Massively Parallel Procrastination

Office Manager / Personal Assistant - Small Software Co. in Porter Sq.

Location: Somerville, MA

ABOUT US

We're a small software company located in Somerville, Mass. Our primary
released product is RT (Request Tracker), an opensource issue tracking
system. It's used by thousands of organizations around the world. We
build software and sell support, training, consulting and custom
development. We've been around since fall of 2001 and are entirely
bootstrap funded. Things just keep getting busier.

ABOUT THE JOB

Our beloved office manager is leaving us this summer to pursue a career in
the arts. We're looking for a bright, talented individual to help keep us
organized. It's very important that you be able to keep on top of both
long-term projects and day-to-day details without someone looking over
your shoulder. On the other hand, you need to know when to ask for help
or direction.


You'll report directly to the corporate head honcho. As his assistant,
you'll be responsible for making sure that things get dealt with -
everything from ordering office supplies to making sure contracts get
signed on time to doing payroll.

Day-to-day, you'll be dealing with staff (not all of whom are local or
even in this country), vendors and customers. You need excellent written
and verbal communications skills (for dealing with customers) even if most
of the time you're slumming with the rest of us who aren't so hot with our
capitalization and punctuation.

We're a small company and the boss is typically overextended. He travels
a fair bit and when he's not traveling, his schedule can be fairly
erratic. You should be comfortable working independently, prioritizing
tasks on your own, and juggling tasks & projects. We know that we're not
going to find an office manager who reads minds, but if you can fake it
well enough to make sure that things get done before they become crises,
we'll be thrilled (that means you should be proactive).

You need to be comfortable using a computer running Mac OS X or some
variant of Unix. You should know how to use an email client, a web
browser, a spreadsheet and a word processor. Bonus skill: experience
creating or editing webpages.

You shouldn't be frustrated by computers or computer geeks. Just about
everyone here is a computer geek (though we all have other interests).
You don't need to know how to program in Perl or have a shelf full of
O'Reilly books, but you should know that Perl is a programming language
and that O'Reilly books are the ones with animals on the cover.

About half the time you'll work from a home office that's walking distance
from the Porter Sq. Red Line T stop. The rest of the time, you'll
telecommute. We do just about everything online and on the phone. You
should be comfortable using email and instant messaging systems to
collaborate and get work done.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Below, you'll find a rough breakdown of what the job entails. This
breakdown is over the course of the year, not what you'll have to do every
week. Being a small company, things do shift around and new things will
come up, but this should be a pretty good snapshot.

Financial Management 40%

* Accounts Payables - pay vendor bills
* Accounts Receivables - invoice customers; process incoming payments
* Payroll - pay employees & independent contractors
* Bank account reconciliation
* Maintenance of records
* Travel expense reports
* Tax preparation for accountant

Project Management & Sales 20%

* Keep track of projects and schedules
* Manage relationships with independent contractors
* Answer basic sales inquiries via email and phone
* Ride shotgun over our salesperson

Office Management 10%

* Pick up mail from post office box in Davis Sq.
* Open and organize mail
* Correspondence - email, fax, and letters
* Mail/ship correspondence & packages
* Order office/computer supplies

Event Planning 10%

* Research and select hotels for training sessions around the world
* Coordinate with hotels
* Communicate with attendees
* Invoice attendees, track payments, issue receipts
* Order books
* Assist trainer with travel arrangements

Household Management 5%

* Open and organize mail
* Pay bills
* Invoice tenants, issue receipts
* Purchase of goods

Special Projects 5%

* Research

Other 10%

* Arrange travel
* Deal with things that need dealing with

BENEFITS AND COMPENSATION

Position is full-time.
Salary: $30,000 - $35,000 per year, depending on experience
Health insurance. We're looking into dental.
Flexible hours & some telecommuting.

HOW TO APPLY FOR THE JOB

Please send a cover letter and resume to:

resumes at bestpractical.com

Real people will read your cover letter. We'd love to know a bit about
who you are, where you went to college, where you've worked and what sorts
of things you're interested in, rather than just that you've seen our job
posting and are sure that you'd be a fine match for the position. If you
have a website or blog you'd like to share with us, please send a link.
While we can probably read any resume format you can throw at us, we'd
appreciate it a lot if you can send it as plain text or HTML. If you can't
do that, PDF. If you can't generate a PDF, Word is okay.