“Elements are unlike any other recruiters we’ve worked with. They have a phenomenal passion for the details of what makes an outstanding hiring process - and the courage of their convictions when managing change with equally passionate stakeholders. The work they’ve done with us has made an indelible mark on the way we hire - throughout our organisation.
Director of Engineering
Our partner were on a verge of a period of dramatic growth, particularly in their London office, which serves as their EU headquarters. They were looking to grow their UK team from 40 to 100 employees within 1 year. Our role was to devise and implement a hiring process which would allow them to meet these targets. Before we came in, most recruitment had been handled from the US, so there was little in the way of UK-specific process, and what did exist focused entirely on active applicants.
After a thorough briefing from the US recruitment team, we devised a UK-specific hiring process which focused on the benefits of passive candidates over active applicants. Our partner had very high design and engineering standards and historically, only a tiny proportion of active applicants had met this bar. The principal outcome was a large workload for the hiring managers and a far longer time-to-hire than their growth targets demanded. The shift of focus to passive candidates initially led to a dramatic reduction in the candidate pipeline – and a commensurate increase in the hiring managers’ stress levels. We managed this process by implementing twice daily stand-ups where all stakeholders were given full visibility of progress against a set of pre-agreed deliverables.
Once the quality of the passive candidates fed through the pipeline, the results were hugely compelling. With the new process fully implemented, our partner made a minimum of 3 new hires per month – a major improvement given that they were previously making less than one. The internal stakeholders all bought into the new process and started to commit more of their time to recruitment. Our team was ultimately invited to sit in the open plan area with the in-house engineering team, from where we could continue to optimise the hiring process and improve results.
a major improvement given that they were previously making less than one.