{"id":4704,"date":"2019-05-30T20:15:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T20:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=4704"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:13","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:13","slug":"finding-the-groove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2019\/05\/30\/finding-the-groove\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Groove"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIF YOU ASK ME, THE DRUMMER IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE BAND.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014Ward Poulos \u201996, co-founder, ZipRecruiter<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WARD POULOS \u201996 still thinks of himself as a drummer first.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been playing since he was a kid. He played in bands, including one that regularly rocked out while practicing on the Ball Theater stage. He thought about majoring in music.<\/p>\n

Even today, based in Santa Monica, California, Poulos has an electric drum set in the house and wishes his daughters would play. He and some of his old bandmates reunite regularly to play and, occasionally, record together.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIf you ask me, the drummer is the heart and soul of the band,\u201d he says, grinning.<\/p>\n

It was practicality that got in the way of his march to musical stardom. Still, he\u2019s managed to make noteworthy contributions through similar collaborations.<\/p>\n

Today, Poulos is the co-founder and chief design officer for ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace with the top-rated job searchapp on iOS and Android.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always the guy playing in the band who went to an office job in the morning,\u201d Poulos says. \u201cI needed to combine creativity with something business focused.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says he\u2019s always been artistic, doodling in the margins of his college notes and simply creating. He thought about designing cars. When the Internet was gaining influence, the philosophy major learned Photoshop and how to build and code websites. It was the kind of creative outlet that could pad a paycheck.<\/p>\n

Soon he discovered a passion for designing software and solving product problems, rather than merely focusing on the visuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found my groove in my late 20s and early 30s in creating web software that really worked well,\u201d he says. \u201cI think about human-centric design principles and the things that make a website work efficiently and solve problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poulos put that valuable skillset to good use with Ian Siegel, Will Redd, and Joe Edmonds in co-founding ZipRecruiter in 2010. With more than 1.8 million businesses and more than 500 million candidate applications serviced to date, he continues to improve on those human-centric design principles daily.<\/p>\n

As the chief design officer, he heads the team that composes what is seen when users interact with ZipRecuiter.com or the app. Poulos leads a team of roughly 30 people whose job it is to solve user-experience issues, some in real time.<\/p>\n

Poulos wants each user to get a more human feel from the app.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s software that engages you on an emotional level,\u201d says the Indianapolis native. \u201cFor today\u2019s generation everything is instant. There is no patience for submitting your r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to a potential employer and waiting a month to hear back. We can connect you instantly with a job that matches via text message. That\u2019s such a personal interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a drummer, Poulos knows there is more to the job than simply keeping time. In the same way he creates space for his fellow musicians to play confidently and freely, Poulos does the same for his co-workers. As co-founder he could have a lofty perch\u2014a third-floor office above the fray in downtown Santa Monica or in satellite offices in Tempe, Arizona, or Tel Aviv. But until recently he didn\u2019t even have an office; he worked in the design group\u2019s bullpen with everyone else. In his mind, he and the rest of the \u201cband\u201d are still building the ZipRecruiter brand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still see what we haven\u2019t done yet,\u201d he says. \u201cI see all the flaws and that\u2019s what I come in every day to fix. I\u2019m literally in the code fixing problems on an hourly basis. If I hear something from one customer, I\u2019ll fix it for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very one-to-one at the end of the day and it has to feel that way to people,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you can\u2019t communicate the human side of it, then you are just software and people will forget about you. I want them to know that there are people on the other side of what they are using.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to put a little bit of empathy into our product for someone who is unemployed or just lost their job. We think about that all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAn Equal Partner at the Table\u201d<\/h3>\n

Whether he\u2019s leading his team in Santa Monica, heading up a session in Arizona, or meeting with top executives, Poulos\u2019 number one asset is his confidence.\u00a0<\/em>WM asked, \u201cWhere did you get that?\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I took from my education at Wabash is thinking of things from a different angle\u2014coming at a problem with a wacky idea to spur some other wacky ideas that eventually come back around to something that works.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving the confidence to do that and not feel like you are going to get laughed at is something I took away from my college experience. My classes at Wabash were an environment where I could be sitting in, say, [Professor] Glen Helman\u2019s house or [Professor] Bill Placher\u2019s house meeting and we could just have a chat. I felt like an equal partner at the table, even though I was a 19-year-old kid. My ideas were valued, and that instills confidence in anybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always carry around this sense of accomplishment and confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIF YOU ASK ME, THE DRUMMER IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE BAND.\u201d \u2014Ward Poulos \u201996, co-founder, ZipRecruiter   WARD POULOS \u201996 still thinks of himself as a drummer first. He\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":4705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-featured-videos"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/05\/2018.08.17_jward-poulos-96-0348-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4709,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4704\/revisions\/4709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}