Lauren Pritchard, one of our newest Leadooers, shares her experience of the recruitment and onboarding process at Leadoo Marketing Technologies 💙
This is going to be some journey, so make yourself a cuppa and settle in for story time ☕
How did you get here?
Picture the scene. It was an overcast, dreary Wednesday in a small countryside village in Hertfordshire, England. I had just got in from a long day of teaching secondary school pupils. I crashed out on my bed, still fully clothed and with my shoes on, and found myself deep in the Instagram rabbit hole. As I scrolled, I came across an advert which I had seen a few times and had previously piqued my interest with it’s bright colours and casual tone of voice. So, instead of scrolling past, I clicked the Apply Now button. I only did it out of curiosity; to read a bit more about the role and this company whose blue-splashed, emoji-filled ads had been shouting in my face across my social feeds.
I scrolled down, and before I realised what had happened, I’d filled out my details in the recruitment bot. The conversation started really casually and it was super easy for me to pick options to interact with the bot. Curiosity, if nothing more, kept me clicking, until eventually the bot, satisfied with my answers, provided me with the ability to book in an initial chat with someone called Jemmi. I found my perfect slot (a Friday, if I remember rightly), sat back and took a breath. I felt good – I had been shortlisted for a role with this company. I started looking into Leadoo Marketing Technologies more, to prepare myself. I quickly realised this was a pretty cool, expanding tech company where there would be lots of opportunity to grow and develop my skills.
And me? I was sold, like prized beef at the meat market. 🐮
Meeting day arrives and I’m not sure what to expect. Nerves were chewing at my insides like mice in a barn but as soon as Jemmi appeared she made me feel instantly comfortable. Her calm but bouncy attitude was refreshing, and the interview felt more like coffee with an old friend. To my surprise, the questions weren’t so much about my experience as they were about my attitude, personality and opinions on company culture. I realise now that that is much more important. Experience can be gained – not everyone is a good fit for a team, and when you want a team to be top of their game, they have to gel.
Me and my new team? We gel. More about that in a bit though.
At the end of the meeting, Jemmi told me she’d like to take me to the next stage. Knots in my tummy, I nervously nodded along as she provided me with the brief for my recruitment task. I opened it up and breathed a sigh of relief. A blog post. Light work, I thought. I started scanning through Leadoo’s existing blogs to get a flavour of their tone and brand, and to grasp some level of understanding of the product, too. I spent a whole day researching backlinks and jotting down ideas so I could create a blog that would impress.
I submitted my blog on Monday, and waited nervously for a response. I didn’t have to wait long – Jemmi sent me feedback within hours of receiving it, and thankfully it went the way I had hoped. The time spent researching and building had paid off, and now I had two stages left to pass; one more written task, and a meeting with a mysterious man named Santtu. 🕵
The second written task was a planning task, which didn’t take me too much time as it was a basic outline which I then needed to explain to Santtu and Jemmi. I prepped my content plan and was ready to explain and justify with all of the nerves bundled in my tummy. Again, as soon as they appeared on screen, both Jemmi and Santtu made me feel really comfortable and the reception was warm and friendly all the way through. It certainly helped get the best out of me!
After those meetings, I had a final meeting with Jemmi, where she offered me the role and I excitedly accepted. Now all I had to do was make it to the end of my (hopefully!) last school year with about 6 weeks to go. In those 6 weeks, Jemmi kept in contact (not too much!) and let me know well in advance what the process would look like. A few weeks before I started, Laura, our fab HR person, got in touch to send through my contracts (all helpfully done digitally!) and to arrange delivery of my Leadoo gear. A few weeks later, a shiny MacBook Air was delivered to my door, ready for me to start. Now for the waiting game.
All aboard the Leadoo Bus 🚌
After a nice two week break, my first day rolled around. Jemmi had already, in her usual organised fashion, sent my logins to me, so I was in and ready for my first meeting at 8am. The first people I got to meet were my own team – a super marketing squad made up of curious marketers, creative graphic designers and innovative data wizards. And immediately, I noticed something about this crazy bunch; they were my kind of people. Turns out all those questions in my interviews about culture and attitude paid off, because the people in this team were totally on my wavelength; dedicated, fun-loving, and bloomin’ good at what they do.
It was still a pretty steep learning curve. 6 years in a totally different industry is plenty to make you feel out of touch and so I had to pick those ropes back up pretty quick. Acronyms and jargon everywhere, I’ve never used Google Search so much in all my life. But, I can look back and proudly say that 6 weeks later, I’m up to speed and jiving along with the rest of my team. My actual onboarding task list was made up of 40 different onboarding activities, from meeting with our Customer Success team to talk through their processes, to getting familiar with the backend of our own product, to meeting with our CEO Vesa (and just about everyone else, too!). 40 tasks sounds quite daunting, but we use a handy Asana board to keep track of our day-to-day and weekly tasks. It’s refreshingly organised.
Towards the end of week 2, when I had a much better grip of what was going on, I was assigned my first blog tasks to complete. The first was ‘why marketers should focus on conversions rather than just inbound/outbound, and the second was ‘why sales teams love conversions (and you should too!). I had so much fun researching, talking to my colleagues for hints and tips about the product, and being creative in my writing. As soon as those blogs were completed and published, I knew I’d made the right move. Content Management for the win.
Since then, I’ve been involved in lots of different projects, including our new and upcoming product (which is top secret right now, so I can’t tell you any more just yet…🕵) as well as an exciting website project, which will make you go *pop*, too.
Enjoyed my recruitment & onboarding story? Check out more of our other blogs, which contain lots of helpful information about a range of topics including conversion and conversion rate optimisation.
