Kara Gillette Email & Phone Number

Santa Clara, CA, US

Due to the organic growth and success of the team, I was promoted! And my team is continuing to crush it. I'm doing everything I did before + setting up more ceremonies/systems to keep Ops aligned internally, and with other teams. Additionally, am supporting change projects/strategies in flight across the business.

Santa Clara, CA, US

• Post-pandemic enrollment surge, business needs pivoted and I was tapped for business operations needs. I tackled a totally new set of problems centered on internal systems, processes and enablement. My first project.
• Onboarding and managing a team of program managers that oversee finance, email automation, customer support and launch operations for a Chegg Skills learning product (Thinkful) for 4,000+ D2C and B2B remote learners
• Defining and setting up team operating standards and goals, and socializing them with the greater team
• Collaborating across Project Management, Product, Engineering, Student Services, Instructional Design, Partnerships and India-based Support teams to execute on prioritized org-wide initiatives
• Overseeing and maintaining business applications used across ops teams (CRMs, automation tools, internal systems) to ensure smooth operations (and urgent support, if otherwise)

Santa Clara, CA, US

• Due to the rapid growth of the careers team through the pandemic surge of new students/graduates, I was asked to manage the new careers team, focused on supporting students of our immersive/full-time programs only..
• In April 2021 drove 85 in-field hires (nearly 4 hires/business day) amidst a recovering COVID job market
• Managing team of 15 (5 contractors) and retaining them at a 86% rate
• Exceeded forecasted performance via our data science team, and maintained a CSAT score of 4.7/5 across career coaches
• Ran two pilot programs with external vendors (Placement.com, Impact Group) to experiment with third party coaching support
• Redefined the career coaching playbook and strategy to drive hires from the perspective of a sales pipeline with aggressive month over month hired goals

Santa Clara, CA, US

• In a fast paced, startup environment, it's hard to drive consistent, high performing results without proper onboarding, resources and training. I saw the gaps that existed on my team and pitched a custom role where I.
• Developing an onboarding process for new hires - from first day communications, to a schedule, to Confluence playbook/documentation, to organized meet & greets with key individuals across the team within the first week
• Running 4 "cohorts" of new hire onboarding across 4 weeks (each cohort being 1~2 people)
• Launching a buddy program, and a "coffee hang" to make new hires feel supported, seen, and less alone during an entirely remote onboarding experience
• Updating documentation of all standard operating procedures (SOPs) to be user navigation friendly (from a 80 slide deck to organized pages in Confluence), and written in simpler, clearer language

Santa Clara, CA, US

• Post-acquisitions (x2, first by Thinkful, then by Chegg), we had two careers team merging and centralizing operations. During this time, I supported our Head of Careers in unifying playbooks, policies and curriculum..
• Engaging with a range/mix of outreach tools (LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Slack communities, lead generation support via a vendor, automated email campaigns) to yield as many responses as possible; pushing the limits on.
• Defining and targeting employer personas and contacts that were most likely to hire bootcamp talent
• Proactively tapping/nurturing working alumni network for referrals and introductions to hiring managers
• Organizing contact strategies by building informative reports and dashboards in Salesforce

Santa Clara, CA, US

• Once I got a taste of bootcamp education/EdTech, I wanted more - and decided to take a challenge in the remote learning space. I went back to my career coaching roots, and was a 1-person career center that supported.
• Managing an inbox of inbound requests (with a SLA of 1 business day) coming from students about career curriculum support, tips for job seeking, and advice on navigating networking
• Running career workshops on topics like navigating job fairs, cold outreach 101, and resume development
• Launching an alumni Q&A series where working alumni came back to share insights on the job search, and the working world
• Having weekly 1-1 career coaching sessions with graduates who were in their job search period (up to six months post-graduation); we walked about job search strategies, prepping for interviews, and networking attempts

Boulder, Colorado, US

• After my time with higher ed, I was ready for a new challenge in a fast paced environment. Cue: Joining the tech bootcamp school movement when it was still only 5 years old, and my first sprint in EdTech. At Galvanize.
• Fixing outdated/clunky tooling for managing partnership data; migrated it all into a CRM (Salesforce) and raised the bar for documenting daily activities across the nationwide team
• LinkedIn outreach on the daily, with a 30% response rate yielding 70+ new hiring partnerships, and 140 new companies signing up to the internal job board, "Talent"
• Owning all planning and management of 40 hiring events (via Eventbrite), ensuring full attendance and bringing in 30 industry thought leaders to campus; these events led to graduate hires at places like Dropbox.
• Developing an employer partnership process manual for use at Galvanize campuses across the country, with the aim of upholding consistent outreach standards/protocols

Atlanta, Georgia, US

• After realizing that becoming a therapist wasn't the path for me, I learned that I could get paid to do a thing I loved doing anyway: Coaching people to get jobs. I learned everything about formal career coaching on.
• Developing a 3 step resume development process embedded within students' portfolio class during their final quarters on campus (via classroom workshops & 1-1 sessions)
• Leveraging hiring partnerships to land interviews & jobs for graduates at top local employers like Dolby, Zynga and WB Games
• Launching a quarterly guest speaking series to highlight thought leaders and working alumni as career motivation and networking opportunities for students
• Coaching graduates on their full cycle employment journey from resume/LinkedIn prep, to mock interviewing, to job search strategizing all the way through to full time job placement

• I wanted to spend a year working closely with a therapist, to see if pursuing graduate school beyond undergrad was the right option for me or not. It wasn't - but this job was a valuable immersive learning experience.
• Facilitating client intakes over the phone; inputting and protecting sensitive client information in a proprietary database, upholding HIPAA standards
• Running vendor/claim operations with insurance companies for benefit eligibility, claims and payments for clients (including Tricare, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare, Medi-Cal, AETNA, Cigna, etc.)
• Managing daily and weekly schedules for appointments and archiving, organizing, and cleaning up client documentation

Bethesda, MD, US

• I was on the research team for a pilot grant-funded study that measured whether or not targeted SMS/text based intervention made a difference in keeping recovering substance users from relapsing. The results were.
• Recruiting new research study participants through on-site visits to rehabilitation centers in the LA County
• Gathering and analyzing data from progressive points of the participant's journey through self reporting measures (in SPSS)
• Onboarding, completing follow up/check ins and closing out study participants across rolling 6-month timelines

Bachelor’S Degree, Psychology

Oxford Programme For Undergraduate Studies (Opus), Psychology