How Lunio’s HR team saved over $50,000 using Willo to hire SDRs
Key takeaways:
- Lunio raised a $15 million Series A round and needed to scale up its SDR team.
- Lunio considered hiring an agency to help them scale but ultimately chose Willo so they could own the candidate experience.
- Using Willo, Lunio hired 7 SDRs and 3 other junior roles, saved 47 hours of recruiter time compared to phone screens and saved over $50,000 compared to paying agency fees for their hires.
The problem
After raising a Series A round, the Talent Team at Lunio was given the ambitious task of introducing an outbound sales function within 6 months and an overall goal to double in size within 12-18 months. In particular, a focus was on Sales/Commercial hiring, Customer Success and People Ops.
Lunio knew that junior roles at a well-funded tech startup would likely get A LOT of applicants. Wanting to keep the experience in-house as much as possible, they wanted a tool that could replicate them but at a fraction of the cost. Lunio are huge advocates of delivering a great candidate experience so applicants coming through felt valued by Lunio even if they didn’t get the job.
Lunio’s Head of Talent Matt McKenna demo-ed multiple different platforms. After the search, he and Talent Acquisition Manager Caitlin ultimately chose Willo.
Why Lunio chose Willo
Initially, they wanted a solution that would provide effective results in a timely manner and deliver the best possible candidate experience.
Diving deeper into her requirements, Caitlin realized she needed a way:
- To thoroughly assess candidates and keep the insights in-house.
- For candidates to show their whole selves.
- To extend her capacity as a recruiter.
- To not overspend
Pricing out an agency, she estimated it would have cost well over $50,000 in fees to hire 8-12 junior roles. On top of that, an agency would own the candidate experience.
“Something that was always a concern of introducing an agency is that someone else is the face of your business and relaying that employer brand, and sometimes it can get lost in translation,” said Caitlin.
Realizing an agency actually wouldn’t fit their needs and was the more expensive option, Caitlin and Matt looked at different video interview platforms to see if they could help save her time. However, she also needed a Teamtailor integration to ensure she didn’t have any manual copy-paste or download-upload work.
After reviewing a couple of different platforms, Caitlin and Matt chose Willo because of its seamless ATS integration, affordable pricing, and easy-to-use platform.
“We didn't have to change anything,” said Caitlin. “Willo didn't change any of our processes other than [replacing CV screens with Willo video interviews], but we could fully monitor that stage and personalize it.”
Recruiting with Willo: 900 applicants and 10 hires in 1.5 months
After getting set up with Willo, Caitlin used the platform in the early stages of their recruiting process. Candidates would apply, Caitlin would read their resumes, and then Willo interviews took the place of an initial phone screen.
One initial concern Caitlin had was that video interviews would make the process feel robotic. However, she found Willo’s introductory video feature made that problem disappear—she could introduce herself to candidates and explain the whole process so there was always a human element.
“It’s just a more modern way of communicating with candidates,” said Caitlin.
Here are the stats from Lunio’s 1.5-month recruiting drive for Sales and junior support functions:
- Lunio received nearly 900 applications for its Sales Development Rep, Support Analyst, IT Coordinator, and People Coordinator roles.
- After reviewing resumes, Caitlin invited 94 people to interview via Willo.
- 84 people completed Willo video interviews, meaning an interview completion rate of 89.3%.
Of the 84 candidates who completed interviews, Caitlin was able to fill her talent needs–hiring seven SDRs and one person for each support role.
“I genuinely could not have grown the team as quickly and successfully as I have without using Willo,” said Caitlin.
She also said she loves Willo’s analytics and admin features, which showed her some of the background positive impacts:
- During this process, Caitlin saved approximately 30 minutes per candidate by replacing candidate screens with Willo video interviews—and noticed that she got to know candidates better with video compared to phone calls.
- Compared to agency quotes, Caitlin estimates Lunio saved over $50,000 by using Willo.
Caitlin also loved that she could own the candidate experience. This not only was important from a Lunio brand perspective but also because Caitlin could see 100% of the little details.
“I can’t assess if a candidate is going to be memorable or not based on an agency recruiter telling me,” said Caitlin. “But I can using Willo.”
Next steps
As Lunio continues to grow its team, Caitlin sees Willo as a valuable tool for her and future team members. And now that they realized they can save time while keeping recruiting in-house, they are able to focus the money they might have spent on an agency elsewhere to grow the business.
“We assess on culture-add and what this person is going to add to the business,” said Caitlin. Agencies assess on culture fit because they’re only able to assess what I tell them to. Not that I can’t tell them what to look for, but it might not be there until someone drops it in front of me. You just get so much more value from Willo in that sense.”