The Smart Way to Scale

In a startup, not much is certain. For Sculpt, a social media agency, one thing is certain, We’re only successful if our clients are happy. That means hiring a skilled team to help create and execute their social marketing strategies.

Marketing problems require creative solutions, and creative problem solvers. That’s who we need for the Sculpt Squad. “Sculptors” are content creators, community managers, and digital strategists. Our goal is not only to make communication between brands and consumers accessible, but also enjoyable and exciting.

Since Sculpt is a fairly new company, we need to be especially smart in our hiring process. We have to make sure we’re not over-stretching our financial resources, yet have the bandwidth to tackle our customer’s needs at full strength. Our sculptors range from part-time interns, to full-time strategists, and we like it that way. The diverse backgrounds lead to diverse solutions and an awesome company culture. But creating this wasn’t always easy…

In May we lost a key person on the operations side, and needed to move fast. We dreamed up a new position, the Head of Happiness; part account management, part project management, all happiness. There was one big problem  — we didn’t know where to start. Previous channels involved a lot of leg work, and little results. In came SmartRecruiters. I posted the Head of Happiness position through SmartRecruiters (and their partner sites like Indeed) on a Friday. When I checked in over the weekend, I was shocked at the influx of overqualified candidates we had. We’re in Iowa City and candidates on the West Coast were offering to relocate. I thought to myself, “Wow, we’re doing something right.”

SmartRecruiters has been an amazing tool to start building our team. It has completely streamlined hiring for Sculpt. My partners are out of state, but SmartRecruiters allows us to collaborate virtually, rating and reviewing candidates on our own time. The Head of Happiness ad raked in 40-50 qualified candidates in the first week. By week two, we were interviewing our top candidates, and by week three we had made a decision on our new hire. That’s fast. Startup fast.

At Sculpt, we make a big deal of keeping things personal and unique, and that follows through to our application process. SmartRecruiters’ one-click apply is an introduction to our culture and company, and it’s one that says, “We want to make this as easy and enjoyable as possible.” SmartRecruiters lets me answer everyone that’s applied within the system so I never have to leave, or get lost in a messy inbox wondering if I’ve answered someone or not.

With our hiring platform providing peace of mind, we can focus on keeping our team and clients ridiculously happy. And that’s the smart way to scale.

Josh Krakauer is the CEO of Sculpt, a full service social media media marketing agency. Follow him on Twitter for all things Iowa City and the Social Web.