Case Study - Kinetic Commerce

# of Months

# of Hires

Cost per Hire

Total Savings

Overview

Kinetic Commerce is a retail tech and design firm with a mission to help retailers create the most seamless and compelling experiences possible for their customers and store associates. They empower their clients to bring their digital and physical retail experiences together and give retailers a deeper understanding of their customers across their journey and empowers store associates to sell smarter, operate more efficiently and deliver superior service. Kinetic’s business included 3 core pillars — Platform, Solutions and Labs — designed to empower retail agility and drive retail experience transformation from concept to scale. Their product suite included customer apps, store associate apps, virtual associate apps, booking management platform, interactive store displays, connected fitting rooms, Mall apps and more.

GuruLink had previously helped one of Kinetic Commerce’s Co-Founders scale his previous company from early stages up until their exit. When Kinetic raised their first round of funding and needed to scale they called on us again to help build out and execute on their talent strategy. We scaled Kinetic from 15 people when we started to almost 75.

Solution

Kinetic Commerce opted for an On-Demand + Contingency hybrid model. On these models we play the role of an internal talent acquisition specialist as well as engage the entire team across Canada, the US and Mexico to help to deliver on the project. This model typically makes the most sense on larger-scale projects and delivers savings over the cost of hiring an internal resource and using agency partners to supplement when needed.

We worked closely with the 3 Co-Founders and other stakeholders to help build out a hiring plan and heatmap and rank the planned hires as High, Medium, and Low difficulty. From there we planned and budgeted for what hires could likely be done organically and which would likely need external help. We then modelled out a few different scenarios and project engagement models options for the client to choose from.

We had one of our team members embedded in their team with an email address, ATS access, and physically in the office 2 days per week who developed the sourcing strategy, managed all inbound activity (postings, referrals, events, etc.), created job descriptions, worked with the team to iterate and optimize processes, conducted phone and in-person interviews, scheduled and managed the entire process, negotiated and prepared offers.

In addition to scaling the team from 15 to nearly 75 people we helped Kinetic to hire a high-quality internal Recruiter/HR and transition things over to this resource while continuing to help on a contingency basis.

The projected cost per hire in this model was just over $8,700 per hire, and the end result was the cost per hire wound up about 5% below this.

Results

We were to successfully hire 58 people over the course of the 22-month project. The hires spanned VP of Engineering, Full Stack Engineers, DevOps, Mobile (iOS and Android) Engineers, Product Management, UX/UI design, and QA Engineersable to successfully deliver on all 47 hires in a span of just over 6 months.

The projected cost per hire was just over $8,700 and the final cost per hire came in at just over $8,300.

Kinetic saved over $200,000 in comparison to if 50% of those hires had been done via contingency search (their projected number).

Testimonial

“Need to get this from Gary…“

— Gary Fung

“I was very impressed by GuruLink. Gavin and Paige were able to find opportunities that aligned with my personal interests for companies that are at the forefront of new technologies and industries. The process was very quick and guidance was given every step of the way. I would recommend them to anyone looking for a job.” – Jeremy/Candidate

“Having applied to many jobs individually and feeling like I was getting lost in a pile of resumes, GuruLink did the legwork of presenting my skills and experience to the employer for me and helped get me the IT job that I’ve always wanted. They have educated me on the company, prepared me for who I’d be interviewing with, what questions might be asked. They gave me the confidence I needed to go in and rock the interviews, and now the job. In a booming IT job market that can be hard to find valuable and interesting work, GuruLink found the job that’s right for me, at the salary that I wanted.” – Dany/Candidate

“I would like to say thank you Julia and Jibran for the great opportunity that they gave me. As a newcomer to Canada, I wasn’t expecting to get the same job that I have before in my home country. I am unfamiliar with the recruiting process here, and I always hear that we need ‘Canadian Experience’ even if it means taking a job not related to your previous occupation or education. But with the guidance and help of awesome recruiters like Julia and Jibran, I was able to get a job well suited to my qualifications and more than expected compensation. I am very grateful to both of them, and I hope that they can help more newcomers like me to have a great job in Canada and start a new chapter in their lives.” – Marc/Candidate