Hyperspeed Build & Fix with Volta Labs

Snapshot

Size & Stage : 30 employees, Late A moving into B

Inflection points : Product Launch, Series B Announcement, Org Doubling

Project Timeline : 4 months, 12 hours per week

Challenge

Volta came to our team approaching multiple inflection points; They had raised a Series B and were planning to announce this funding, stage their commercial product launch, and kick off a hiring spree of 30 teammates (effectively doubling headcount) at a large industry conference in Feb ‘24.

Hiring had largely been accomplished with referrals through CEO’s network, which was hitting its limit of effectiveness. The People function was owned by an Ops Lead with support from an HR Generalist, who admitted they were overwhelmed and undereducated on what to do or where to start preparing for this enormous product launch and plan to scale. 

  • WC conducted our standard Org Readiness Assessment, which is designed to uncover gaps in process, systems, and education for scaling teams through a series of rapid structured interviews.

    After our assessment, the list of challenges expanded to include:

    • Overall lack of talent branding

    • Onboarding processes

    • Performance review scaling

    • 30% 2023 hiring goal attainment

    • Candidate decisioning and biases

    WC constructed an action plan that accounted for a fixed budget, firm February deadline, holiday absences, limited team bandwidth, and created a streamlined scaffold for implementation and rollout to the team.

November

After Onboarding, the first step was tackling the ATS chaos through a triaging and scaling process to prepare the team for training in the new year.

  • ATS triage included closing roles, cleaning up archived candidates for future searchability, and identifying which hiring managers struggled most with the tools for first contact (TTF, Open Roles, Active Candidates).


    The next stage was ATS Improvements: implementing knockout questions and automations to manage applicant volume and surface ideal talent, Job Description modernization and rewrites for improved candidate targeting, and interview rubrics for each stage of the hiring process to ensure consistent assessments and support decisionmaking.

December

Focus shifted to preparing the team for BOY processes including hiring planning and performance review expansion.

  • The team had previously performed an unstructured annual review for employees and a rudimentarily structured management review. At Series B, they needed to apply structure to the employee review, expand the management review, and implement a rollout timeline to remove the crunch felt in previous years.


    Deliverables included: review of all existing materials and expansion of process documentation, providing written instructions for managers and employees to frame the review, writing baseline employee assessment questions, and expanding the questions on manager effectiveness to include employee growth and psychological safety.


    Upon reviewing the Hiring Plan, it was discovered that impossible goals were set for hiring timelines which is why goals were missed, and role planning was not scaffolded appropriately through the year.


    Partnering with Finance, Operations, and Department Leads, the Hiring Plan was re-organized to take advantage of talent market flows, create visibility to role launch and hiring deadlines, and establish bi-annual planning processes for future hiring. A communications & distribution plan was also provided for announcing roles to the team for promoting referrals.

January

Talent Branding needed to be established from a near-baseline standpoint. It was very unclear to candidates and investors what the company did after visiting LinkedIn and the website. Job descriptions were convoluted and attracted the wrong talent.

  • We discovered that the mission and values had never been clarified or published anywhere. A short values exercise was performed with key leadership and culture representatives, and we presented the finalized copy to the team, which was approved.


    From there, deliverables included a LinkedIn rewrite positioned to attract candidates and showcase benefits, a rewrite of the “About Us” website page to include the clarified mission and values, 4 cornerstone blog posts designed to showcase Life At Volta from each key technical department + Operations, and Job Description rewrites for all active roles.

February

As the team approached their key launch deadline and the end of our working relationship, focus was on education and handoff of support materials.

  • The team had no real People Ops intranet, so we built a new Confluence subsection for the team outlining basic hiring best practices, step by step processes for using the ATS including recorded Microtrainings for their unique use cases, and links to documentation that had been lost in personal GDrives.


    The entire hiring team was given a 45-minute custom training to outline a new process for kicking off roles and how to interview candidates, designed to streamline and clarify team needs and cemented through a live presentation kicking off a new role. Each teammate then met 1:1 with our team to launch a role of their own with the new format.


    Candidate support materials were created to support Hiring Managers in the initial phone conversations, removing the pain point time spent explaining the complex technology and market opportunity.


    In addition to multiple handoff meetings and 1:1 training, the HR and Operations team was provided with a “cheat sheet” document outlining the Why and How for the changes, links to relevant documentation, and recommendations for next steps on scaling other key Org Readiness areas not included in our scope.