Rachel Powell is our Projects and Marketing Coordinator who very bravely and kindly offered herself up for the latest Meet the Team installment of Homefiniti and Beyond when I posed the question to my colleagues several weeks ago. Among other attributes, she has the distinction of being both the youngest team member and one of 5 people hired during the pandemic so she only knows the ONeil work life as a virtual one! I was very excited and impressed that she volunteered and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to get to know her.
Rachel is a mere 22 years young and is a Baltimore lifer. She attended the same high school that my children currently attend and is a December 2019 graduate of Towson University who majored in marketing. I made the assumption that she came to ONeil via a job posting on Indeed or LinkedIn, but alas, Rachel is not your average 22 year old and skipped the usual job spaces. She was looking in the spring, right when all the recent college graduates with whom she would be competing for the jobs, would also be browsing job boards and applying for positions. Proving to be a creative thinker and a go getter from the get go, she decided to do some research on small local marketing and advertising agencies in the Baltimore area, at which time, she stumbled upon ONeilInteractive.com and became smitten with the idea of working here. Alas, not jobs that fit her description were posted on our site, so instead, continuing with that go getter, creative thinking bent, she found Megan’s email address and reached out. Lo and behold, Megan was, in fact, looking for someone just like Rachel! A couple interviews later, and Rachel became part of our team in mid July.
Right from the start, Rachel has asserted herself in meetings large and small and has handled the work from home atmosphere with ease. She diligently takes on duties on both the web design and development side and the marketing side of ONeil. On an average day, Rachel can be found loading content for new websites, updating content on existing sites, creating and posting social media content on behalf of ONeil and our clients, and absorbing as much as she can as a “fly on the wall” in meetings.
So far, she has nothing but praise for the company, her coworkers, and the job itself. She’s in a great position to learn and absorb as much as possible so she can build a solid foundation for her career. Generally, she feels a pull towards the marketing side but feels fortunate to be able to learn the web design and development portion of the business since the two sides are so complementary to each other. One of the things she loves about working at ONeil is how accessible everyone is. She feels like no matter how big or small her question is, people are happy to take the time to answer her and help her figure something out.
Since she has never been in our office, she’s only heard stories about the before times. So she’s most looking forward to getting to know everyone in person and further developing the relationships she’s begun building. That’s what she said is hardest about virtual work life, building relationships takes much more time and effort when it’s all done through video calls and the office Google Hangouts chat. Though she did appreciate the strength of the memes on the group chat. And she’s dying to see Stacey’s Mayo.
ONeil Interactive’s Giant Vat of Desk Mayo
Rachel has become an essential team member at ONeil in short order and she says that she can also bake a mean banana bread, which if true would cement her role on the team as irreplaceable. 🙂 Plus she’s a dog mom to Louie and team ONeil is big on fur babies. When we closed the Homefiniti and Beyond, Rachel told us she felt like she’s found a diamond of a team, and we can say the feeling is mutual.
