FILD Builds a Foundation for Hypergrowth | Recruitment Firm Case Study

Talent Solutions FILD Case Study
Building a foundation for hypergrowth: A conversation
with Nancy Soni of recruitment firm FILD
It’s many a recruiting leader’s dream to build a rapidly-growing,
high-performing recruitment firm from the ground up.
And it’s a dream that Nancy Soni has realized in FILD. The
CEO and Founder’s tech recruiting firm has grown to more
than 20 employees in 18 months, with plans to double in
size by end of year.
Nancy recently shared three of the most valuable lessons she’s
learned along the way. We’re thrilled to share them here:
1. Build your brand around your most
important differentiators
LinkedIn: What differentiates your brand identity from the
other recruiting firms out there?
Nancy: Our top priority is to build the brand of the company
and make sure that clients and candidates really respect who
we are and what we’re trying to do. Most recruiting firms pitch
and provide services -- and that’s it. We’re a bit different in
that 90% of our business comes from venture capital firms
and the startup space.
Our priority is to build our brand around the value that we
provide our clients -- we focus on quality rather than quantity.
We don’t throw a bunch of resumes in front of our clients. We
want to send them a couple of candidates who are really
strong fits.
LinkedIn: Can you share some examples of steps that you’re
taking to build your company’s brand identity?
Nancy: We regularly sponsor events in our biggest markets:
Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. For example, we
were the only recruiting firm at Disrupt, which is mind-blowing
to me.
A big area of opportunity is that FILD is a brand new company --
so we can build its presence from the ground up. I knew from
the very beginning that LinkedIn would be an important part of
this process -- LinkedIn is the first place that professionals go
when they’re curious about a new opportunity. We knew we
needed to be present in this ecosystem, and since launching,
we’ve grown our follower base to over 15,000 professionals.
2. Choose tools that help you grow
and scale
LinkedIn: Tell us about the tools you use to build your
business.
Nancy: Our model is very specific. We work with experienced
recruiters and make sure that they have the right tools. We also
make sure that they are trained on what tools to use when. It’s
a selling point for us: every recruiter gets access to LinkedIn
Recruiter, TalentBin, Connectifier and so on when they come
onboard. That’s one of the reasons recruiters are so interested
in working here.

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The benefit of being a new company is that we are building
our systems and processes from the ground up. For example:
we use HootSuite to make sure that content is posted regularly
on social media, to build our brand presence. We use LinkedIn
to build 1:1 personal connections with candidates.
You don’t go to a construction site and say “Okay, I'm going
to bring one tool.” You have to have a power drill, you have to
have a hammer, you have to have a flat head screwdriver and
a Philips head screwdriver. We train every single recruiter on
how to use these tools effectively.
LinkedIn: How has LinkedIn help you scale your business?
Nancy: We’re a new business, and people often tell us how
shocked they are to hear how much we’ve grown in such a
short timespan. People always ask -- how have you grown to a
team of 20 within a year and a half? Believe it or not, this year,
we’ll be at 40 or 50. It’s because we invest in the right tools.
The biggest benefit of having LinkedIn Recruiter is that we’re
able to work collaboratively together as a team - through
shared searches, project folders, and so on. Our recruiters
can focus more closely on finding awesome candidates and
making strong connections.
LinkedIn: That’s incredible. What would you say is your ROI
on using LinkedIn Recruiter?
Nancy: Between January and May 2014, we’ve made 19
placements through Job Slots on LinkedIn and another 18
through LinkedIn Recruiter. With an average ROI of $25K per
placement, we’ve generated $925K in revenue as a result.
When I look at the numbers, LinkedIn is the clear winner in
terms of providing value and high ROI.
3. Focus on long-term relationship-
building instead of short-term gains
LinkedIn: How has your firm generated such impressive
results over such a short time period?
Nancy: It sounds counterintuitive, but our approach is actually
to focus on long-term ROI. I'm a big believer that if you do the
right things over and over again, you provide value, and your
clients love what you're doing, they’ll come back.
We focus on building relationships with both clients and
candidates so that our referral engine is inbound on both
fronts -- on the client side, most of our business comes
through referrals, and on the job seeker side, we work with
many passive candidates.
LinkedIn: How does LinkedIn help you build stronger,
long-term candidate relationships?
Nancy: LinkedIn helps us take the time to build relationships
and get to know our candidates. Instead of sending them
generic communication, we can send them highly targeted,
personalized messages. Our brand is about building
relationships for the long-term and not being short-sighted.
At the end of the day, the experience needs to be more about
your candidates and less about you as the recruiting firm.
When candidates and clients see the value in what you’re able
to provide, your growth will be astronomical.

FILD Builds a Foundation for Hypergrowth | Recruitment Firm Case Study

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FILD Builds a Foundation for Hypergrowth | Recruitment Firm Case Study