HIRECLOUT is a small recruitment firm that focuses exclusively on technical, product, and IT roles. And they help California-based companies hire highly-skilled software engineers who actually stick around.

The 25-person team is mostly made up of recruiters - including Maxwell-Jake (Jake) Lipton. And, as Jake puts it, what they do at HIRECLOUT is easy to explain but difficult to execute. 

“This job is so freaking complicated. You can’t just read a few papers and understand what you’re supposed to do.” 

For example, a lot of tech recruiting is based on circumstances, so there isn’t always a clear set of processes. This leaves a lot of room for assumptions. And as a result, it has historically taken new hires up to 6 months to get fully onboarded at the firm. 

But it wasn’t just the work that made onboarding difficult. “The other issue was that our company relied on oral transmission of how to do the business,” Jake explained. There was no documentation, no system, and no way to assess new employees.

Inconsistent training means inconsistent work

Without formalized training, every person had a different experience during onboarding. Some new hires jumped right into the job and learned as they worked. While others shadowed an existing recruiter or watched generic video classes online.

And as a result, Jake started seeing inconsistencies in the quality of work. “[A lot of the new hires] were doing certain things the wrong way.” 

But Jake bet that if the company documented the training instead, they could reduce onboarding time and eliminate unnecessary mistakes. He just didn’t know how to make it happen, so he went to an existing partnership to find out.

EOS suggests a solution

At the time, Jake was working with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), so he went to them to find a possible solution. But he had one stipulation: “we didn’t want to pay someone to do this for us.” 

EOS recommended Trainual. So, Jake did his due diligence and compared it to other training solutions. However, after his research, Trainual was the obvious choice. 

“We needed to get people the information. And then make sure they understood it with tests,” he explained. “And that was only available with Trainual.”

HIRECLOUT quickly signed up for Trainual and put Jake in charge of building out the content.

Building a foundation on Trainual

When Jake sat down to begin, he said documenting the business turned into a brain dump. “I literally wrote out how to do every single aspect of the business. And it turned into a 36-page wiki,” he shared. 

It was a good start. But without context, it didn’t help clarify the already complicated business. 

So, he started migrating the information into their Trainual account. He sorted the wiki into relevant Subjects and kept the Steps within them brief. This way, new hires could train on small bits of material rather than trying to understand the entire business at once. 

Before, the firm had zero tools or resources for new employees. Now, they have their tribal knowledge stored in a centralized hub that anyone on their team can access.

And especially now that HIRECLOUT is working remotely, Trainual has been a critical component for keeping the team aligned. With everything accessible online, Jake can assign training materials to anyone working anywhere. And his team can go through the content on their own and at their own speed.

Testing assumptions with Trainual

The HIRECLOUT team initially chose Trainual because they wanted to test employees on the material. For them, gauging a new hire's assumptions was key to helping them avoid future mistakes. 

So, Jake created tests at the end of each Subject. Each one, requiring written answers. And based on how the new hires answer, the team knows how to continue building on and improving the training.

Before, it was impossible to know how employees understood the business - let alone what they were learning. Now, the team at HIRECLOUT can extinguish incorrect assumptions before they show up in the field.

Slashing onboarding time

Jake says Trainual was the first step toward systematizing their onboarding process. And since adding it to the arsenal, they’ve been able to get new employees up-to-speed in half the time.

Plus, new hires finally have a consistent experience across the board. So everyone learns the right way to run the business the first time. Meaning, less recruiting errors, less time retraining, and more happy clients.

Moving forward with Trainual

And now that Jake and his team have a strong base in Trainual, they are looking forward to building onto their content. They have plans to embed screen recordings for larger tasks. And they’re currently working on a sales playbook. 

But above all, HIRECLOUT is super excited to bring on more recruiters. Because now they have a tool to make their work less complicated and growing their team way easier.