We seek a full-time assistant who will perform both personal and secretarial tasks. Our need is immediate. We are financially successful and we offer long-term job stability, a refreshing oasis amid a pandemic of layoffs in corporate America, universities, and the federal government.
1. About Us
Paragon Analytics LLC makes money by processing mass tort legal cases, such as the herbicide Roundup causing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. We primarily pursue case types which are in settlement mode, thus substantially reducing risk. We have developed proprietary, world class AI and data mining techniques to identify prospects who have viable claims, and thus our Customer Acquisition Costs (“CAC”) are $300 per valid case, as compared with $5,250 for a Roundup case or more than $100,000 (!) for a mesothelioma case.
We only undertake case types and cases where it is clear that the defendant/manufacturer has engaged in outrageous conduct, and we seek to obtain as favorable a settlement as possible for our clients. Thus, you will not only be able to earn a good salary but you are also “doing the Lord’s work” in assisting victims of the negligence caused by corporate America.
Our management team includes individuals who have co-founded a successful mass tort law firm (“MTLF”); an attorney who has negotiated the settlement of numerous mass tort case types with settlements substantially in excess of what most law firms achieved; a data scientist who studied statistics and data mining as a graduate student at Harvard University; a medical coding professional with over 20 years of experience; and an information technology professional who has spoken at national conferences and has co-authored a book published by Microsoft Press..
2. Job Responsibilities
Your job responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:
- Very basic housekeeping (we have a professional cleaner come in once a week)
- Running errands
- Making telephone calls
- Complex word processing in Microsoft Word
- Organizing
- Speaking with clients
- Researching various matters on the internet and assembling packets of information on a given topic
- Speaking with, and screening, applicants (in the next two years, we will be hiring more than 100 people)
3. Desired Characteristics
- You should be really smart, as we do not suffer fools gladly.
- Excellent computer skills. We prefer that your experience be in Windows computers, since we are a Windows shop and Macintosh computers are fundamentally different.
- You are a power user of Microsoft Word
- Excellent attention to detail
- High level of intellectual curiosity
- Excellent oral communications skills. You give good phone.
- You are neat and organized. As good cooks say, “Clean up as you go.”
- Transcribing dictation (you do not need to know stenography, we use a cloud based dictation system)
- Outgoing extroverted personality
- Strong desire to learn and to grow
- You have a car in good working order.
- You live reasonably close to Chapel Hill. If your commute is long, the odds you will stay long-term are low (see Section 8).
4. Intellectual Curiosity / Professional Development
We seek to hire individuals with an insatiable intellectual curiosity, people who love learning for learning’s sake, people who are avid readers. Ceteris paribus, people who invest in themselves through systemic professional development will, over time, be more productive than those who don’t, and if an employee is more productive, we’ll pay him or her more and promote them faster. If you’re interested in which blogs our CEO reads, click here.
5. David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” Time Management Methodology
We are devout followers of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (“GTD”) time management and personal productivity system. Using it, our minds are almost always free of worry, and we are totally in the moment, what Allen calls “mind like water” or “in the zone.” If you’re intrigued, we suggest you start with an essay our CEO wrote, and then watch Allen’s talk at Google. After then, we recommend that you purchase the second edition (2015) of his first book, which is called Getting Things Done.
6. Smoking
As a matter of policy, we do hire people who smoke, even if they only smoke after work.
7. Dropbox
Before our first in-person interview, we will want you to read various documents we have prepared. We use Dropbox to distribute these documents because for the applicant, Dropbox Basic (up to 2 gigabytes) is free, it’s brain dead simple, and it’s ubiquitous. If you haven’t ever used Dropbox and you can’t figure out how to install it, realistically we are the wrong company for you, as we do require a certain level of computer sophistication of our employees. We are not interested in other approaches, such as Google Drive, Basecamp, Microsoft OneDrive, Box or whatever), as Dropbox works just fine for us.
8. Long-Term Employees
For several reasons, we seek to hire people who will be long-term employees. First, hiring and training is a pain. Second, we are growing, and we need people who will develop professionally and are capable of being promoted. Third, the devil you know is almost always better than the devil you don’t. Fourth, we simply enjoy having long-term relationships and in particular, we enjoy mentoring and training talented people and watching them grow professionally. Accordingly, we are highly skeptical of job hoppers. See Mark Suster’s essay, Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees.
9. Our Office
Our office is in Chapel Hill, near the Wegman’s supermarket. It’s essential that you have a car in good working order, in part because getting to our office by public transportation is not practical and also because sometimes we will ask you to run errands.
10. Working Virtually
For this position, we are not a fan of working virtually. See Mark Suster’s essay, “The Power of In Person.”
11. Manhattan
In about one year, we will be opening a second office in Manhattan. If your work is satisfactory and you are desirous about moving to Manhattan, then we would pay for your moving expenses and provide a salary increase (since the cost of living in Manhattan is higher than in the Triangle). If you do not wish to move to Manhattan, that is fine, as we will be keeping our Chapel Hill office open forever.
12. When Your Respond
If you are interested, please answer the questions below and email us your responses. Alternatively, you can see the email to write to at https://www.paragonanalytics.ai/careers/personal-assistant-secretary/contact-us/. (Craigslist prevents us from displaying our email in job ads.)
Please include our questions and your answers when you respond, so we know which question you are answering. In the subject line of your email, please include “I have answered all of your questions.” We will respond to everyone who writes to us and answers our questions. Thanks!
13. Questions to Answer
1. Your full name
Contact Information
2. All of your telephone numbers
3. Which telephone number do you prefer?
4. Hours and days in which we can telephone you
5. Your email address
Your Residence / Commuting to Work
6. Where do you live?
7. How far (in terms of travel time) is your residence from Wegman’s supermarket in Chapel Hill?
8. Do you have a car in good working order for your exclusive use?
Resume
9. Please attach your resume or CV.
10. Please provide the URL of your LinkedIn profile. (That means we can cut and paste the link you provide us, and your profile will pop up.)
Your Availability
11. How soon can you start?
12. Do you have any travel plans in the next six months?
Personal Tasks
13. How do feel about performing personal tasks for our CEO?
Manhattan
14. Assuming we pay your moving expenses and provide a salary increase, how do feel about moving to Manhattan? (As noted in Section 11, this is definitely not a requirement, as we will be keeping our Chapel Hill office open forever.)
Compensation Expectations
15. How much per hour are you looking for?