Paperless Parts is the leading secure, ITAR compliant, cloud-based sales and quoting platform revolutionizing manufacturing.
We connected with Elana Silver, VP of People at Paperless Parts, to learn about her background, her responsibilities, what drew her to Paperless Parts, and more.
In this video, Elana answers.
- Who is Paperless Parts?
- Her Role and Responsibilities
- Elana’s Background & Path to Paperless Parts
- The latest at Paperless Parts
- Why now is a great time to join Paperless Parts
Video Transcript
My name is Elana Silver and I am the VP of people at Paperless Parts.
I oversee everything HR related. So for folks who are familiar with what that means, it’s things like performance reviews and compensation and hiring and training and all of that stuff. But really the way I think of my job is, I’m the one who’s responsible for really thinking about what people need to be happy and be able to do their best work. Because that is really what’s going to make us successful at the end of the day.
One challenge, like with so many jobs, is we’re a relatively small and growing company. And that means wearing a lot of hats. So I’ve got my hands in a lot of different things, just keeping everything moving and jumping from one thing to the next. It’s part of what makes the job really fun, and also can be a challenge at times. Another thing that can be a challenge is, part of the reason I got into the people space or the HR space is I would often see in my previous jobs that there could be a bit of a disconnect between leadership and the rest of the people in an organization. So one of the challenges that I am constantly kind of, constantly have my finger on is really trying to translate between what employees really need and want and what leadership is trying to communicate, which often times is a lot more aligned than you might think. But I kind of see my role in a big way as helping to close that gap wherever it exists. We’re really fortunate as a company where I think we have a leadership team that very much kind of has the pulse of employees and is very close to all of our employees and understands what they need and what they want to a large extent. But there’s still a little bit of that, you know, kind of playing that translator role and making sure that people are getting what they need.
So way back when, I studied mechanical engineering in college. I worked at an aerospace engineering company working on things like missiles and satellites. The reason I mentioned that is because Paperless Parts makes software for the manufacturing industry. I had a bit of a journey in between and I’ll get to that, but it’s one of the things that’s been awesome about working at Paperless Parts is that that engineering world has kind of come full circle for me. But basically in between I went from engineering to working in management consulting. And then from management consulting, that’s where I was kind of seeing like, wow, a lot of the challenges that I’m helping my clients solve seem to all lead back to some sort of people issue. And that’s what I became really passionate about, really helping to solve some of those problems and making people happier, more satisfied, better able to do their jobs.
So, like I mentioned before, I think we have a really fantastic leadership team. We have a really fantastic culture. When I first joined the organization, I met individually with every single person. And everybody told me how the people and culture are some of the things that are their favorite about working at Paperless Parts. I said, “I come to work and I’m with my friends.” So that’s really what our culture is like. Another huge thing for us is that our product, the software that we make for the manufacturing industry, it’s really helping real people solve real problems. We hear things from our customers like, “Oh, because of you, I’m able to go on a vacation for the first time in 20 years,” or “Because of you, I’m able to sit down with my family every night for dinner,” because we’re giving them a modern, streamlined solution for something that they were having to do on their nights and weekends for years and years. And that’s a huge impact and that’s something that we love to hear, we love to see. And our employees just love the fact that what they’re doing really makes a difference and really matters. Another great thing for us too is, we’re a small company, we’re scaling up and we’re really in that sweet spot where we have that great startup energy, but we do have a good solid foundation in place. That’s another thing that I heard from folks when I first joined. I was talking to everybody that they feel like it’s a really solid environment. It doesn’t feel overly chaotic, but we still have that fun energy going for us.
