Overview

Sama AI is a company that provides artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions for various industries, including healthcare, finance, retail, and more. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Sama AI’s primary product is its platform, SamaHub, which leverages advanced algorithms and automation to help organizations achieve their AI and machine learning goals. SamaHub offers a range of services, including data preparation, annotation, and quality assurance, to help organizations improve their data accuracy and enhance their predictive models.

Sama AI’s mission is to democratize AI and make it accessible to organizations of all sizes and industries. To achieve this goal, the company employs a unique approach called “impact sourcing,” which involves training and employing people from disadvantaged communities to do the data labeling and other tasks required for machine learning.

Sama AI is an AI and machine learning company that provides a platform for organizations to improve their data accuracy and predictive models. The company’s unique approach to impact sourcing also helps to democratize AI and provide opportunities for people from disadvantaged communities.

Sama AI engaged GuruLink to help with the growth of their technical team. While Sama AI had a recruitment team in place, they needed a solution to help other TA team members focus on other critical areas of the business such as Machine Learning and Backend Engineering. GuruLink was engaged to help continue the growth of their Frontend Team.

Challenges & Requirements

Sama AI was experiencing growth and wanted to engage GuruLink to focus on frontend engineering (FE) so that their other talent acquisition (TA) teams could focus on non-technical roles such as sales, machine learning, and backend engineering. The company had a pre-existing FE team that the engineering manager was mandated to grow based on the funding they had received. Sama AI had a TA team in place but was still figuring out exactly what was required for the FE team.

We had successfully working with Sama on a Contingency engagement model for well over a year. When GuruLink joined in an On-Demand capacity we helped with the hiring process for the FE team, which had a lack of interview process and needed streamlining of screening and evaluating candidate criteria. During GuruLink’s time with Sama, we helped to increase salary bands, perform market analysis, and create dashboards for the hiring process.

• Building out the FE team with the engineering manager at Sama
• Lack of interview process (implemented and optimization)
• Streamlining screening and evaluating candidate criteria
• overhaul of entire comp structure and levels for a lot of the engineering team

Solution

As a 6 month project, GuruLink provided a Full-Time resource at 40 hours per week. During this time, GuruLink and Sama also engaged in a Hybrid model which allowed the GuruLink team to work on hard-to-fill roles while keeping costs down. This recruiter was responsible for full-cycle recruitment.

• Research & Requirement Gathering
• Identifying, Qualifying, and Screening Candidates
• Shop based recruitment
• Creating & streamlining processes

Results

• 6-month project duration
• 9 successful hires which included from Front-end Engineers, ML Engineers and a Software Development Manager
• Cost-per-hire of $22,077.78
• Total savings of $124,300
• Savings of 38.7% compared to our previous contingency agreement
• Built out the majority of processes for candidate interviews, including suggesting various process automations
• Offer Acceptance ratio of 90%

Overview

Dapper Labs is a Vancouver-based unicorn that is behind CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, UFC Strike and the Flow blockchain. Dapper Labs created the Flow blockchain to help bring NFTs and new forms of digital engagement to fans around the world by paving the way to a more open and inclusive digital world that starts with games and entertainment.

Founded in 2018, Dapper Labs has raised over $600M+ and some of its investors include the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Google Ventures, Kevin Durant, Michael Jordan and many others. Dapper Labs was named one of 50 world’s most innovative companies and the #1 gaming company of 2022 by Fast Company.

Dapper Labs engaged GuruLink to help with their extremely fast-paced growth and recruitment needs that spanned multiple areas. At the time that GuruLink was engaged, Dapper Labs had only 1 recruiter and 1 coordinator working across over 50+ openings, many with multiple hires.

Challenges & Requirements

• Massive volume of hiring across a variety of different roles
• The recruitment process required optimization and improvement
• Needed recommendations on new sourcing tools and process
• Lack of ability to measure key metrics in order to effectively manage the recruitment team and understand key pipeline metrics and velocity
• Internal communication was breaking down and the process and decision-making were ad hoc
• The company lacked internal knowledge of recruitment tools, and process automation, and was under-utilizing their existing tools
• Inconsistent, ad hoc, and lengthy internal recruitment/interview processes between departments
• The internal recruitment team was significantly under-resourced

Solution

As an ongoing project, Dapper Labs has needed a variety of different resources as the company and recruitment team has grown. During this time, GuruLink has provided a Recruitment Manager, both senior and intermediate recruiters, sourcers, and coordinators to help facilitate the capacity across the team as more internal resources were brought in.

