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Meet the Pathfinders
Dylan Caraker recently shifted into his current role at OnBoard after working as a Demand Generation Manager. A three-year veteran with OnBoard, Dylan ranks as one of the more tenured members of the marketing team, as well as one of the most versatile, both in his capabilities and his outside interests.
Meet Dylan
Role: Customer Marketing Manager
Department: Marketing
Tenure: 4 Years
What He Loves About OnBoard
“We have a very unique culture and we maintain a culture of learning and sharing and being open with one another and camaraderie that I haven’t seen before and don’t think I’ll see again.”
“We have a very unique culture and we maintain a culture of learning and sharing and being open with one another and camaraderie that I haven’t seen before and don’t think I’ll see again. It’s really something special that I don’t think is in a lot of places.”
What Prompted You To Make Your Most Recent Job Switch?
I really enjoyed what I was doing and I learned a lot; I just felt more draw to the customer marketing side. Rashmi (Bijai, vice president of marketing) a long time ago when I first started said I had a gift that I was a good marketer and a good communicator. That’s why I went into the partner marketing side. I have an ability to understand both sides of the (marketing) house because of my background. When I was in college, I majored in anthropology and experience design, which could be anything from Cracker Barrell to Disney to marketing. It’s about creating an experience for someone … what makes people tick and what makes them think, so the projects I’ve taken on for customers have been very interesting. It’s a blast to see what customers think about the product and how to make it better.
I’m still doing marketing, so that’s the crux of what it is. It’s about furthering OnBoard and making it the best it can be, whether it be for prospects or customers. It’s just talking to [prospective clients] differently and to a different audience of people.
They all taught me something different. At FlexPAC, I was the only marketer there, so that taught me from a tactical side how to dig in further and show my ROI. I was there a little over two years and they just kind of left me to my own devices and so I ran with it. I learned everything I could about digital marketing. I got started in marketing doing my own thing, and also in a bunch of other positions. I’ve done marketing for every type of industry out there except for software, and now I’m doing that. It gave me an idea of what works and what doesn’t work, becoming a jack-of-all-trades. Having to wear a lot of hats, coming here and being more specialized enables me to take this position and try to take it to the next level.
Ask questions. Don’t feel stupid about asking questions, because everybody’s been there. Marketing’s a tight-knit field. There’s a lot of dissemination between fields. There’s a lot of crossover. Becoming a digital marketer is becoming a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, and then figuring out what you want to be. Ask questions, dig deep, ask why, because there’s always a reason. Research, learn, fail, then learn from it.
You take what you learned in scouting and you apply that and become a better person. It’s all about leadership. You have the opportunity to lead a team, fail, and learn. You have the opportunity to learn what kind of person you want to be. You have these mentors, leaders who have your back. I feel like I try to bring in experiences and try to emulate what I learned from scouting and the people I looked up to and bring that to work.
I like the people. We have a very unique culture and we maintain a culture of learning and sharing and being open with one another and camaraderie that I haven’t seen before and don’t think I’ll see again. It’s really something special that I don’t think is in a lot of places. You don’t want to just go in for a paycheck. You want to love who you’re working for … and I think that’s what OnBoard offers.
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