Case Study - Drop Loyalty

Overview

Drop is a rewards platform on a mission to inspire people to live their optimal lives by empowering them financially.

Powered by machine learning, Drop matches their 7+ Million consumers with over 500+ partner brands to satisfy two main goals: to earn points from their purchases and redeem them for instant rewards.

Headquartered in Toronto, with an office in New York, Drop is backed by world-class investors including NEA, HOF, Royal Bank of Canada, Sierra Ventures, and White Star Capital with current capital raised between $56.2M and $71M.

The responsibilities for Drop’s recruitment were tasked to the Chief of Staff but due to substantial company growth, this task became too much for one person to tackle on their own. GuruLink was engaged for a 3-month renewable contract at 20 hrs/week to help address the backlog of internal applicants for engineering.

One month into the engagement between Drop and GuruLink, the Chief of Staff for Drop left for another opportunity. GuruLink was then given the responsibility of managing all recruitment-related tasks for Drop on an interim basis. GuruLink was contracted for 40 hrs/week, and eventually that increased to 80 hrs/week (2 resources) in order to handle all internal recruitment operations for the company. The engagement was extended multiple times and wound up running for a total of 10 months.

Challenges & Requirements

• Drop was losing top professionals to other companies at a rate of 1-4 employees per month (including 4 Directors and Managers responsible for staffing in their departments)
• Backlog of internal applicants (approximately 250-500 applicants per role for 10-15 positions at the start of the engagement
• Company requirement for current projects to Hire 3-5 employees every month for 2021
• The company lacked internal knowledge of recruitment tools, process automation and use of ATS (Lever)
• Convoluted and lengthy internal recruitment/interview processes between departments
• No internal recruitment team

Solution

• First 30 days address the backlog issue of past applications to Drop for 10-15 positions
• 30-60 days for internal review of all hiring teams and hiring process for Engineering, Marketing, Design and Sales teams
• During the 30-60 day review period also update Drop’s ATS feature use, leverage automation, and improve accessibility & scalability
• Created process/framework for revisiting top candidates and previous finalists
• Developed a new process for managing team-wide sourcing efforts eliminating double data entry
• Develop and implement new internal recruitment processes and interview processes
• Education of the current hiring processes and market value for professionals to Hiring Manager and Founders through weekly and monthly meetings
• Develop onboarding content and processes for the future recruitment team

Results

• 31 out of 65 hires staffed by RPO directly, with ⅓ of these being Managers or Director level, 3 Agency hires through GuruLink at reduced placement rates for Engineering
• Streamlined internal interview process reducing the average number of interviews to hire from 5+ to 3+ and reduced total interview processing time by 10-14 business days on average per role
• Increased speed and efficiency of the ATS to reduce response rate by applicants by 3-5 business days
• Created internal templates and ATS automation for scheduling, tracking interview processes and candidate pipelines
• Developed targeted candidate outreach and follow up campaign templates
• Developed training templates for future recruitment and department hires
• Drop is now 125+ employee company and set up for continued future growth
• They have an internal recruitment team that is set up for continued success with established hiring practices and process
• An updated and responsive ATS system for optimized scheduling and pipeline management