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Overwhelmed by ambitious hiring KPIs? Merita Ramadani’s success story of hiring 245 in just a year gives you an inside scoop into the secrets behind meeting OKRs while supporting sustainable company growth.

What you’ll learn:

Strategies for scaling talent acquisition: learn about the importance of building a talent acquisition team before deep-diving into the hiring process and the key traits to look for when building your hiring team.
Ways to empower team members during hypergrowth: discover the value of providing support and opportunities for employee development during the process.
How to get teams to operate smoothly as it grows: learn how to set up processes that support a streamlined work environment.

1. Build first, operate later

In an ideal world, if you’re presented with a daunting OKR% growth goal, you’d have the time to bring new people in first, and then work together as a larger team later. This will allow you to deep-dive into the requirements for the hiring process.

Basically, it’s the time to plan, collaborate with the finance team, and create specific formulas to determine talent acquisition needs.

“If you have the time to plan, or you know that the company is going to close a big round of funding, spend that time speaking with external recruiters, understanding growth requirements and the roles that need to be filled, so when the time to grow comes the team can hit the ground running”.

Merita Ramadami

VP of People

Pro tip: Foresee hiring requirements and consider the hiring process before getting started.

2. 3 team traits to look out for

#1 They need to be willing to get their hands dirty

Growing is all about trial and error, which is why no one in the team should be afraid of doing things.

#2 They have to be metrics driven

People teams need to run like a product team because every decision that people teams make will affect the entire business.

#3 They need to be adaptable

Things are constantly changing in startups. One day you need to hire 10 people. The next day you realize the numbers weren’t right and you need to hire 50. So instead, people should focus on the goal, even if it changes.

“Once it’s time to grow, who you choose to help you grow in your talent acquisition team will have a direct impact on the success of every department”.

Merita Ramadami

VP of People

Pro tip: Hire hands-on, natural leaders who are output and goal driven.

3. Give employees opportunities to grow with you

As teams grow, managerial responsibilities are naturally going to grow too. One of Merita’s initiatives was to introduce an onboarding buddy program to ensure that new hires felt supported and connected with their team members from different locations. The people that did well in the onboarding buddy program actually ended up being managers later on.

“It sounds simple, but building an onboarding buddy-like program is going to help people feel supported. By having someone from one country onboard someone from a different country to make sure they got to know each other, a company can also avoid silos in the business where different countries were onboarding each other”.

Merita Ramadami

VP of People

This helps everyone grow professionally, because not only are people focusing on getting their job done, but also on building a team and discussing what they’ve achieved so far.

Pro tip: Introduce schemes that both support new hires and empower existing ones to reassure the benefits of the team’s growth.

4. Train trainers sooner rather than later

Training managers earlier on and finding ways to support them to manage team members more effectively will have a direct impact on the productivity and wellbeing of all team members – so doing it earlier is better in the long run.

“The number one thing that we could have done better is training managers earlier. Bringing in more management training from an earlier point, not as late as we did. It’s never too late, because training is training. But it’s still very important.”

Merita Ramadami

VP of People

A smart way to roll out training is to do so as if it were a product launch: through phases. This way different pieces of training can be tested in smaller cohorts before the company-wide rollout. It’s also a more effective way of gathering feedback from employees and less time-intense because training can happen in rotation.

Pro tip: Consider training managers earlier on to ensure both growing teams and new managers are adequately supported.

5. Let your culture grow with you

Although there are fundamental values that remain from day one, culture is in constant growth. There is not one person who owns culture. In fact, everyone owns it!

New hires will come with their own expertise, backgrounds and perspectives. With that said, it is likely that the needs of employees will change with new additions. For example, at Merita’s latest role, they realized that a lot of people had different expectations because different countries have different benefit set ups.

Pro tip: Set a flexible benefits approach that comprises a baseline of benefits alongside localized benefits to embrace cultural change.

6. Lean on others for a better outcome

“Acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers. It’s really important that you surround yourself with people that have done this before. No one should ever be afraid to go onto LinkedIn, find people that are inspiring and reach out”.

Merita Ramadami

VP of People

One of Merita’s career approaches has been to seek out mentorships. In fact, she is now dedicated to giving back to the community herself. You can reach out to her personally through LinkedIn. And for those seeking some extra reading time, some of her book recommendations include:

Scaling for Success by Brad Harris
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
The Soul of Startups by Sophie Theen
Redefining HR by Lars Schmidt

Pro tip: If you haven’t done something before, ask more experienced people what they would do. Gather three different possible solutions before choosing a direction.

TO SUM UP

Merita Ramadani's journey in scaling up companies with rapid growth provides a wealth of valuable insights and lessons for any competitive VP of People or talent acquisition professional aiming for significant expansion. Her emphasis on collaboration, planning, nurturing team dynamics, and continuous learning serves as an inspiring blueprint for others seeking to achieve extraordinary growth while maintaining a strong company culture.