Case Studies
3
min read

Scaling for growth: Elevating Octave's tech talent for behavioral healthcare innovation

March 14, 2024

About our Client

We partnered with Series B healthcare technology company, Octave, to help them hire a new round of engineering talent. Our client is a leader in behavioral healthcare, connecting individuals, families, and couples all over the United States to receive top-notch mental health services.

The Challenge: Scaling the Engineering Team  

After raising their Series B, Octave needed to scale their engineering team quickly. Some of the hiring challenges they brought to us included:

  • A top of funnel problem where they felt they couldn’t attract the right level of talent.
  • Discovering that candidates who did make it to an interview weren’t the right fit after all because they didn’t have the right tech stack experience.
  • Wanting to hire candidates from underrepresented groups, particularly female engineers.

I came into my role with many candidates in the pipeline for various engineering roles. I spent a lot of time screening what turned out to be a bit of unqualified applicants.  RFS was able to send me mostly close and strong matches.” – John Merciadez, Senior Technical Recruiter

The Solution: Bringing recruiting expertise

RFS became the main source of talent for Octave after they described working with recruiting firms who didn’t quite meet their needs in the past. We were responsible for recruiting their engineering roles, including three Software Engineers, a Frontend Lead and a Data Engineer. Using our state-of-the-art technologies and analytics, RFS sent personalized communication to source the most qualified individuals, helping our client solve their top of funnel problem.  

RFS worked with our client every step of the way: guiding them through their wants and needs, sourcing candidates with extremely specific skillsets, building a pipeline, managing interviews, and closing the deal for talent to join their teams.  

The Results: Growing headcount quickly and meeting our client’s needs, finding hires with long retention rates, and delivering business impact.

We were able to grow Octave's headcount grew by five engineers, filling a much-needed headcount through strong communication and follow up: During our time working together, we successfully hired three Software Engineers, a Frontend Lead and a Data Engineer from companies like Amazon, Coinbase and Verizon. We were also able to help hire women engineering talent, which is important to their company and hiring practices.

“Recruiting from Scratch had very good communication overall and listened to our needs and expectations as we iterated through the process, as well as the job requirements.” – John Merciadez, Senior Technical Recruiter

Additionally, our hires were able to start quickly and hit the ground running. The average number of days from first touchpoint with our sourcing team to official start date at our client was less than two months total – a terrific win for a company who previously struggled to find top-notch talent.

Excellent retention: At the time of this writing, all our hires are still working at Octave (for many, this is well over a year and a half after their start dates). We consider this a massive win for our client, and our candidates – who remain happy in their roles.

Impact to the business bottom line: Less than a year after working with Recruiting from Scratch, our client was able to raise their Series C funding during a particularly difficult time in the market to raise capital from VC investors. We’re excited to see what they do next, and the innovations their team members bring to the mental health space.

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