I’ve just completed my first full year as Recruitment Lead at Rooser. It’s been a year full of learning, challenges and fish puns (which will be a theme throughout this post 😬). I thought now was a great opportunity to share a bit about the experience.
If you’d told me a couple of years ago that I’d be working in the seafood industry, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. What originally captured my imagination was the opportunity to have a positive impact on the planet by delivering on our mission to eliminate seafood waste. Fast forward twelve months, and this has grown to a huge appreciation for what it takes to build a company that is serving those in this great industry.
Setting out to sea 🚢
Like any new joiner, I was both excited and nervous to get started! What I initially underestimated was the nuances of hiring seafood experts as well as those who have never experienced the industry. Some will know a lot about you, and others absolutely nothing. Hiring at an early-stage startup is really about bringing the mission to life for those who are willing to take the plunge and join our crew.
Eliminating seafood waste is a powerful mission, but we need to be clear about how teams and individuals can have an impact.
Finding our voice 📣
We’re delivering on our mission by creating transparency and certainty in the industry. So, how do we start to get this across? First off, we baited our brand hook. We started to throw the spotlight on the people behind the business, their stories, and their impact. We focused on developing our own tone of voice - simple, to the point and human.
This took the form of celebrating new joiners and anniversaries, to sharing about company retreats and new product launches.
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Getting candidates hooked 🎣
The next move was to get our ship in order—literally. We implemented Ashby as our Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This gave us a fresh start and the basis to gather data that will help us improve our recruitment process in the future.
On top of this, we also introduced consistent recruitment processes and started to use rubrics (a grading method for criteria-based assessment), which can help to balance the subjective and objective when it comes to making hiring decisions.
And finally, you won’t hire people if you don’t deliver a great candidate experience. We worked on our comms and focused on creating an interview and offer process to make candidates feel valued. For example, if you get to our final interview, we’ll send you a thank you note (and fish lego!) to show our gratitude for the time you’ve taken to interview with us. It’s a small gesture, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing people’s surprise and the photos of what they have built!
Our catch 🐟
Alright, enough with the puns and metaphors, let's talk numbers. In this past year, we've welcomed 25 new crew members aboard. I’m hugely proud of the supremely talented, driven and, moreover, humble people we have been able to bring into the business.
And what about our candidate experience? It’s early days, but we have an offer acceptance rate of 100% and a candidate NPS score of 57. (I’m reliably informed that anything over 50 is considered excellent!)
Final Trawlings 🤔
Reflecting on the year, it's been a successful first expedition, but we're far from done. It’s been a real team effort to get to this point, and I’m hugely grateful for the investment the team continues to make in recruiting.
Let’s see what the next year brings. Ahoy, onwards!
Article by Kristian Bright, Recruitment Lead at Rooser
