Case
Brain Rocket
We had a month and a half, 28 vacancies, and 4 functional teams to assemble. December snow was falling outside, the New Year holidays were approaching, and the hiring deadline was unchangeable — January 18th. But we wouldn't be writing this case if we hadn't succeeded, so let us tell you the story of how the Brainrocket team and the InsulaLabs team did phenomenal joint work in recruiting and setting up functional frontend teams.
2 months 🚀
for the entire hiring and setup process
28 people
hired for the team over the period
4 teams
with specific functions and requirements
10 days
breaks due to the Christmas holidays
Challenge
This is a story not about spot hiring, but about functional hiring of specific roles in a team, where the challenge is practically everything: the tasks, urgency, roles, and the calendar period.
- Form 4 separate functional teams, each consisting of people who are fully suited for their roles.
- The start of hiring was at the end of November. The peak hiring period coincided with the worst time in terms of candidate activity — the Christmas holidays. Thus, out of 60 days, we lost almost a week and a half precisely during the holiday period.
- Deadline — January 18th. By this date, the teams must be fully set up, with contracts, equipment, and ready for onboarding.
- The team has very specific functional roles. Not everyone needs to be a rock star, but rather they should ideally interact with each other.
- Cultural match is very important — teams are formed for long-term systematic work on projects, so they must fully align in values with other teams, and have a high level of soft skills.
- Logistical challenges: the entire team needs to be equipped with technology and pre-configured software, despite the fact that people are located in different cities and countries.
How we achieved the result
What tools and approaches we used
- Input-Statuses. We started with a series of input-calls, during which we clearly outlined each candidate's profile, their tasks, requirements from them, and functional interaction with other team members.
- Creation of ICPs. Next, we created separate ICPs (Ideal Candidate Profiles), in which we documented: red and green flags, markers by which we determine who is suitable, hard and soft skills, and specific decision-making criteria important to Brainrocket.
- Hiring Funnel. During the process, we created a funnel in which we calculated the conversion at each stage of hiring for each candidate.
- Roadmap. At the start, we formed a step-by-step roadmap, in which we outlined how we submit candidates for approval, the speed at which they need to be accepted, and the processing regulations.
- Analytics. We sent analytics daily on the candidates submitted, so that the entire team understood the pace of the project's progress.
- Processing Client Feedback. All decisions and responses to feedback took place within one day to ensure the hiring and approval process was continuously moving forward.
- A lot of hard work. We conducted up to 7 technical interviews each day during the hiring period, submitted 60-100 candidates for each position, constantly collected feedback, and took it into account in our work with subsequent candidates:
Client’s role
How the client helped achieve the result
- The client's team fully adhered to the previously agreed roadmap of actions, so we moved exactly according to plan.
- The workflow for each candidate took no more than 5 days from first contact to hiring.
- The candidate signed the offer within 2 weeks of us submitting them to the client's team.
- The client's team provided maximally detailed and comprehensive feedback, spanning several paragraphs for each candidate.
- With each rejection of a candidate, thanks to the feedback, we better understood the hiring criteria for the next candidates, and therefore selected more effectively.
- The work felt collaborative: we were all one team working towards a single result.
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