Axiom Zen

Axiom Zen

by | Dec 12, 2020

Case Study - Axiom Zen

# of Months

# of Hires

Cost per Hire

Total Savings

Overview

Axiom Zen is a venture studio in Vancouver that turns ideas into companies. They are the creators of both Zenhub and CryptoKitties. Axiom has been in a high growth mode since their Seed/Series A funding of $12 million. Some of the investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Version One Ventures, and others. 

Axiom has an excellent recruitment team, but with the amount of growth currently happening, they needed additional support for various hires across engineering and other company divisions. 

Axiom Zen engaged GuruLink to help with the current recruitment team and add some firepower to hire critical members to several different teams across the organization. Two GuruLink team members joined the Axiom team as full-time RPO recruiters and quickly helped place several essential development resources. Axiom Zen entrusted GuruLink to help put together a plan to help them scale while saving money on hires without paying typical contingency fees. 

 

Solution

GuruLink worked closely with the Axiom Zen team to create a plan to help accelerate hiring as quickly as possible while still maintaining a high level of quality and integrity.

Our solution was to provide flexible on-demand full-cycle recruitment resources to help generate qualified candidates, initial reach-outs, scheduling interviews for the internal team, and close offers. GuruLink brought two internal team members at 30 hours per week to help with the current growth. Axiom Zen had many open positions; even Axiom Zen’s talent acquisition team’s combined capacity wasn’t enough to keep up. 

 

Results

In 4 months of working with Axiom Zen, the GuruLink team provided many candidates to several teams across the organization. Some of the roles we worked on to help hire were: Ruby on Rails Engineers, Frontend Engineers, Blockchain Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers, Engineering Leads, and Full Stack Engineers. 

During the engagement with GuruLink and Axiom Zen, GuruLink had a total of fourteen offers presented and nine accepted. The cost per hire worked out to be $8,527.78, a savings of over $15,000+ per hire over the course of the project working with GuruLink, Axiom Zen saved over $155,000 on agency hires. 

 

“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

Indigo

Indigo

by | Nov 17, 2020

Case Study - Indigo

# of Months

# of Hires

Cost per Hire

Total Savings

 

Overview

Indigo is a well-known Canadian retailer (TSE:IDG) and eCommerce company owned by Heather Reisman, one of the most influential female business leaders in Canada.  Indigo had long been established as a highly respected Canadian retailer but they were looking to further build upon their eCommerce and digital capabilities as well as leverage data and build out the technical infrastructure to enter the US market.  In order to deliver on these mandates they decided to build a division called “Indigo Digital Innovation”. They were looking to build out a team of 47 people in the span of 6 months across Design, Development, QA, DevOps, Product Management, Mobile, and eCommerce as well as the management layers for that organization.

The VP of Digital Innovation was someone that we have had a phenomenal relationship with over the years and have worked with him for well over a decade across multiple organizations including Yahoo!, Mercatus, Sysomos, Indigo and Setter.  He has put a lot of trust in us over the years, and this was certainly no exception…

 

Solution

Indigo 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 is typically the model that makes the most sense on these 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 key stakeholders and the executive team 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.

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.

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 10% below this.

 

Results

We were able 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 under $8,000.

Indigo saved over $250,000 in comparison to if 50% of those hires had been done via contingency search (their projected number).

 

Testimonial

“GuruLink is kind of like Mastercard, priceless! 😁

I have worked with the team at GuruLink for over 10 years and across 5 different organizations and the consistency with which they deliver a high quality of talent that matches our culture never ceases to surprise me.  They just “get it”. They’re the first and only people I mention when anyone asks me who the best agency I’ve ever worked with is.

While agencies sometimes seem like a commodity as the barrier to entry is so low, it has been my experience that the good ones are few and far between and I only know one great one.  GuruLink approaches the conversation much differently than any other agency I’ve encountered.  They ask good questions, get a deep insight into the roles and culture, offer innovative cost-saving approaches and really become an extension of the company. They’re my secret weapon wherever I go and need to scale a team…but I guess now the secret is out.

If you’re scaling a technology team you should definitely give GuruLink a try. Heck, I’d stake my reputation on it…and have multiple times already.”

— Ambles Kwok

“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

Stilt

Stilt

by | Nov 16, 2020

Case Study - Stilt

# of Months

# of Hires

Cost per Hire

Total Savings

 

Overview

Stilt (YC W16) is a fintech company based out of San Francisco, USA. Stilt is a mission-driven fintech company focused on providing credit to immigrants and the underserved. They build products to improve financial inclusion and are democratizing access to credit.

 

 

Challenges & Requirements

  • Stilt is a small startup (less then 10 people when GuruLink was engaged)
  • Stilt was in need of a Cloud Engineer, Head of Product, and a Data Scientist to help with their launch of an upcoming product.
  • After working with multiple talent partners, they engaged in a partnership with GuruLink after not being successful prior to our engagement.
  • The CTO was spending a significant portion of time managing HR and Recruitment which hindered the ability to work on the product and business

 

 

Solution

  • Stilt engaged GuruLink on an RPO Hybrid model to help with their growth needs
  • By engaging on the RPO Hybrid model it gave the CTO relief internally and opened the network of the entire GuruLink team to support these roles

 

 

Results

  • 3-month project duration
  • 3 critical hires successfully hired
    • Cloud Engineer (Contingency)
    • Head of Growth (RPO)
    • Data Scientist (RPO)
  • Cost per hire down $23,600, on just contingency, the cost would have been $40,000 per hire
  • Total Savings vs Contingency of $49,250 total
“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

Envoi

Envoi

by | Nov 16, 2020

Case Study - Envoi

# of Weeks

# of Hires

Cost per Hire

Total Savings

Overview

Envoi is a company disrupting the same-day delivery space and helping retailers to meet the demand for same-day delivery at a cost that is no more expensive than traditional 3-day postal service.  They are circumventing the traditional courier model with their own warehousing infrastructure and fleet of drivers to help clients serve their customers faster, better, and with greater visibility. They are essentially helping retailers deliver an Amazon-like, same-day delivery experience.

We first worked with Envoi very shortly after they graduated from TechStars and engaged on a contingency basis and successfully helped them find their first key full-stack engineering hire.  When they needed to add more resources to the team they called us to help them think through the strategy and best approach.  As an early-stage startup they did not have an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in place, standard job descriptions, standardized interview processes, or candidate scorecards and needed help building out this foundation.

 

Solution

Envoi opted for a Fractional Guru On-Demand project-based solution to deliver on these objectives. GuruLink worked closely with the Envoi executive team to create an initial 8-week project to implement an ATS, build out their standard job description structure, optimize the interview process, and build out some candidate scorecards as well as drive and manage the process to hire an additional full-stack engineer for their team.

 

Results

We were able to successfully deliver on all of the objectives in 6 weeks, and so came in under the projected price by nearly 25% which led to a subsequent project for a “Product Strategist”.  This 2nd project was for a role that was a hybrid Product Owner, Project Manager, Scrum Master, and Client Manager. Sounds easy, right? We projected this as an 8-week project and are happy to say that we were able to fully complete this project (candidate started) within 4 weeks.

The projected cost per hire averaged across these 2 projects was $10,000 and we wound up at a cost of $6,750 per hire and represents a cost savings of over $27,000 when compared to a contingency search cost.

 

Testimonial

“Envoi engaged GuruLink in a “recruiter-on-demand” capacity when we were looking to make a full-stack engineer hire. The GuruLink team left us very impressed with the thoroughness with which they planned the execution of the hiring process. Sergey was the GuruLink team member assigned to us as a full-time recruiter from the firm, and he became embedded into the Envoi team and went above and beyond what would be expected of a regular head hunter.

He started by first meeting one-on-one with the founding team, to understand the personalities of the founders and the DNA of what would become the culture of the company into which this new hire would fit. That company profile was then used to scout for talent that had the professional and personal trajectory of what the founders valued. It was the first time we had seen the very abstract concept of “fit” be translated into an actionable item built into the hiring process itself.

From there, Sergey took the time to teach us the ropes on how to set up a scalable, repeatable hiring process. From the creation and maintenance of an applicant tracking system to the tips and tricks used to keep the people we turned down engaged for future hires, we learnt everything we need to know about how to make a streamlined process that will come in handy for the next hire(s).

 Lastly – and this is not an insignificant point for any startup – the cost structure was very favourable and flexible, and we finished the hire ahead of schedule.“

— Maarij Rehman, Co-Founder

“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

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