Balancing the Art of Culture and Growth

I joined seven months ago as the lead recruiter for Australia and Southeast Asia. I packed up my life in London to join BCGDV and to contribute to the growth of what I view as one of the most exciting companies to work for in corporate venturing.

Those seven months have flown by, but it’s flown by for good reason. Every day I am constantly amazed at what this firm can achieve, and I’m yet to see another company match BCGDV’s ability to invent, build, launch and scale brand new businesses. This kind of business building expertise — and the demand for it — is reflected in how quickly we have grown globally.  We now have almost 400 staff and multiple, awesome Centers and Labs from Sydney to Berlin, London, San Francisco, Manhattan Beach and New York. That’s immense growth, right? In Sydney alone, we have grown from 18 to 84 people in 18 months, and our US hubs had 40 new starters in one just one month!

A question I am often asked when speaking to people all over the world who are looking to join BCGDV is, “What is the impact of this rapid growth on company culture?” It’s a question I love to answer because the answer says so much about who we are and what we are building. Rapid growth is part of our culture because we hire for culture over skillset. Regardless of your location, cohort and role, we see the same characteristics in everyone: entrepreneurial and ambitious mindsets, people who are consultative and methodical in their approaches, a fascination in digital and bleeding-edge technologies and customer-led thinking, the ability to embrace and thrive in ambiguity and a deep, mutual respect for one another.

Here’s a deeper look at the attributes we look for in a potential new DVer:

“Entrepreneurial and ambitious”  We look for people who push boundaries and go above and beyond what’s asked of them to drive their own success. Some of the incredible successes our staff had previously to joining BCGDV from startups they’ve worked in, perhaps founded and scaled, haven’t come without startup ambiguity fought with their ambition to have an amazing impact.

“Consultative and methodical in their approach”

What makes DVers stand out from the crowd is the level of detail and passion that comes through in their approach to working with our global partners on ventures. Whether it be through product design and venture architecture, through to building and launching innovative scalable businesses from scratch, they build partnerships with everyone they work with.  

“A fascination in digital and bleeding-edge technologies”

Across every cohort within BCGDV globally, you can strike up a conversation with anyone about innovation and the future of technology. Within a few seconds, their passion is incredibly infectious. As a recruiter, it’s one of the biggest things I look for when talking with candidates. I am personally very passionate and fascinated with the latest and greatest in digital, so I talk about this with candidates. Naturally, their shared passion for this space oozes out of them through conversation. Before you know it, you’ve learned that this person isn’t just doing a job; they are living a passion and immersing themselves within this space as much as they can through self learning, attending and even speaking at events and meetups and making sure they keep up with new world digital as it happens. It’s an incredible thing to see and someone everyone here at BCGDV wants to work with.

“Customer-led thinking”

We are continuously focused on human-centered design. The incredible level of ethnographic research that our strategic design teams carry out to ensure that the businesses we build are going to be a truly unique, innovative, high-impact asset to the businesses customer is the baseline to all of our ventures.

There you have it. A snapshot of the BCGDV DNA from entry-level hires through to our partners. It’s what makes our business the growing success it is globally since opening our doors in 2014.

If this type of culture resonates with you, take a look at our vacancies here:http://ow.ly/zJpm301lJua

Are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime?