My Experience Working at Seer Interactive

What’s it like working at Seer? I’ll tell ya!

People will often ask, “what’s it like working at Seer Interactive?” Whether it’s a family member, an old friend, or even a former coworker wondering if the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence, my answer usually surprises them.

Working at Seer Interactive is not what I expected. I saw the brand messaging on the website and on social media, and the amazing employee perks and bonuses sounded too good to be true, so I thought,

“No way could this be true. This is all pure company-culture brand marketing, right?”

I was hired by Seer as an SEO Associate in March 2019, and in this post, I’ll explain what my first 365 days at Seer have been like. From the perks and benefits to the daily workload, I’ll give you an inside look at what it’s like working at Seer’s Philly office.

Of course, if you’re an eternal skeptic like me and you’d like to do your own due diligence, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn or reach out to Seer on Twitter (@SeerInteractive).

My experience before working at Seer

I’ve seen businesses that love to talk the talk but never even consider walking the walk—ones that brag about their “modern workspaces” and quirky perks, but in reality function more like a factory churning out work than a forward-thinking industry leader.

So after reading all the reviews, blogs, and social media posts I could, I came into Seer extremely optimistic about what could be, but I was also a little skeptical, if I’m being totally honest. Of course, salary transparency and an annual professional budget sounded incredible, but I knew I’d need to investigate on my own to be 100% confident that Seer would live up to my expectations.

My Experience at Seer Interactive

Interviews / Hiring Experience

I could tell Seer was different from my first interview. I was speaking to a real person, not a stuffy suit-and-tie hiring manager or Toby from HR. It was a member of Seer’s People Team, and she really just wanted to get to know me as a person.

She asked about my work and education background and what brought me to apply to Seer, but I wasn’t grilled with formal digital marketing questions. She was able to gauge whether I was a good fit for Seer as a person AND if I was a competent candidate for the position, which put me at ease. After that, I had follow-up interviews with members of the SEO team and from management to further share my expertise and abilities through writing samples, a presentation, and various behavioral situation questions that require critical thinking.

The point is, Seer focuses on hiring people who have the right mindset, attitudes, and values that resonate with Seer, which is a big reason why it’s able to sustain the value-driven company culture you hear about.

Pay / Salary

I won’t get into salary ranges in much detail, but I was very happy with my starting salary at Seer. Seer’s minimum salary for full-time employees is double what my last agency paid. Everyone has their own salary expectations, but I think it’s safe to say that Seer is transparent when it comes to salaries and sharing their profits with their employees.

Workload & Number of Clients

One of the biggest adjustments for me was the workload. In my first year at Seer, I was responsible for supporting 5 accounts. I was responsible for deliverable research, monthly and ad-hoc reporting, client communications (with supervision from Account Managers), and a variety of other project tasks and deliverables.

If I had extra time beyond that, I was expected to work on my professional development (industry blogs, webinars, other learning), an innovation or thought leadership task (exploring new research/analysis methods, presenting new information to the team), or I could support my team members with their work.

At other agencies, the number of clients can overload the internal teams with work, causing a snowball effect on the company. Overworked employees deliver lower-quality work, which means lesser returns for the client, which means more work for the account teams to and higher client turnover, which in turn creates more work for teams. Seer is intentional & data-driven when it comes to client-allocation and monitoring workload. We want our teams to deliver strategic, quality work in a timely fashion and that's near impossible when you're overwhelmed with a high-volume of client to support.

At Seer, your workload is transparent. You have ongoing discussions with management about your workload, and if you’re overloaded, you’re encouraged to voice that with your team and delegate it appropriately. Candidly, the workload could still be overwhelming to folks - especially those who are first starting out at Seer & learning the ropes of doing digital marketing in an agency environment. It may take you 6 hours to complete a deliverable the first time around, when it usually takes 3 hours for a seasoned Associate.

Required Hours

Trust and transparency are pillars of Seer’s values and leadership philosophy. If you’re delivering high-quality work on time and attending all required meetings, we’re going to trust that you’re working - even if you’re not sitting at your desk in the office.

Now I should clarify that a bit. Does Seer track hours? Yes. Does Seer care if you hit 40 hours each week? Sort-of.

I would say your Team Lead cares more about you getting your client work done in a reasonable amount of time, and that if you have extra time, you spend it wisely and offer to support others when you can. Being purposeful with how you spend your time is extra critical when you’re aiming to get promoted. If you’re working towards becoming an SEO Manager, for example, you want to ensure that you are purposefully allocating any additional hours to ensure that you’re levelling up in the areas you need to strengthen to secure that promotion.

Seer is most concerned with the impact of your outputs and less so the hours you’re spending sitting at your desk. If you finish all your account work for that week in 30 hours, you’ll be expected to move on to other work, offer support to other accounts, or work on something productive in that time. But if you go above and beyond for your accounts and knock out a bunch of additional tasks and you’re still only at 38 hours for the week, you’re not going to lose your job. It comes down to common sense and trust. Are you taking advantage of the flexible hours or are you genuinely working hard and making the most of your time? Seer also offers flexibility on when to start and end your workday to optimize your work/life balance. For example, if I had rugby practice at 4 pm, I could come into the office around 7:30 am to be able to leave early.

Management

What is management like at Seer? In a word—supportive.

Seer’s management team is all about encouraging learning and professional growth. It’s not the type of company where there’s one correct way to do things and management simply enforces the procedures.

Seer is a company that looks to encourage creativity, learning, and sharing information with the team. As an Associate, I felt my Team Lead was a real asset to help me grow professionally. We met on a regular basis to talk about my workload, troubles I’m having, and interesting things I was working on. Access to Leadership - No corner offices here! Our Directors are friendly, accessible, and always up for grabbing a beer or coffee

In a nutshell, management at Seer is great. They help you do your job better, not just oversee employees and pressure them to work harder. No closed office doors here - you can expect weekly office hours, coffee with leadership in your first few months, and opportunities to interface directly with Wil, our founder.

Professional Development

As I’ve mentioned before, Seer is all about professional development, and even gives employees a professional development budget to use for anything related to professional development. This includes books, research tools, conferences, or anything you feel you have a good pitch for. In fact, innovation and continued learning are factored into performance reviews across all roles at Seer. In other words, everyone on the team is expected to support their clients, while continuing to level up their skills & evolve with the industry.

This budget is called KAIZEN, and you can read more about it here.

You’re also encouraged to pursue avenues of digital marketing that excite you. Do you like Local SEO? There’s a Local SEO Task Force at Seer you can work with. Have a knack for big data analytics? Join the Data Strategy Team to get more hours allocated to data strategy and innovation!

How I’ve worked cross-divisionally:

Even though I was hired as an SEO Associate, I've loved how closely I’m able to work with other divisions like Paid Search and Analytics. I don’t feel like I’m confined to search strategy at Seer. Because Seer takes a data-first approach, the other teams become tools I can leverage to back up my recommendations and even explore new ideas. A few examples from my first year at Seer include:

Testing keywords that don’t show MSV in keyword tracking tools, using Tactical PPC campaigns to bid on these keywords.
Recommending new page layouts for organic landing pages, using HotJar analyses.
Building a full year (or more) worth of a content strategy from a single Search Discovery Analysis, with help from some of Seer’s Data Strategy wizards.

Work-from-Home Privileges

Another great benefit of working at Seer is the flexible work from home policy. As you probably know, Seer has offices in both Philadelphia and San Diego, with a growing team of remote employees scattered around the country.

For employees at the San Diego or Philly offices, Seer offers a flexible WFH option and even a Desk Share program (working 50% remote; 50% in-office) for those who prefer working from home more often. There are some common-sense guidelines for how much WFH is too much, but generally as long as you’re not abusing the policy and it doesn’t interfere with your work, Seer encourages you to work from home when you need to (which makes visiting your parents and waiting for the plumber significantly less stressful).

PTO, Sick Days, Vacation, Holiday, Bereavement, etc.

Seer offers a variety of PTO, including sick days, vacation days, holidays, and more. There are some light, common-sense policies around taking paid time off for vacations, but as long as you’re not trying to take a 3-month vacation on 2-weeks notice, you shouldn’t have any complaints about paid time off or the vacation policy.

Communication and planning are key to ensuring that these flexible PTO policies are successful at Seer. Since everyone is able to take PTO, it’s important that everyone creates comprehensive out-of-office plans and fill in the gaps for when other team members take their PTO. This helps team members truly unplug during their time off, which keeps everyone excited to pay it forward for other folks.

Other Awesome Perks

Seer is full of awesome perks and benefits that I can’t get to in full depth, so here’s a list of some other things I love about Seer:

Leadership Training - Nearly 40 hours of training taught by our Executive Team
Seer Events - Industry Speakers like Rand Fishkin-- 100% of the proceeds are donated to charity
Monthly Catered Team Lunch - Our team is so busy so, the team lunch is a great opportunity for everyone to come together and share a meal.
Dog Friendly Office - Huge stress relief for pet owners! Plus, have furry friends around the office makes the office feel more lively
12-weeks Paid Parental Leave - We support both moms and dads who are growing their families.

Have other questions? Let me know!

I hope this post gave a good picture of what it’s like to work at Seer Interactive. In short—it’s freakin’ awesome. Not only do I wake up every morning excited to get to work, but I’m noticeably happier and healthier after working at Seer for a year, and I feel lightyears ahead of where I would have been in my career had I not applied.

If there’s anything in particular I didn’t touch on that you’d like to know, let me know on LinkedIn or reach out to Seer on Twitter (@SeerInteractive).