Given the overall volume of hiring and aggressive growth plans, we worked with Dapper Labs in a Hybrid RPO capacity and as such in addition to providing on-demand resources also provided contingency search services for many of their roles.

At the onset of the project we started with 2 fractional resources and eventually ramped up to 7 full-time resources including a Recruitment Manager, 2 full-time Recruiters, 2 full-time Sourcers, and 2 Recruitment Coordinators. As the project progressed we also played a key role in scaling out the internal TA function and eventually helped to grow the internal team to a team of 12.

In addition to helping optimize the hiring process, creating outbound collateral, creating a metrics-driven recruitment culture, and helping scale out the internal TA function we also helped bring in new tools such as Gem and TalentWall and integrated these into the processes for both sourcing and recruitment.

The RPO team through GuruLink worked on a wide range of requisitions at various levels on the Creative, Engineering, Product, Marketing, Customer Support, and Design teams. The roles spanned from junior level all the way to executive and C-level.

During our time with Dapper Labs (which is still ongoing as of Aug. 2022) the company has grown from 129 people to over 500 people.

Results

• 24-month project duration
• Over 150 successful hires
• Cost-per-hire under $12,000
• Built out the majority of the internal Talent Acquisition team (10+ internal individuals)
• Offer Acceptance ratio of 94%
• Recommended and helped implement Gem for top-of-funnel sourcing and outreach management and metrics
• Total savings vs contingency of $1,746,714 (or $20,077 per hire), equating to a 6.99% of the candidates’ average 1st-year salary

Overview

Having just raised $5 million dollar series A and a $12 million Series B rounds in short succession Wave was one of the most well-funded and highest-profile startups in Canada. 

At the time they were about 20 people and had been working with a couple of contingency agencies and had no internal recruiting function.  They needed to scale rapidly and for obvious reasons, the status quo was not the answer. 

Wave engaged GuruLink on a contingency basis initially, and we quickly placed several key development resources.  They were considering adding an internal resource to help with this scaling entrusted GuruLink to put together a plan to help them scale their hiring for key functions across the company, both technical and non-technical.

Solution

GuruLink worked closely with the Wave executive team to create a 12 month hiring plan and heatmap.  From here we ranked the various planned hires as High, Medium and Low difficulty and from here projected out which positions Wave could and should conceivably be able to hire directly.  We then modelled out a few different scenarios for a cost comparison, which included the “As-is” model, a model with hiring a direct internal resource and using agencies to supplement and a couple different custom GuruLink solutions.

Wave opted for a Guru Onsite model, whereby we had one of our team integrated into Wave and onsite at Wave’s offices 2-3 days per week, and one of the Co-Founders there 1 day per week for key meetings, strategy and roadmap check-ins.  The onsite resource managed all inbound (both from postings and referrals), created job descriptions, implemented systems, worked with the team to optimize processes, conducted telephone and in-person interviews, co-ordinated the entire process, negotiated and prepared offers and even helped with onboarding new hires.  The GuruLink core team would also help supplement the candidate pipeline for the positions that were scored as high difficulty, as well as those there were scored as medium difficulty after leveraging organic for these for 2-4 weeks depending on urgency.  All low difficulty positions were filled organically, and several of the medium difficulty.

The projected cost per hire in this model was just over $6,300 per hire, which is a cost per hire well below what most companies are able to do internally and as you can see below we dramatically outperformed that projection.

Results

GuruLink helped Wave to scale from around 25 people to almost 100, making every single hire along the way.  The hires spanned Technology, Accounting, Sales and Operations. 

The cost per hire across all of these hires worked out to $4,073.  If only 1/3 of these hires had been made on a typical contingency basis this represents a savings of over $200,000.

Additionally, during this process GuruLink requested and was granted an opportunity to invest in Wave as we truly believe that this helps to realign incentives and gives us skin in the game.  Wave eventually exited in June 2019 for $537 million, one of the top 5 largest non-IPO tech exits in the last 5-10 years in Canada.  Ultimately, a great outcome for all!

Testimonial

“Drew and GuruLink became a very important partner of Wave during a significant growth period. Their personalized approach provided a customized solution that allowed us to scale our company very effectively.

Strong communication created a great working relationship that led to great results and the consistently high level of integrity at every stage made the experience of working with Drew very comfortable and effective. His desire to ensure he was meeting our needs was at the forefront of the service he provided and was the primary reason that we were very satisfied with the overall results we got from the partnership.”

— James Lochrie, Co-Founder

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