Meet the Team: Zoi Manos
In this Meet the Team interview, we’ll interview our People & Culture Coordinator, Zoi Manos. She’s been with the company since late 2022 and helps keep ForwardAI a fun place to work.
Hey Zoi! Tell us a bit about your background and experience.
I have always been a very transparent and people person, and I was always able to put myself in another’s position and see it from their perspective because there is not only one way to do things in life, and this stands for within the workplace as well. I believe in good communication, respect, honesty, and fairness in the workplace, and that involves everyone in the workplace, titles shouldn’t matter, positions shouldn’t matter, people matter. I have been in Human Resources for about 8 years now in different industries, including retail, hospitality, janitorial, property management, and now here at ForwardAI! I run all aspects of the Human Resources department for our small team in #TeamCanada.
From the moment I start recruiting for a position to the interview process to the hiring process, I always like to make an employee feel at home because, at the end of the day, there shouldn’t be that fear between Human Resources and the employee. You see, multiple individuals have us as the bad person but we aren’t, we never were, and that is always one thing I knew I wanted to change when I got into Human Resources, the way our employees look at us, feel within the workplace and choose whom to go to first when they need something, even if that is a quick chat, all this starts from how the Human Resources professional runs things and make things seem.
ForwardAI seems a very family-orientated company with its employees, how do you contribute to that?
ForwardAI is a very family-orientated company with a more team-member mentality rather than an “employee” mentality. As the first initial contact with our candidates who become part of our team, I try my best to make everyone feel comfortable, at ease, and happy before and after joining our company. Contributing to how one feels is extremely important. We do not believe in micromanaging at ForwardAI because, at the end of the day, employers who do that lose valuable members and we are working with people and sometimes many employers forget that.
At ForwardAI, we all work as a family and are all after the same goal – succeeding, and you cannot succeed with others in your workplace if there is not proper respect, communication, and transparency. I am always there for the team and they know that. I always knew this, but now, in my experience, I stand by this, “Employees come first. Bringing people together. Hiring your people. Helping clients achieve results through their people.”
What do you look for when hiring, and how do you feel that ForwardAI is growing?
I trust my instinct when I am hiring for a position and have started the recruitment process. I first look at how one communicates, how one acts, and overall, their attitude. I judge how this candidate can potentially join our team and how they can succeed within our company because I agree with our impeccable Director of Operations and Marketing, Jane Ingram, when she says, “Skills and experience can be learned and earned, but a good attitude makes you practically indispensable and is much more challenging to teach if it’s not there naturally.”
ForwardAI is a start-up, a fully remote company; we have teams in Canada and India, and we are growing on a daily, and I am more than happy to be the one to bring on valuable team members to assist in this process. It’s a great feeling to watch all the candidates you once interviewed become valuable and key members of our company’s success. We are looking forward to what the future is going to bring us!
