Focusing on People Operations for Innovation and Training

La Converse is a young, independent Francophone media organization from Montreal with a team made up of journalists from traditionally marginalized backgrounds. Founding editor Lela Savić has grown La Converse and invested crucial financial and time resources into both the publication and École Converse, which equips BIPOC youth in Montreal with reporting training.

The Challenge

As La Converse continues to grow, Lela and her team wanted a better system to assess new hires and understand best practices for bringing them into the organization. As La Converse is an organization guided by its values, Lela sought to ensure that she could operationalize those values in the hiring process. She also wanted to grow the organization thoughtfully and adjust La Converse’s revenue strategy as needed to allow for future growth.

The Results

Lela worked with LION coach Ana Mina, whose background in organizational strategy helped Lela think through human resources solutions to benefit both Converse Media and École Converse. Together, they examined the people operations workflows for both organizations and worked through how Lela could optimize La Converse’s current recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and evaluation processes.  

As Lela prepared to recruit a junior journalist into their fellowship program, she worked on several deliverables, including an interview grid, job description, and interview process. Lela also completed a performance review template and a user manual to help onboard leaders at La Converse and help them more quickly understand the organization’s culture and values.

The Wins

• Created a performance review template and leadership user manual
• Overhauled interview process
• Developed new assets to support better hiring practices

“[Ana] was very kind with her time. She would just give us honest feedback on what was working and what wasn’t working.”

– Lela Savić

Have a success story to share about the business side of your news business? Email the LION team at hello@lionpublishers.com!