World of opportunity: How LinkedIn helped Hofy to identify talent hotspots, scale up fast, and meet the demands of an expanding market
SUCCESS STORY
Achieving sustainable growth in a fast paced and changing market
Managing a remote workplace is a time-consuming, cross-team effort, incorporating skills and knowledge across HR operations, facilities, IT, legal, and finance. But it doesn't have to be.
Hofy, the remote equipment management specialist, is redefining the way that organisations oversee their remote and hybrid workplaces. Headquartered in London, Hofy is operational in more than 80 countries and works hard to equip remote teams and employees with equipment and services in just a few clicks.
Founded in March 2020, at the start of the global pandemic, Hofy’s founders – Michael Ginzo and Sami Bouremoum – recognised that the future of work was not about a single office space. The future involved remote working. They believed that Hofy could help employers to deliver a great onboarding experience by making sure that its client’s employees had all they needed to begin their new role and career. But what could Hofy do to ensure that it kept pace with such a fast-moving remote world and how could it scale up its own recruitment and operations at speed?
THE CHALLENGE
Attracting top talent and scaling up to meet demand
When Hofy launched, the company was quickly propelled into the global marketplace. The new company won several large clients, as global organisations realised that remote working was key to business continuity and safe operations. Hofy’s challenge was to find talent to meet incredible levels of demand. Initially, it spent large sums of money on recruitment fees. This was an unsustainable solution. Furthermore, despite rapid expansion, Hofy's brand was also relatively unknown at the time. It was struggling to attract top software talent to develop its SAAS platform. Plus, it needed to hire international talent and required a solution that could reach across borders quickly. LinkedIn was the answer.
THE SOLUTION
Using LinkedIn to find the best candidates
Hofy’s new Head of Talent, Mariya Hristova, had vast experience with LinkedIn and had used the platform in previous roles to implement mature internal recruitment strategies. She joined Hofy in December 2021, overseeing all elements of Hofy’s recruitment strategy and talent journey, including onboarding and HR. A passionate professional, she wished to responsibly grow the business and opted to pilot three Recruiter licences, and 21 Job Slots over six months. She wished to meet hiring demand and demonstrate value of the large solution.
Mariya said: “We needed to scale up and make sure we were filling our available positions. The company was expanding quickly but we also had to think like a maturing business – we needed to have structure.
“LinkedIn helped me massively. We needed to find talent to fill a variety of roles, but LinkedIn was also amazing because we could use the platform to research what other companies were doing and profile other start-ups. This gave us a greater understanding of the changing world of work.”
A forward-thinking business
LinkedIn satiated Mariya’s curiosity. She wished to implement a sustainable growth strategy. When Mariya started, Hofy had 30 employees. Now, the company has 85 employees and continues to grow.
“I am incredibly passionate about recruitment,” explained Mariya. “I am inquisitive and like to ask lots of questions and be asked lots of questions. It’s only by doing this that you learn, evolve, and discover what’s new.”
“What I loved about our adoption of LinkedIn is that our VP of sales – an ex-LinkedIn employee – found us on LinkedIn and his covering letter specifically talked of a desire to work with a company that was exciting, was evolving, and knew that work would be different in the future.”
Targeted approach = diverse workforce
Mariya was able to use LinkedIn to identify existing and upcoming tech hubs. She could identify where talent was located. This enabled her to find a “good balance of people” in international locations.
“When you are a global platform, the way people interact with software is very different as you move from country to country,” Mariya added. “It was important to find different perspectives and points of view.”
Mariya and her team specifically wished to hire a diverse workforce. Together, they created organised sourcing strategies and sprints, and devised and implemented campaigns. The approach had to be targeted and consistent standards had to be adhered to across all markets.
“In the past, we have used other channels to recruit, but LinkedIn data can show you differences over time, including where you are getting more candidates from,” commented Mariya. “It gives you access to more talent.”
World of opportunities
All Hofy’s recruitment team has access to LinkedIn, and it has taken ownership of the platform. Mariya can see that top talent is interacting and engaging with the brand.
“I have noticed that candidates are curious about Hofy and ask us questions. I can see who is engaging with our brand and I know that they will ask me and my colleagues questions about our vision and ethos. We love getting questions and I believe that LinkedIn is sparking candidate curiosity – top talent wants to know what other companies are doing and what’s out there. People are interested in our company and our mission; they are looking to work with a business that is looking to the future. They see on LinkedIn what we are doing and what to know more and that sparks conversations.”
Mariya concluded: “We open up a world of opportunities for employers and employees and LinkedIn opens up the world to us.”
Main products used:
THE RESULTS
Engaged workforce
LinkedIn has helped Hofy decreased time to hire from over four months to just 65 days (on average)
Reduction in agency placements
Working with LinkedIn Hofy has reduced agency placements by 60%
Successful sales expansion in USA
2022 saw Hofy successfully launch a warehouse and remote sales expansion into the US with candidates found almost exclusively on LinkedIn
In their own words
“We open up a world of opportunities for employers and employees and LinkedIn opens up the world to us.”
“At Hofy, we are looking for passionate, curious and skilled individuals from all over the world. Through LinkedIn, we have access to a global talent pool to help us build a product that also democratises access to and advocates global collaboration!”
About Hofy
Offering a competitive remote work programme is more important now than ever. But managing a fleet of remote offices is time and capital intensive. Shipping a home office can cost hundreds of pounds in courier and custom fees, and it can take hours to navigate the tax compliance and administration associated with shipping equipment to other countries. That's where Hofy comes in. The company makes the world feel small for people operations and IT teams. Its software and logistics turn hours of manual processes into seconds and reduces the mammoth task of provisioning and managing remote work equipment across the world to simply managing a SaaS tool. It does this by combining and automating all the tools that companies need – from asset tracking and mobile device management (MDM) to a fully-fledged webstore – to set their new hires up for productive work at home and manage the equipment lifecycle effortlessly.
INDUSTRY:
IT Services and IT Consulting
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES:
51-200
HEADQUARTERS
London, UK