FAQ: What Outbrain Can Offer You & Your Career

Looking for a new position or career path is never easy. The hi-tech market today is competitive, with candidates contacted often by recruiters claiming they all have a “fantastic opportunity” to explore. It can be hard to know what’s true and what’s not. Most companies are adapting to the new normal and offering more benefits than ever to employees in these uncertain times. After the amazing feedback from our Guide to Landing a Job at Outbrain, we want to highlight how you can grow internally once you join our team at Outbrain. So we rounded up some FAQs about what it’s like to work at Outbrain and what our culture is really like.

Let’s get started! 

Q: What’s changed at Outbrain for employees since the pandemic?

A: Wellbeing and mental health are top priorities for us at Outbrain. As a member of the People and Culture team, I had the opportunity to survey our employees to see what THEY wanted. The data doesn’t lie; our team wanted a hybrid model, so that’s what we gave them. As offices slowly begin to open, we are implementing a hybrid blend of work-from-home and in-office attendance that puts safety and wellbeing at the forefront. For example, Outbrain’s London office has a rotational system where – depending on the department – you can come in on specific days. We implemented a user-friendly online system for reserving a workspace in each office as well. Lunch is provided once a week to employees on the rotational system so no one misses out. In Netanya, our Israel office, we have two ‘capsules’, so two groups of Outbrainers take turns coming in two days a week. In the US, we are still fully remote but we plan to roll out the hybrid model in 2022. 

Q: Having opportunities to grow professionally is very important to me. How does Outbrain support and develop their employees within the business?

A: I love when people ask this question, because we want Outbrainers to stay and grow with us as long as possible! Agathe’s Outbrain journey is a great example; read all about her internal growth path to her current position as Director Global Brands Operations over a ten year career at Outbrain. We have many initiatives in place so as employees, you can  “Expand your Toolbox”,  one of our mantras. Find out more in our culture manifesto here. We also offer an internal learning platform called SmartBrain, where you have access to learnings about different departments within the company. We encourage quarterly check-ins as well as weekly catch-ups with managers where employees have a space to voice their needs/ interests about growing within the company. Our managers are held accountable for promoting growth and giving promotions. 

Q: How do I find out about new opportunities at Outbrain after I join? Is it easy to navigate and apply? 

A: Yes, we take great pride in our transparency internally. For the engineering team, we have a series of internal career fairs, where we invite all of the different dev teams to share current projects, network, and collaborate on new project ideas. We also put a ton of effort into our referral program for the whole company, which encourages employees to bring new, smart, and talented people from their personal and professional networks.  Tomer, one of our Data Ops Engineers, is an example of someone who referred a childhood friend to Outbrain. Read about it here. Applying for a role internally is easy and seamless. We encourage our internal employees to step up and apply for positions before we post them on our external careers page. 

Q: What is your Diversity and Inclusion strategy?

A: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) is a topic we take very seriously at Outbrain. We’ve put many processes in place to achieve our mission: that the makeup of our company should reflect the makeup of the world – and to become leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion in our industry. Some of the initiatives we’ve undertaken include Bias training, which is mandatory across the organization. We have also partnered with a DEI consulting firm. We have an internal employee-created and -run group called Outbrainers For Equality. All are welcome to join and participate in biweekly meetings to discuss how Outbrain can make an impact. The Women’s Empowerment employee resource group is also pivotal to our mission. We dedicate a section of our periodic Employee Survey to diversity and inclusion so we can get real-time feedback from our employees and capture the data for further action. We are proud to say that 47% of our employees are female, which is well over the average in the tech industry. 

Got more questions about Outbrain careers? Don’t hesitate to reach out to jobs@outbrain.com, or take a peek at our latest open positions on our Careers page.