Six months at Street Group 🏡

Laura Whitworth

Published in

StreetGroup

5 min readFeb 16, 2021

Onboarding into a standalone role during a pandemic.

Laura! You’ve been at Street Group for 6 months, how’s the journey been so far?

It’s been a pretty crazy six months! I joined two weeks before lockdown started, so I got two weeks in the office getting to know the team, and I’ve been working from home ever since. When I joined, the goal was to double the team in 12 months, but as our customers (Estate Agents) got hit pretty heavily by the lockdown, it didn’t make much sense to be growing the team so quickly. When that happened, I started focusing on getting us ready to start hiring again. I created some recruitment PDFs with our UX Designer, found out what people processes we needed, implemented a new ATS, set up our Glassdoor page, refreshed our job ads, and worked on improving on our recruitment process. When the UK lockdown relaxed, the hiring picked up again, and from July — September, we’ve onboarded 11 new starters, taking us up to 43 people!

What does being a Head of Talent mean at Street Group?

Head of Talent at Street Group means looking after everything people related. There’s the talent part — hiring, working on creating some employer branding content, onboarding new starters, interview training, putting a structured hiring process in place, keeping in touch with past candidates, etc. Then there’s the HR & People Ops part — things like, progression planning, employee happiness surveys, competency frameworks, learning & development, improving performance reviews, supporting wellbeing initiatives, putting leadership support and coaching in place, working on an internal knowledge-based etc. It’s a busy job, but extremely rewarding!

How does working here compare to your previous jobs?

Before this, I mainly worked in teams of other recruiters focusing on hiring, so it’s quite different! Here I have a significant impact across a lot of different areas. I get to own things end to end, and shape how we do everything people-related. There’s a lot of trust from our co-founders and so many chances to make an impact.

What’s your favourite memory over the past 6 months?

One of the things that made me laugh out loud was when the team did the Getty Museum’s Recreation Contest. Our dev team lead recreated “The Birth of Venus”. I have a silly sense of humour, and that really tickled me because I wasn’t expecting it at all. Also (and I’m sure many other recruiters will attest to this) — when the new starters I’ve hired get shout outs. It makes me feel strangely proud of them.

Tell us about your biggest achievement since joining us.

I think one of the things I’m most proud of is hitting my Q3 hiring goals in the first five weeks of the quarter 😊 I get imposter syndrome sometimes, but achieving that goal so early in the quarter made me feel pretty good!

Is there such a thing as a typical day or week for you?

A typical week includes things like scheduling and taking part in interviews for teams across the business, giving feedback to candidates, working on other people related projects (things like employer branding with our marketing team or HR/L&D projects). It’s consistently busy, but I always feel like I’ve achieved a lot by the time Friday rolls around!

What’s one reason why you think someone should join us?

My top reason would be because there’s so much to do, and so much freedom and trust to get it done. I think this job is career-defining for me — I’ve never had as much impact as I’ve had here. If you like impact and autonomy, you’d like working here.

What’s one reason someone shouldn’t join us?

If what I mentioned above scared you! We’re still pretty small; what we can offer is the chance to shape and impact a business that’s super ambitious and is going to be very successful. If you like a formal or corporate environment, and lots and lots of processes, we’re probably not the place for you.

Has it been strange joining during a pandemic? How do you feel about working from home?

I love working from home. Before this, I lived abroad for 12 months. I was living apart from my husband & our two beagles, so it’s nice to be back — and getting to spend all this time with them! I’ve also got a lot more time and money now that I’m not commuting, so I’m spending both of them in doing some much-needed home renovation. The thing that I dislike most about working from home is not being able to have those social moments with my colleagues. Luckily, we’ve got an excellent team who try and make sure we’re still connecting — from using a Slack bot called Donut to have chats with random colleagues, to a remote cheese and wine night that we had.

What are you most excited about for the next 6 months?

What I’m most excited about is our new product launch, getting some people processes rolled out to give more structure around career progression, and to hit our hiring goals of doubling the company within 12 months. 💪

Who’s your favourite office dog?

The hardest question of the lot! I think it has to be Ringo, just because I used to sit next to his owner, so I got to spend the most time with him. One of our new employees just got a golden retriever puppy who is adorable too. But they’re all good dogs — look at them! 😍