Cheers to 1 Year of Being A Part of The TurboHire Growth Story

TurboHire, or home — I am not sure which one sounds more appropriate :)

Hello reader! I am Dhrishni Thakuria, Associate Director of Marketing at TurboHire. It’s been an extraordinarily enlightening and tumultuously growing 1 year in this organization for me today, as I write this celebratory article. I cannot begin to fathom the starting point of this journey but bear with me, as I intuitively pen down my thoughts …

tl;dr

Inception

August 2020 was when I got in touch with Aman Gour, co-founder & Chief Product Officer at TurboHire, while I was actively job-hunting after 1 year-long period of freelancing, plus 5 years of carrying out a career in Content Marketing. