Grow with Cleo: Meet our boomerang hire, Jeet

Jeet joined Cleo back in May 2020 as a Product Analyst. He left Cleo for a few months to take on a big opportunity, but decided to come back as an Analytics Engineer earlier this year. (Which was clearly the correct decision 👏)

Here’s how he tells it…

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Why did you choose to join Cleo ?

Funnily enough, I wasn’t going to apply initially as the job advert said Cleo was looking for the best and brightest, which I didn’t think I was*. The product seemed cool, using AI at a time when few in the financial industry were.

Luckily, I did take a chance and apply. During the interview process I met Conor, our now Head of Analytics. I remember finding the interview process challenging, but I also learned a lot from Conor which made me want the role more.

I got a great impression from everyone that I interviewed with. Interviewers came across as switched on, with a great attitude, but the interviews felt relaxed enough for me to show my strengths. I hope now that I’m on the other side of the interviews, I give candidates a similar experience.

‍*Don’t worry, our job postings have more inclusive wording now to stop discouraging people like me 💀

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What was your role?

I was successful in gaining the role, so I joined as a Product Analyst. It was a new role at Cleo, in a new function, which meant I could shape it to what felt right for the company and products, without expectation.

I will admit it was a big transition to go from working in a massive corporate company to a start up. It was my first time experiencing a truly Agile environment. Working iteratively, with tickets, standups, sprints and async updates was new to me, and it took some getting used to.

When I first joined, I worked closely with a product manager and a tech lead on key results tracking for one of our budgeting tools. We experimented with A/B tests and collaborated with the user research to plan future product iterations too.

I also worked on some cool predictive stuff. We experimented with using basic Machine Learning models to try and understand what keeps people using Cleo.

A real highlight from this time was the expansion of the team of Product Analysts, as we grew the team to eight people.  I felt this showed that I was providing value to the company which was great.

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Why did you leave and what brought you back?

I really enjoyed the smaller start up environment and mentoring side of my first role at Cleo. But then I was offered a huge opportunity: a leadership role in analytics.  

The only problem was that it was somewhere else. 

It was a really hard decision. But everyone at Cleo understood the dilemma and really wanted what was best for my career. So I made the move. 

About 6 months into that new role, I ran into Conor (my former manager at Cleo) while at an old colleague’s leaving drinks. We had a chat about how things were going at my new company and how analytics at Cleo was evolving in a big way. 

It all sounded exciting and if I’m honest, the new role wasn’t what I thought it would be like. 

We caught up again after that and realised there was a great alignment between where I wanted to take my career in the future and the current needs of Cleo as a business. 

Re-joining as an Analytics Engineer would help me strengthen my technical skill set and widen the scope of my impact beyond product analytics exclusively. 

As I already had heaps of knowledge about Cleo, I could come in and hit the ground running to help scale the impact of the analytics engineering function quickly. 

I also missed the people I used to work with too. They’re some of the best humans around. 

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How has Cleo changed since you’ve come back?

The company as a whole is growing rapidly. When I joined there were roughly 40 employees, today that number is over 200! I’ve been surprised by how well Cleo has managed to keep the parts that made it special as a smaller startup. 

It’s clear that leadership has done a great job at hiring the right people to create a high performance environment with clear career growth opportunities. You can check out our progression frameworks and performance philosophy for yourself. 

The data function is continuing to expand quickly as well. In my team, we currently have four analytics engineers, with one remaining open hire. That’s a lot of growth for a brand new team in the space of 12 months!

It's been interesting to see the analytics engineering function taking a similar path to the one product analytics did all those years ago. 

It's been clear since I joined for the first time that Cleo is invested in data and making data driven decisions.

Since returning to Cleo I’ve focused on making strides with my technical skills. I’ve been working on DBT, data modelling, CI/CD, and Python scripts.

I’ve also had the opportunity to mentor and upskill others who are interested in these technical areas too which is always a great learning opportunity.

If you’re interested in joining our awesome data team, check out our open roles. 

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