Remote Graphic Designer @ Fun Ecom Co [CLOSED]

- Do you enjoy making original designs and seeing them come to life as finished products?

- Do you like working in an environment where you and your skills are appreciated and valued?

- 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 30+ 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:

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

--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 (http://amzn.com/B01HLGZRCQ)

Cable Tie Mounts (http://amzn.com/B06XNBS6TG)

K2-D3 Capsules (http://amzn.com/B07C451MZ9)

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 put your hours in and get your work done, we’re happy.

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.

--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.

--What will I actually be doing?--

Super short version:

We recently started our own in-house Print Shop. For now, we’re focusing on making stickers but eventually we will branch out into other printing categories. You would be responsible for creating a variety of high-quality product designs and using feedback to make revisions as needed to create a top-notch finished product that will make us a lot of money.

Here is a bulleted list of responsibilities:

- Work from a prioritized list of product ideas and make 2-5 designs for our Print Shop team to evaluate

- Work closely with the Print Shop team to create innovative, attractive designs that will appeal to our customers

- Use time management skills to balance creating up to10 designs per week with the feedback and revision process for previously made designs

- Communicate with the Print Shop team on a daily basis to deliver updates on design and revision progress

- Meet with the Print Shop team via Zoom on a regular basis, potentially once per week

- We typically have dedicated photo editors to edit or render our images to launch online, but there may be times when we need you to do some photo editing work

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, high productivity, and a reasonable amount of people skills.

--Do I need experience?--

Having previous experience managing a high-volume design project will definitely help you succeed with us, but is not required. Ideally, you’ve been creating artwork for others to evaluate for long enough to be able to accept and act on specific feedback to improve your designs and make your client happy.

--Do I need a college degree?--

You definitely don’t need to have an art degree. It’s cool if you do, but it’s not a prerequisite. You just need to be awesome and can produce a lot of designs (from simple and boring to detailed and fun) in a reasonable amount of time.

--Can I submit my own product ideas, too?--

Absolutely! The JLS Print Shop is a collaborative team and we appreciate and value your ideas. And, with a goal of launching 10 new designs per week, we will be needing LOTS of ideas.

--Is this a permanent position?--

We understand that everyone has creative differences and that sometimes we’re not a good fit for each other. What we’d like to do is hire you for a guaranteed 3 months (guaranteed, with the exception of not doing your job, of course) to make sure we work well together. If after 3 months it’s not working out, we would part ways.

But if we work well together, we’re happy with your work quality and output, and you are happy with us, we will keep you on a full-time, permanent basis. By full-time, we mean about 40 hours per week.

--Would I ever be working on other projects for the company?--

For now, our Print Shop will be focusing on stickers. But in the future we will likely branch out into other printable products like greeting cards, posters, signs, etc. So you will likely be designing artwork for a variety of niches and products and possibly even for another department within the company.

Also, we typically use a photo editor or renderer to launch our listings, but there is a small possibility you could do some photo editing/rendering work for us. It’s unlikely, but we want to be up front about the possibility.

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

You and the IRS both!

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

Please click apply button and complete the survey there.

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 (a) 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.