Welcome to another edition of Meet Team VFA! This week we’re checking in with Connor Schake, the Talent Acquisition Analyst on our incredible Selection team. Connor is the numbers guy behind all things selection, and our resident data guru—if you don’t think it’s possible to find a spreadsheet beautiful, you clearly haven’t seen one of Connor’s. Read on to meet the man behind the formulas.
Name: Connor Schake
Position at VFA: Talent Acquisition Analyst
Department Name: Selection
College or University: Grinnell College
Job before VFA: Data Management Intern at Great Outdoors Colorado
What does your team do and why is it awesome?
It’s good to be a chooser. Selection picks up what the Community Growth team puts down: we channel potential Fellows through five rounds of our multi-tiered application process, from the very first resume to the very last Selection Day. Our work ends in late May and then begins again right away with the next class of Fellows, when we tweak, tinker, and ramp it back up even bigger.
What do you do?
I crunch numbers and connect dots to make sure every candidate gets through the application pipeline—and that we learn enough about them along the way. All those questions on the application form eventually blossom into beautiful data. I help trim the hedges, prune the roses and pick the flowers.
What are you known for at VFA?
My cheap deployment of metaphor. Actually, probably for having hair on the lower half of my face.
How did you come to work at VFA?
I knew about VFA through reputation—you can find my name on a half-complete application from 2013. After cutting my teeth in data management in an internship in Denver while attempting to start a record label, I started itching to combine data and entrepreneurship in an eastern city. VFA came to the rescue.
Favorite part about your role at VFA:
Kicking it with the Team when we travel.
One thing you do every day at VFA that you probably couldn’t do at another job:
Hear from Drake or DJ Khaled on Slack whenever a new candidate applies (it’s just a bot for now, but one day we’ll have that outreach).
Favorite annual VFA event and why:
Still checking boxes, but trampoline dodgeball at SkyZone takes the cake so far.
Favorite Training Camp memory:
Dom dealing ice cream on the quad while I met the 2015 Fellows for the first time. [Ed. note: Dom is one of our amazing #InternsforAmerica—this year marked his third summer helping out at Training Camp. He serves a mean popsicle.]
Coolest thing you’ve done outside of work with VFA team members in the last year:
Not to cop out, but also trampoline dodgeball at SkyZone. Maybe sipping Chardonnay on the Amtrak back from Providence with Team $$$.
What newspapers, websites or blogs do you kick off your day with?
NYT Daily Briefing, TechCrunch, RealClearScience, the Broadsheet, and, ever since Gucci Mane followed us on Twitter [Ed. note: this really happened], HotNewHipHop.
What are you reading and/or watching right now?
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Best tip or life hack for increasing productivity during the work day:
ZestTea. [Ed. note: ZestTea, founded by our very own James Fayal (VFA ’12), makes a line of super-caffeinated premium teas. We can’t get enough at HQ.]