In this new series, we’re pulling back the curtain so you can meet the people who make InVision not only the world’s leading prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform, but a fantastic place to work. (Psssst… we’re hiring!)
First up: Beth Vanderkolk, InVision’s Documentation Content Specialist.
How long have you been at InVision?
Since July of 2014—just over 2 years now. I was somewhere around the 40th employee, and now we’re over 220.
When I first came on, there wasn’t a Help Center or FAQ page, so it was my job to comb through our existing content, polish what we had, and create everything that was missing. I helped with support tickets for a while, which really helped me pinpoint where customers get confused. We’ve come a long way since then, and we’re currently working on launching a new Help Center in a few months that will be more thorough and useful than ever.
What’s the best thing, the most challenging thing, and the most boring thing about your job?
It’s my job to create content for the InVision Help Center and make sure the instructions and images are up to date after we roll out new features and enhancements. On a daily basis, I’m working on new content for upcoming launches.
My job is cool because it ensures that I know how every feature on the site works well enough to create detailed content about it and step-by-step instructions. Thankfully, we also have an incredibly smart support team, and they have technical knowledge I can tap into when need be.
“Your job shouldn’t get in the way of your life.”
The most challenging part of my job is keeping up with InVision’s pace! And the most boring part of my job is performing endless keyword searches to identify content that needs to be updated.
How does your team communicate?
I’m on the Product Education team. My teammates (located in Florida and Oregon) and I chat on Slack all day, but we occasionally throw in some Google Hangouts. We also use a combination of JIRA and Trello to keep track of projects. We keep talking about meeting up for a week, so hopefully we can arrange that.
What’s your favorite InVision Slack channel?
It’s a toss-up between InVision-Pets and Austin-InVisioners. I’m a sucker for cute videos and pictures of pups, and I don’t feel as remote when I’m keeping in touch and making plans with my Austin coworkers.
Some readers may not know this, but everyone at InVision works remotely. So how did you adjust to working remotely? Was it tough in the beginning?
I worked remotely for a short time in a previous job, so I knew what was coming. I’m a really social person, so I basically just upped my game when it came to meeting friends for lunches and after-work plans. About a year into working at InVision, I had a baby—my first, named Reed—so it’s been really cool to be home during his first year, with the help of a nanny during work hours, of course.
Where do you typically work? How do you keep your work and home separated?
Up until we had Reed, I had free reign of the whole house during work, so I moved around a lot. Now that I’m sharing my workspace with my son and his nanny, I’m usually working from a table in our guest room or in the master bedroom—that way we each have our own respective areas. In an ideal world, we’d have a separate studio behind the house to use as an office, but that hasn’t happened quite yet.
How do you stay focused throughout the day?
Is it cliche to say coffee? Coffee, and taking breaks. Having a one year old toddling into the room to say hi every so often provides great little breaks, which are helpful for me. Being on Slack and in touch about what’s going on with my team also helps me stay focused.
You have an amazing company on the side. Tell us about that and how it came to be.
I’ve always been really interested in interior design and textiles. So when my husband and I spent part of our honeymoon in Istanbul, I was completely enamored by the vintage Turkish kilim rugs and pillow covers. I started importing a curated selection and opened an online shop called Vander Interiors.
It led to a few freelance interior design jobs, which was really fun. I’d love to keep every single rug and pillow for my own house, but I’m settling for sharing my finds with others.
A photo posted by Vander Interiors (@vanderinteriors) on
Want to join the InVision team? We’re hiring!
