get big too fast or cut corners to appease some selfish investor.

--What are your company’s values?--

See here: http://www.jlstradingco.com/careers/

Yes, those are legitimately our values. The careers page is definitely worth checking out - it’s not just normal corporate BS. We promise you’ll learn a lot about us.

--OK, so I’ve read like 8 dang pages about you guys. Will you tell me what the actual job is?--

No.

--Wait... What?--

OK fine.

--So, what will I actually be doing?--

Super short version:

Create images that are so amazing you’d convince even Mother Theresa to buy our Child Chucker.

Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:

- Identify the features/benefits of a product and create a storyboard for shoots through collaboration with creative, copywriting, product development, and product management teams

- Photograph products and lifestyle images in the most interesting way possible with immaculate lighting

- Source props and sets, and hire models (this includes makeup/hair)

- Prep and style products and sets

- Edit photos, including color correction, spot healing, compositing, etc.

- Maintain photography equipment, including props, lighting, etc.

- Manage and maintain digital asset library of all photography

- Create shot lists and shoot schedules while coordinating with other internal teams to maximize speed

- Figure out creative ways to convey what the product is/does in a heartbeat

- Approach each product with an understanding of the market/audience to best tell the story

- Work with inventory and product development teams to photograph re-sourced products as needed

- Keep multiple photo projects going simultaneously without anything falling through the cracks

You’re essentially Don Draper - if Don Draper also shot photos, bought props, hired models, styled sets, spot healed photos, adjusted lighting, gave Peggy acknowledgment, etc. You’re not just going to photograph a lot of products beautifully. You’re going to help us reach out through the screen and touch Karen’s soul, inspiring her to purchase our disposable coffee cups- because she deserves to be happy, dangit.

Like everyone else in the company, you will also need to innovate regularly - which means figuring out ways to improve quality and production speed.

It is challenging, but fun work that’s going to require a lot of time and task management, problem-solving, and a reasonable amount of people skills.

--Do I need experience?--

You don’t necessarily need to have owned your own photography studio or anything like that, but you need to have a decent level of experience in photographing a variety of products and managing shoots. This role is going to require you to wear a lot of hats, so if you have a high level of competency and can learn super, super-fast, we’ll help to fill the gaps. Though, we probably can’t train you to be creative, unfortunately.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You just need to be awesome.

--Do I need my own equipment/studio?--

If you do, that’s a plus, for sure. If not, we’ll set you up with what you need. We have a lot of great gear at our warehouse and are happy to buy additional equipment as needed (though we usually don’t opt for the tippy-top of the quality spectrum - we don’t go for the cheapest stuff either, for what it’s worth).

Here’s the thing, we don’t have a preference for if you’re working out of our Charlotte studio, or from your own set-up in Guam - if you’re the right candidate, we’ll work something out.

--What is the one trait I need to be successful in this role?--

We’ll give you two:

1. Be super coachable - you’ll receive constant feedback that you’ll need to process and react quickly to
2. Know what looks good - it can be hard to articulate what that is, but if you know, you know

--This sounds pretty good, though I’m still skeptical that this isn’t a pyramid scheme.--

Haha - you sound like the tax authorities!

--That doesn’t resolve any of my fears, but what do I need to do to apply?--

Please submit your information on the following page to apply. We promise to respond within 5-10 business days even if our answer is No.

There will be multiple steps in this process, FYI, including a long written application, interviews with potentially a few different people, and paid work test(s). Hiring the right people is really hard and very expensive if we do it poorly, so we have to front-load the process. I'm sorry about that and thank you for sticking with us.

Once you’re in our pipeline though, I would anticipate giving you a final answer within a few weeks, depending on how it goes. We definitely don’t want to string you along, and as long as you do what we ask, we promise to tell you “yes” or “no”, and to not just ghost you (like everybody I match with on Tinder).

Thank you for your time and interest, and I hope we can work together soon!

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JLS Trading Co. provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, JLS Trading Co. complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

JLS Trading Co. expressly prohibits any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. Improper interference with the ability of JLS Trading Co.’s employees to perform their job duties may result in discipline up to and including discharge