Meet The Team Series: Jim

Jim started with us early in 2020, and has immediately become a really important member of our SEO team.

Meet Jim

So, when you did you officially join the Optimising team?

My first day at Optimising was January 20.

What's your job title and what kind of work do you do?

I'm an SEO Specialist.

This means I try to get more relevant visitors, prospects, or customers visiting your website through search engines.

I need to analyse your website, understand your business, look at your competition, and try to understand the mindset of a searcher trying to find what they need.

For some bigger ecommerce sites I might need to prioritise technical fixes in order for search engines to better crawl, index, and understand your site. For others I might look at how we can make the pages more engaging, useful, or relevant to satisfy the searcher's intent better than the incumbent pages. It's a very interesting job that requires a lot of analysis, problem solving, and attention to detail.

What was your first impression of Optimising when you first started?

It was a good first impression; very welcoming. I like it that we have a mixture of people with different ages, backgrounds, and skill sets. Some people in IT and SEO can be quite shy and introverted, but we have a good mix of personalities in the office. The snack cupboard is top notch, too... that can be very dangerous!

Share one positive result/outcome that has come from working remotely?

The first would be the ability to sleep in a bit more and not have to commute. It's nice to spend lunchtime with my family and interact with them a little more. Work-wise, it's been great as an open plan office is not always the best place for "deep thought"- style work. It can be hard to really focus on a particular task in a busy office.

By collaborating purely online through tools like zoom, slack, or notion, you tend to still communicate, perhaps even more, than if you were in the office. Overall, I've found it a largely positive experience.

What have been the main challenges as a new employee during COVID-19? How have you learned to overcome them?

I was lucky enough to have a couple of months in the office to settle in, before Covid-19 really impacted my work set up. I've had regular catch-ups with the other SEO specialists through slack or zoom to brainstorm and problem solve, so it's been good to build stronger relationships through tackling a common problem.

What's your favourite thing to do outside of work hours?

Besides spending time with my young family, reading a good book, and watching sport, in my free time I like to learn new things. I'll often watch instructional videos or do online courses on subjects that interest me (or that can complement my SEO skills). Lately I've been enjoying watching videos and learning about the JAMStack - new ways of building websites with JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, designed to make websites faster, more secure, and use less resources.

It might sound absurd to some, but I do enjoy spending hours learning about a new or interesting topic.

Name the last movie/show you saw - and how would you rate it?

Recently I saw 'The Hunt'. It's a dark humour horror film. I had very low expectations going in, but was pleasantly surprised. It might be too violent for some, but I enjoyed the satire and the subtle pokes at social commentary. A solid 5/7.