Jason Jones is a collaborator, tireless worker, and employment marketer who carved his own path with a little help from his friends. Today he serves as the Global Employer Brand Lead at Boston technology leader Klaviyo.
He grew up locally with two siblings, each of which are 12 years apart from one another across a generation. Jason’s mom is a lifelong educator and his dad worked all his life from a young age. He was a custodian who took a break to serve our nation in the Korean War. If there was a problem, he could find a solution. Hard work was ingrained in the Jones family. Jason attended school in Belmont through the city’s METCO program, always in transit throughout his childhood with a lot of time to think creatively.
Growing up alongside the growth of the internet, he flexed his creative passions early and often. He would tweak custom HTML templates on his MySpace page to make it stand out. These were the good old days of the web, people!
He had a passion for knowledge and a thirst to understand how things worked. Aspiring to be a photographer, Jason saved up to buy a Canon XT DSLR camera. He would take pictures at parties and worked for the school newspaper at UMass Dartmouth, where he studied Marketing. He loves to snowboard and golf, living life outside of his comfort zone.
Graduating at the tail end of the Great Recession, Jason began his career as a personal banker for Bank of America in order to help pay off his student loans. Working in a lower income neighborhood, it was an eye opening experience to get yelled at by angry customers as a fresh grad.
When his friend reached out about joining outsourced recruiting company RPO as a candidate sourcer, he was all in. Fortune 500 brands like AllState Insurance and General Motors used the outsourcing firm to handle their entire recruitment process and Jason began as a sourcer. He would use boolean logic to find passive candidates across the web and pass qualified leads to his recruiter liaisons for candidate outreach. One client had some additional budget for him to experiment with on an early version of a talent community. He dove in. Jason leveraged candidate data from their CRM with CareerBuilder to design campaigns for prospective candidates and drive engagement as they were considering new opportunities.
Next, he had the opportunity to go in-house as a contractor for Intralinks, a data storage firm. He helped them brainstorm how to stand out in a crowded candidate market and began working on projects like prototyping visual job descriptions.
After working at Intralinks, Jason knew he wanted to stay in the tech industry. While exploring companies in Boston on a career platform called VentureFizz, Jason was drawn to LogMeIn by their engaging culture video, and it was LogMeIn that kick-started his career in tech. They gave him the opportunity to come on full time and he joined as a sourcer before becoming a Technical Recruiter. He discovered Recruitment Marketing, where dedicated teams helped market an employer’s culture, people, and recruiting processes. It was the perfect combination of Jason’s recruiting skills and his passion for marketing. He took photos at company events and passed them to their social media team to share LogMeIn’s cultural experience on social media.
Jason’s hard work shone through. With a better business case and a lot of evidence to show the value, he took on LogMeIn’s first Employer Branding role. Over 2+ years he spun up employee referral contests and experimented with unique ways to advertise new roles around the city. He produced a culture video between their Dublin & Boston offices and did some wacky & fun photo shoots too. Jason even compiled referral family trees to track the source of the company’s growth. Not as easy of a feat as it sounds for anyone who’s worked with recruiting data!
Just down the road, late stage sports & entertainment leader DraftKings was positioning itself for major growth ahead of their U.S. sportsbook approval. Jason came onboard to help them reshape the perception of the daily fantasy company with prospective candidates as a data & analytics leader as their first employer brand resource.
Through paid campaigns on LinkedIn, Google, Reddit, and even local elevator banks of competitor employers Jason helped the team build their brand. He led the launch of the DraftKings podcast to better attract talent & spread awareness beyond their social media footprints. Their team tackled misconceptions about the company and further opened their cultural doors. The podcast lives on today! Through it all Jason continued to teach himself new tools like PhotoShop & Premiere and tap subject matter experts to enhance his knowledge.
Next he moved to New York to join Templafy and then Refine Labs, fulfilling a lifelong dream of living in the Big Apple. From a timing perspective it helped to get away from some distractions life had thrown his way. There was no better way to switch things up than during a global pandemic! Ultimately he returned to Boston to be closer to his family after the passing of his father.
Landing back in the Bay State he was recruited to join Hitachi to help them with their campus recruiting & recruitment branding efforts. When a former connection he knew from his DraftKings days reached out, they told Jason about a new employer brand opportunity they were recruiting for at Klaviyo, it sounded like another “can’t miss” opportunity. The company was growing rapidly and he had nothing to lose! They went public his second week! It’s been a rocket ship ever since.
Jason is responsible for creating and driving awareness of the company to fill the top of the funnel for open roles. He does this through events, conferences, and partnerships with organizations who can help make unique and talented candidates better aware of Klaviyo. He travels a fair amount, spreading the word at conferences throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Jason has helped drive awareness through public relations & positioning the company for awards opportunities with top organizations like the BBJ, Inc., FastCo, and Great Places to Work.
In his spare time he has been experimenting with Generative AI tools to make his life easier and improve his writing, Canva AI for video editing, and Jason is responsible for a host of other initiatives with the goal of ensuring Klaviyo is a top global employer of choice.
Building Community
Jason is adamant that he wouldn’t be where he is today professionally without the help of his community, an army of current and former colleagues.
Whether running into roadblocks or just having the ability to execute in a cross functionally focused role, working in Employer Brand is all about collaboration. Building relationships with other teams to get the website or career site updated, getting content posted to social media, or anything in between has been all about cultivating a community to “get stuff done”. You cannot employ your brand or do your job if you do not have the collaboration of your teammates.
Jason focuses on being visible, being a good listener, and remembering personal anecdotes. Listening goes a long way and people appreciate being heard. We live in a competitive world so anytime someone gives you an ounce of energy, he’s sure to show his appreciation.
Last, as your community expands, make sure you’re giving advice or help to junior level talent who are sitting in the seats you once sat in. Pull people up to drive your organization forward!
3 Career Insights / Learnings
Perception is Reality – “Stakeholder management is important to progress in your career. I assumed my boss doesn’t know what I’m working on even if we talk everyday. I send a weekly email recapping what I’m working on and where she can help. When working on a project, I make a habit of sending slack updates even if I don’t have an update. As long as my partners know I’m on it, it’s one less worry for them”
Say Thank You and Mean It – “My job can’t work without the collaboration of many. I’m always giving people a sincere thank you to show my appreciation for their time and energy. When someone feels appreciated, they are willing to go the extra mile for you when you need a future favor”
Keep Evolving – “In order to stay competitive and marketable, we need to keep evolving. Evolve our thinking on a topic or evolve our talents and skill sets. The evolution of technology is getting faster and faster and we cannot hold on to outdated concepts, ideas, and ways of working because they are comfortable to us”
Eventually, Jason would like to transition into a strategy type of role using data to solve business problems and drive strategic outcomes. Or perhaps he might start his own business one day using the tools he’s learned throughout his career.
If you want to learn more about Jason you can find him on the links in the summer, slopes in the winter, busy traveling for conferences throughout the year, or on LinkedIn. Thanks for sharing. We’re excited to see the work you do to highlight & promote Klaviyo far and wide in the coming years!