Eight Questions: Stephanie Mardell, Head of People

Welcome to Eight Questions, where we profile individual members of the Anchorage Digital team, diving into their career paths, what brought them to crypto, and what makes them tick. Why eight? Because it’s the number of decimal places a bitcoin can be divided into. It’s also the last single digit number in a Fibonacci Sequence, and we like that.

Next in our series, meet Stephanie Mardell, who recently joined Anchorage Digital to bring talented new hires to our company. Prior to Anchorage, Stephanie led people operations and recruitment at Button and Square. Only two months in and making an impact on our day to day experience as Anchorage employees and streamlining our recruiting processes, Stephanie is a welcoming and energetic force at Anchorage.

1. You’ve focused on hiring talent for over a decade. In that time, what have been some of your biggest takeaways?

I started my career on the talent acquisition side, which taught me to always anticipate the needs of the candidates and employees I work with to better accommodate them. I value providing every candidate with a memorable, positive experience, whether they get hired or not. Switching careers is a big deal and supporting the candidate with the small things like sending interview prep suggestions, a good luck note, or a gift bag all matter in a big way when it comes to hiring.

Another thing I’ve learned is that hiring is only the beginning, or one small part, of the talent journey. Organizations spend a lot of money on the recruiting process, but it’s retaining talent that matters even more. Talent retention should be a daily practice for a successful growing company like it is at Anchorage Digital. I’ve learned that the companies most successful at retaining talent invest in their employees by building growth and development opportunities, and maintain a strong sense of community as they scale.

2. What’s it been like hiring and onboarding new team members remotely?

Hiring and onboarding remotely has presented a new set of challenges and opportunities, and I believe it has forced organizations to become more innovative and adaptable.

We’ve been able to adjust hiring by adding little personalized touches to our candidate experience and have recently launched BambooHR to automate and scale our onboarding process. As someone who recently went through remote onboarding myself, I really missed the energy of walking into the office on my first day. The hallway greetings and getting that first coffee with a colleague aren’t right in front of you to experience remotely, so we have to be creative about making these moments happen for new employees. This change is an opportunity to create a helpful and connected experience in both hiring and onboarding.

3. What’s a top skill you look for in candidates, regardless of their department or job role? How has the pandemic shifted this?

Resilience — hands down. Resiliency is all about how someone handles difficult situations and balances ongoing responsibilities with unexpected needs. We’ve all had to build resiliency over this over the past year being thrown into working from home. Sustained resiliency, though, being effective at it takes practice over time.

With Anchorage being my fourth startup, I’ve certainly seen that people who believe resilience is a skill you can practice tend to have a more positive approach to work and life. They’re able to adapt quickly, are more motivated, and better equipped to solve tough problems.

4. Speaking of solving tough problems, tell us about a challenge you’ve solved while scaling teams in the past.

As teams scale, communication can break down, both within teams and between them. At Button, one of the problems I tackled was how to communicate around work that needs to get done. “How do we create best-practices as a team that will help us both from a philosophical and practical perspective?” We developed training programs that helped our team discover their own communication styles so they could better communicate with others. These programs fostered empathy and understanding across teams which led to better communication overall. We also trained employees and managers alike on practicing a growth mindset which includes becoming comfortable with giving and receiving feedback.

5. What was your experience with crypto before joining the team?

I remember the first time I heard about bitcoin was from an engineer I was working with at Square, back in 2012. She was so excited in explaining what she’d read and how it could change the world. Throughout my career, I’ve always been drawn to work at emerging technologies companies who were early adopters, so when this role came up, it was an easy decision. How many times do you get a chance to work on something that changes the world as we know it like the internet, or smartphones? When was the last time that happened? It’s happening now with crypto.

6. We hear you’ve been planning a wedding for this summer. What’s been unexpected about planning during a pandemic? Any tips you can share with others?

Whenever you’re taking a big life step like getting married, you get a lot of advice from others on how to do it right. Lots of people told my fiance and I to stick to a checklist, stay on a timeline. And for the most part, we have! It’s honestly been very stress-free and fun for us.

Over the past year, we’ve had the general ups and downs caused by the pandemic — we didn’t think we’d have a wedding, then we thought it’d be delayed, then we thought it’d be really small, and only our closest family and friends. The pandemic actually helped us focus on the most important things and skip the details that didn’t really matter. My tip is to boil it down to what you really value, no one will remember the napkin color or what chairs you rented, personally, I’ll remember the food, spending time with each other, and the commitment itself.

7. What are the hardest roles to fill as head of people?

Hiring for every role is a challenge because each person you hire changes the chemistry of the entire group. Ideally, they change it for the better. It’s important to think about skills, knowledge, attributes, experience, as well as what the existing team values in working together. Before posting a job, I talk to the hiring manager and the broader team needing new members and ask them what it is they like about working together to make sure the new person fits the team dynamics. A candidate could have great skills, but if they aren’t aligned on values, it may not work out.

8. How do you describe Anchorage’s culture to potential candidates? Personally, how has it been for you?

I would describe the culture as determined, curious, and team-oriented. We have assembled a talented team with a wide variety of backgrounds determined to change the financial industry and advance crypto. Everyone is curious about the how and the why — which leads to us learning more about each other, the business, and the best solutions to the problems we’re solving. Lastly, there is a strong sense of team, more so than any other company I’ve worked at. We’re in this together — building, learning, and growing this business as a village. What sets Anchorage apart from many other companies is the mindset — we’re all looking out for each other, not just ourselves — we’re here to win together.

Interested in working with Stephanie on recruitment or looking for a role? Anchorage is hiring for a variety of roles, check our job opportunities here.