Could A “Recruiting Surge” Be Exactly What Your Company Needs?

November 4, 2013

If your company is growing faster than you can hire, a recruiting surge could be your ticket to a swarm of new referral hires and killer ROI.

Expansion-stage companies are primarily focused on one thing: growing very quickly (hence the name “expansion”). But with growth comes hiring needs — a lot of hiring needs. In fact, these companies can sometimes have more open positions than they can handle. If that’s a pain your company is feeling, you should consider a “recruiting surge.”

What Is a Recruiting Surge, You Ask?

A recruiting surge is a period of time where the entire company focuses more on hiring needs. This can be anywhere from one month to one quarter or more. In order to create the surge, referrals should be incentivized more than usual and there should be an end goal in mind. For instance, if your team makes X amount of hires, you will get X. If the company meets our hiring goals, we will buy lunch for a week, etc.

Monetate: A Recruiting Surge Success Story

Monetate_Logo

I was prompted to write this post because one of OpenView’s portfolio companies, Monetate, is in the middle of their second recruiting surge this year. That’s right — the first one was so successful they’re now going back for more.

I reached out to the team at Monetate to get some stats from their first surge, which took place in Q1 this year.

Stats from a Successful Recruiting Surge

  • Total Surge Bonus Payout: $51,000
  • Surge Internal Referrals: 216
  • Surge External Referrals: 35
  • Surge In Person Interviews: 45
  • Q1 Hires as a Result of the Surge: 26
    • 11 Engineering hires
    • 8 Sales hires
    • 4 Services hires
    • 2 Leadership hire
    • 1 Admin hire
  • Q2 Hires w/o Surge – 17
  • Q3 Hires w/o Surge – 21

Incentivizing Success

Monetate MakerBot

For their first recruiting surge, Monetate upped their referral bonus (typically $2000 for engineering) to $5,000 in January, $4,000 in February and $3,000 in March. Additionally, if they hit their goal of seven engineering hires (which they blew out) the engineering team would get a MakerBot 3D printer (which they did). If they hit the goal of seven non-engineering hires (they made 15) they would get Rock Band for the office.

Lastly, in order to keep every internal employee engaged, the company also held a drawing every two weeks where a selected referrer received a gift card to any Steven Starr restaurant in Philadelphia.

Round 2

Monetate is in the middle of their second recruiting surge, taking place throughout Q4. Similar to Q1, the typical referral bonus has been upped to $5,000 in October, $4,000 in November and $3,000 in December. If you would like more information please visit http://monetate.com/jobs/open-positions/.

I know we are all excited to see the results from their second surge!

The Moral of the Story? A Recruiting Surge = Referral Hires & Killer ROI

If you find you are struggling to keep up with the many hiring needs of your company, consider a recruiting surge. As the stats above indicate, the total amount of referral payouts for Monetate was $51,000. To put things in perspective, that would get you between two and four employees through an agency — Monetate got 26! The ROI is definitely there, and as I have mentioned before, referrals are typically the best candidates.

So what are you waiting for? Get a surge going today!

Have any recruiting surge success stories of your own you’d like to share? Leave them in the comments below!

Senior Talent Manager, Engineering

<strong>Meghan Maher</strong> is Senior Talent Manager, Engineering, actively recruiting top talent for OpenView and its Portfolio Companies. Her tech background has helped OpenView hire for nearly 20 IT and engineering positions. Meghan began her career at AVID Technical Resources, where she was a Technical Recruiter for two years.