Envoy

Envoy uses Gem’s Talent Compass to look ahead as it scales

Envoy is transforming modern workplaces for hybrid work by safely bringing people together. The company’s vision is to create a unified workplace by removing mundane and broken systems throughout the office. Envoy’s workplace platform has redefined how companies welcome visitors, ensure employee safety, manage workspaces, and execute deliveries in over 14,000 international locations. Among their recent products is Envoy Protect, which confirms employees are healthy and coordinates schedules before they come on-site.

“Envoy was already building products for a hybrid world. Companies are reopening now; they want to do it right. And Envoy is the answer. Which means hiring is very exciting for us right now: we’re basically looking to double a lot of our teams.”

Carmen Coleman

Head of Business Recruiting

Location:

San Francisco, CA (HQ)

Size:

200+ employees

What they do:

Business/productivity software

ATS:

Greenhouse

Website:

https://envoy.com/

Gem product:

CRMFull-Funnel Analytics

Pain points / Challenges

• Lack of visibility into the recruiting effort required for each hire

• Inconsistent performance management and recognition for recruiters

• Limited clarity and data to accurately forecast hiring trajectory

• Reliance on anecdotal evidence to address process inefficiencies

Results with Gem

• Transparency for hiring managers, leading to a deeper appreciation for talent acquisition

• Pinpoint tracking of top-of-funnel activity, enabling standardized performance reviews

• Detailed forecasts and capacity planning with the help of accurate data and insights

• Visibility into the drivers of bottlenecks and drop-offs, allowing for targeted solutions

Background

With the onset of Covid, Envoy launched Envoy Protect, which immediately drove back demand for their business. “Suddenly I was tasked with building the sales org back up,” says Carmen Coleman, Head of Business Recruiting. “And then I was responsible for rebuilding the marketing team... and then we decided to open an office in Denver and another in the UK.”

These ambitious goals, however, came at a time when the team was facing internal challenges. Her recruiters were already managing excessive workloads and many of the hiring managers had no idea, leading to mismanaged expectations and frustrations. Meanwhile, Envoy’s executive team wanted greater transparency into how the team was doing and how many hires they could expect by quarter’s end—data that was not readily available. And to top it all off, some teams were struggling to quickly move candidates through the process, leading to drop-offs and lost opportunities to close more hires.

So how does Carmen meet such new, lofty expectations when her teams are already at capacity? What solutions does she turn to when it comes to forecasting headcounts and seeking guidance on improving outcomes? Enter Talent Compass, Gem’s native insights & planning solution.

Demonstrate the Value of Talent Acquisition

Carmen recognizes that her hiring managers are anxious to fill open roles and they often do not have visibility into the amount of effort it takes just to get one hire. But with Gem, all of her team’s activity is auto-logged, “so I can go in and see weekly stats per recruiter. The UI is simple, the filters and navigation are obvious. Now I can present to my leadership team the activity behind each hire, the work behind the team we’re building.

“Until Gem [Talent Compass],” Carmen says, “hiring managers really only understood the work that went into the phone screen stage.” Now I can show them these beautiful funnels and say: This is what we had to do to get here. It’s also the first time my team has felt like it has visibility in the company for the amount, and quality, of the work it’s doing.”

“We hired 34 people on the business side in Q1. [Talent Compass] pulls data from our ATS, so we can see that those 34 hires came from nearly 2,200 created applications—both inbound and outbound. 397 phone screens came from those, and down the funnel, 43 offers went out. This is the work that just two-and-a-half of us did last quarter.”

Objective Reviews and All-Star Recognition

Many of Envoy’s teams that are in need of additional headcount need active sourcing to build sufficient pipelines. “Those roles tend to have very low application rates,” Carmen says. “They require multiple reach-outs to passive talent if we’re ever going to fill them because sales talent and eng talent is getting a ton of messages every day.”

Sourcing, however, is often a thankless job. As Carmen posits, “the top-of-funnel process is pretty dark for hiring managers.” She uses [Talent Compass’] outreach activity to demonstrate the effort her teams are making to build sufficient pipelines. In fact, Talent Compass has even helped her build a business case for salary increases. “I pull pipeline data to explain to my team why their comp is being realigned, and I bring that data to conversations with leadership. It gives me hard numbers for when I go to bat for the team. And there are other ways that data allows for visibility at Envoy. Envoy Extras is our employee recognition program. Once every quarter we nominate and recognize specific employees. I got an Envoy Extra for one of my recruiters last quarter by pulling Gem data to show how much work she’s done.”

Forecast Today, Plan for Tomorrow

Talent Compass has served Carmen equally well when it comes to conversations with leadership around forecasts and capacity planning. Thanks to the Forecasting Calculator, she knows how much work her team will have to do to fill a given req. “Gem [Talent Compass] essentially tells me how many hours of work we’ll have to put in to suffice a new headcount. Based on historical conversion rates for that role, I know how many outreaches my team will have to make, how many phone screens, how many onsites, how many offers extended to get an offer-accept. As soon as you have that data, you know whether you’re under-resourced or not. So if I need to go to leadership and say, I need more sourcers if we’re really going to hire this many people, Gem has already made the argument for me.”

Optimizing the Recruiting Funnel

Carmen relies on Talent Compass to understand how well her recruiters are partnering with their hiring managers. “The higher the conversion rate from HM screen to technical screen, the better the alignment. If it’s low, there’s some miscommunication there; down the road, that means lost trust. So as soon as we see conversion rates drop at that stage, we intervene with a suggestion to recalibrate.” Similarly, Carmen says, it’s a flag if candidates are passing the HM screen but not the technical screen. “It means either the HM isn’t aligned with the experience level they’re looking for, or the exercise is too rigorous for that experience level.”

Talent Compass also offers visibility into other steps of the process, allowing Carmen and her team to pinpoint bottlenecks and streamline the funnel. Reviewing passthrough rates across different jobs and departments, Carmen can uncover any troubling discrepancies quickly. “Maybe the data shows us there’s a superfluous stage in our process, the whole journey-to-hire is too long. Gem shows us where candidates are opting out, accepting offers elsewhere. That’s huge. None of these are things that gut instinct will tell you.”

Conclusion: Everyone Now Wants a Piece

With all the success Carmen’s team has achieved, is it really a surprise that other teams now want to work with her and the insights she has at her disposal? “Our Sales Ops Manager built out a spreadsheet that tracks the sales hiring we need to do from a revenue perspective: I can sit down with Sales Ops and measure activity against hiring date to know how much revenue we’re losing or gaining. All of that comes from Gem’s [Talent Compass] data, and it’s what my C-levels want to see as well.”

“Data is part of our DNA,” Carmen explains; “It’s been powerful to see how Gem fuels data-driven communication between TA and other teams.”