Catchpoint Profile: Looking Back and Looking Forward with Eva Bose-Chatterton

Eva Bose-Chatterton leads global human resources and talent recruitment for Catchpoint, building the company from a handful of employees in 2009 to a worldwide workforce of more than 300. With over 20 years of experience in human resources and talent management, Eva has headed teams at Getty Images, Guardian Life Insurance, and DoubleClick. She holds a BS in industrial and organizational psychology from SUNY Stony Brook and an MS in mental counseling from Long Island University. Eva loves travel and photography and resides in New York with her husband, three kids and their beloved furry friend Cody. 

When did you first meet the co-founders?

I met Mehdi, Drit, Veronica and Scotte over twenty years ago in 1997. We met at a little-known start up at that time called DoubleClick. DoubleClick quickly became one of the largest internet advertising companies in the world. It was one of my earliest jobs and it was the start of the internet boom. The opportunity at DoubleClick was like no other.  I was fortunate to have multiple roles within the HR organization and the ability to travel all over the world. The company provided me with a solid foundation to start my career and a tremendous amount of learning opportunities.

After leaving DoubleClick, I thought I needed a more mature role, and I went on to work at Guardian Life Insurance. It was the best mistake I made in my career because it showed me what I did not want in an opportunity. Guardian was a very structured environment with quite a bit of process and management layers. I was looking instead for a marriage between structure and start-up and that is when I started working at Getty Images. My career took me to many places and great companies after Getty Images and in 2009 I was approached about the Director of HR Role at Catchpoint. I started off as a consultant with Catchpoint. I was pregnant with twins at the time and had a toddler in tow and wanted the chance to have the best of both worlds – raising a family and continuing my career. Back then companies very rarely offered work from home opportunities, but Catchpoint did, and I have always been grateful for that. The team here afforded me the ability to be with my kids without having a gap in my resume.

When I started, we were a handful of people in a very small office in Manhattan. The four co-founders, I think two engineers, and then me. My first hire was someone who was fresh out of college at the time. She wound up staying at Catchpoint for over ten years! We were recruiting off Craig’s List back then. I thought I was just going to put together an Employee Handbook and then leave. And here we are thirteen years later.

What’s unique about Catchpoint culture?

Catchpoint has a clear mission and values, and it is clearly articulated through the organization as well as lived in daily practices within our executive leadership team and our people. We hire based on these core values and its success is shown in the tenure of our employees. Our tenure speaks for itself. The average here is about three and a half years. Whereas the average at a SaaS company of our size is about eighteen months.  

Wins are celebrated at Catchpoint and our leaders are visible and accessible. We have a very flat organizational structure which allows our people to come forward with ideas and proposals without coming up against too much red tape or politics. When you don’t have too many limitations, the possibilities for creativity and innovation are endless.

We invest a lot in our people. Competitive salaries, incredible perks, professional growth, and the opportunity to learn. Two years ago, we made the decision to invest heavily in a learning and development team. We consolidated employee learning, sales enablement, and customer enablement under one umbrella in the People Operations team and hired some of the best. Our sales enablement is constantly at the top of every survey we conduct, and our customer training team is one of the strongest we have ever had providing content for Fortune 100 companies. Our internal onboarding for our new employees goes beyond the basic welcome. It is operational, in making sure that our employees have the right tools and contacts to be successful. It is social, in ensuring that our employees feel welcome and build valuable relationships. And finally, it is strategic, in that our employees get to thoroughly know our organization, the vision, key products and the landscape of the industry we work in.  

How do you look after your people?

First, we are a very transparent organization. We want every employee to feel that they know where they stand and where the company is headed. We do this through biweekly all-hand meetings, semiannual employee satisfaction surveys, annual performance reviews and regular meetings and conversations with our people. COVID has not made this easy, but we have taken this is an opportunity to make sure that we overcommunicate with our employees.

We are continually revising our employee programs, from making sure there are peer to peer opportunities to recognize colleagues for their hard work to providing customized training programs, education reimbursement, and access to LinkedIn Learning for people. We also offer social activities, mental wellness programs, and a healthy PTO policy which is supplemented by sabbaticals, Summer Fridays, a day off for your birthday and First Fridays (employees taking off the afternoon every first Friday of the month).

‍Can we talk about recruitment?

Recruitment at Catchpoint has evolved in my time here. In its infancy, Catchpoint’s recruitment process was very rudimentary – we posted jobs and created mailboxes to collect resumes. For years we had one recruiter (who is still with us after eight years) and now the team is global and approaching ten people. It is the most visible function within the People Operations team and has daily challenges, as do all companies in our space. We are looking for the best of breed and what makes us stand out is exactly what was mentioned before, we are fortunate to work in an environment that promotes innovation by creating opportunities for both learning and growth while having fun. The tenure of our employees speaks for itself and the fact that over one third of Catchpoint is employee referrals is an amazing feat. People love to come to work here and bring their friends and colleagues along and that builds a strong and positive culture which is appealing to prospective candidates.

We have hired over one hundred employees in the last year and what makes that possible is the dedicated team we have on the talent acquisition side who make it their priority every day to introduce people to Catchpoint that embody our core values. Our core values are the common thread that makes our people our number one asset.

What have some of the biggest challenges been as Chief People Officer here?

In many respects I do not view the word challenge as a negative. As we are building and growing, organizational health needs to remain a priority. Creating a progressive talent management strategy is a challenge in the competitive job market we are facing now. We are continuously benchmarking and looking at the competitive landscape to ensure that we offer the right things to attract top talent and engage our existing talent.

We want to deliver an incredible employee experience and that is something that evolves daily and requires planning, execution, and a solid team behind the scenes. I am incredibly proud of the People Operations team at Catchpoint. Our growth, strong tenure, and positive culture would not be possible without this team.

What are your biggest accomplishments on a personal level over the last thirteen years?

Keeping people interested. Keeping people wanting to continue to work for us. The proudest thing I can say, is we have great people that want to stay here. The tenure and low attrition rate speak for themselves.

What do you think the impact will be on the company of the upcoming rebrand?

I am really excited about the possibilities that the rebrand affords us. It will augment our ability to attract great talent in the marketplace, and I look forward to seeing the overall impact of the upcoming rebrand.