Essence Digital was created as Google’s advertising and marketing team as a separate business that became one of the fastest growing digital marketing agencies, winning other big clients. Naturally this growth required them to hire the industry’s best and most accomplished digital marketers to lead their teams. Ensuring the team was able to recruit and hire the industry’s most sought after rising stars and industry pioneers was an ever evolving challenge at all stages of growth. We began our partnership with Essence in 2011 when they were a team of 15 people working out of a shared workspace looking to attract and hire the most impactful leaders who could spearhead rapid growth. Scaling the overarching approach along with the growth of the company encountered numerous iterations and challenges over the years but we helped them grow to 200 ppl in 2 years and to over 500 people in 4 years.
For each role (over 50 in total) we mapped talent across the competitive landscape and leveraged our proprietary data, insight and industry intelligence to establish and attract the handful of ideal prospects for each role. We were already well aware of the general market perception (risk vs. opportunity) associated with these roles so we were able expedite the recruitment process while helping to establish a clear vision that enabled the business to grow rapidly with the leaders who would provide the highest possible impact. We needed entrepreneurially spirited leaders who had experience leading Fortune 500 clients who were also excited to have a larger impact on building a business while effectively navigating the highly challenging environment with a maturing culture that comes with risks. Our approach was to ensure that we would make each hire within 30 days, ultimately landing at an average time-to-hire of 32 days.