Scaling Talent Acquisition from 1,000 to 10,000 employees

We hope you’ve enjoyed the series up to this point, as we’ve discussed going from 0 to 1000 employees. For this article, we’re putting the true startup size behind us and focusing on companies between 1,000 and 10,000 employees. This transition is often an interesting one, filled with new expectations and changing company dynamics.

A little about companies that have between 1k and 10k employees:

• Increased departmentalization: Silos start to emerge. More evident divisions between departments (engineering, marketing, sales, etc.) require more specialized recruiting strategies and potentially dedicated recruiters with subject matter expertise.

• Process formalization: Ad-hoc processes that worked for a smaller company may now be causing bottlenecks. This is the time to invest in robust candidate relationship management (CRM), employment marketing tooling, performance management systems, and structured interviewing processes.

• Data-driven decisions: Gut feelings and intuition become less reliable. Companies at this size leverage (real-time) data analytics to understand key recruiting metrics (time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, offer acceptance rates) and use them as starting points to identify areas for improvement.

• Employer branding evolution: The company's reputation as an employer becomes increasingly essential. A strong employer brand helps attract top talent in a competitive market. This might involve more sophisticated employer branding campaigns, enhanced online presence, and a focus on employee value proposition.

• Talent development and retention: As you seek to scale more quickly, retaining existing talent becomes crucial. Investing in employee development programs, career progression opportunities, employee referral programs, and competitive compensation packages is essential.

• Global expansion (potentially): Some companies in this range may be expanding internationally, adding another layer of complexity to recruiting operations. This involves navigating different labor laws, cultural nuances, and potentially building remote teams.

Navigating the challenges:

Successfully scaling recruiting operations in this phase requires a proactive and strategic approach. Here are a few tips:

• Start with the process: You define what ‘good’ looks like. You develop clear KPIs and leverage your new analytics to refine toward those goals.

• Embrace technology: Implement an ATS and CRM with robust reporting capabilities, explore automation tools for tasks like candidate sourcing and screening, and consider AI-powered solutions to enhance efficiency and align with your processes.

• Build a strong recruiting team (talent advisors): Invest in specialized recruiters, sourcers, and recruiting coordinators. Provide them with the training and resources they need to excel.

• Develop clear career paths: Offer employees opportunities for growth and development to improve retention rates.

• Prioritize experience: Ensure a smooth and positive hiring team and candidate journey from headcount approval to onboarding.

• Focus on diversity and inclusion: Implement strategies to attract and hire a diverse workforce.

By addressing these challenges head-on and implementing the right strategies, companies can build a strong foundation for continued growth and success.

What are the consistent issues for TA teams at this stage?

• Is TA a strategic function?

Yes. At some point in a company's growth, TA teams start to make concessions to complex hiring teams in order to keep them happy or make one-off exceptions to processes that make hiring successful at the company. 

This changes the power dynamic, and TA starts to be seen as more transactional instead of complementary in most cases. The consequence is that TA teams then have to spend time reestablishing their seat at the table and as internal partners.

• I’ll know it when I see it.

Playing off of the first point, this will be a common refrain from hiring managers. If TA hasn’t built out and reinforced the job intake process, most roles will take more time than necessary to fill because hiring managers either aren’t aware or don’t want to follow company process.

• There is too much process!

Speaking of process, the issue with process changes is that they are often framed poorly for those who need to follow them. Instead of framing the changes as benefits to them, they are often framed as benefits to the person asking. Additionally, what got a company to a certain point might not get them to the next goal, so change is necessary.

What do you see from a ratio perspective regarding a TA team?

This decision will likely be the determining factor for the size of a TA. However, you’re likely to see the following ratios, which are changing as processes and tech become more available: 

• 6:1 or 7:1 ratio of Recruiters to Recruiting Coordinators

  • Possibly less if enabled with a scheduling tool.

• 8:1 or 9:1 ratio of Recruiters to Sourcer

• 15:1 or 20:1 ratio of TA Team to RecOps

Now why do the rations play out this kind of way? Most TA teams are recruiter-centric, meaning everything is based on the work that the recruiters can do, so the roles that support that, such as coordination and sourcing, need to be aligned. 

For example, if your RCs are only there to coordinate interviews but there aren’t enough interviews to schedule because there aren’t enough roles or recruiters, you need to find something for them to do. RecOps roles tend to operate slightly differently as the scope of the role is broader (e.g., systems, documentation, data, reporting, etc) and the work is system-wide. Additionally, RecOps roles can handle more than one element (e.g., they can handle coordination, sourcing, etc).

What does your tech stack look like?

• An all-in-one (AiO) ATS or ATS with a robust library of integrations

• Sourcing tool

• Multiple job boards

• Texting

• Scheduling

• Headcount management

• Survey

• Analytics/Dashboarding tool

• Employer of record

What data is vital here?

Building on our already established metrics, hiring plan progress and activity within a stage are two new ones to consider. Focusing on the hiring plan progress for a second, companies in this segment usually have gone public or have to meet new governmental requirements. 

This means that the accuracy of hiring projections becomes supremely important. This can also lead to discussions around the activities taking place in stages because if those activities are taking time but not furthering the process, then they should be reviewed and possibly eliminated.

Where should your programs be?

• Referral — Everyone in the company should know about your referral program and follow the proper referral process. You may want to join onboarding sessions to bring new hires up to speed.

• Enablement — This is the stage where a more robust enablement program will start to become necessary. As the company grows, making the information easily accessible and understandable in multiple languages will ensure global consistency.

• Internship — You’ve likely completed several intern classes at this point, which means you have reliable data on what schools your top performers are attending or where you need to go next.

• Internal mobility — Like your referral program, employees should know how to apply to roles internally or understand the process for an 80/20 program. As new managers are hired, you will need to reinforce that direct reports are not the property of their managers.

• Employer branding — This is likely where you start thinking about hiring a specialist to manage your employer brand, as marketing resources might no longer be available or as a redundancy.

Who are the strategic partners here?

Building on what we discussed in the previous article, TA will likely go through a leadership shift here that can impact the strategic partnerships that were built. This change will come from both internal and external factors. Internally, TA leadership might go through a change as people who like to build might leave for smaller companies, and those who like or have experience with large companies come in. Externally, the leadership teams might also shift for similar reasons. Both are likely impacted if the company has gone through an IPO or M&A. 

Does that mean TA has to become transactional now? No! But it does mean building relationships in a slightly different way. Yes, keep learning the language and data because those words will evolve, but relationship-building will be even more important. This is where you will find champions within the business who can remind new leaders of what was built into the company's DNA regarding TA.

If you are specifically looking for the exact roles you should partner with, though, we highly recommend FP&A, Business Operations, and Sales. Why? Money talks, and if you can keep these groups happy, they will likely go to bat for you.

Automation and AI

In the startup stage, a company might not have the volume needed to require complex automation or AI, but at this stage, the question shifts from “Wouldn’t this be nice” to " OK, we’re going to need this, especially in certain areas.” 

If the comfort of using automation or AI isn’t there, there might be opposition to using them with the argument that “it dehumanizes the candidate experiences.” However, in order to get to a point where hiring happens at scale and follows consistent processes regardless of level, this is necessary. Additionally, building automation allows for a safeguard in the event that the team is asked to do more with less.

What to expect next:

In our next and last article in this series, we will discuss companies over 10k. You’ll see how at that level, they still use many of the building blocks established when they were smaller and in the 1-10k employee range. You’ll also see how the data, the tech stack, and, more importantly, the company structure will also have an impact.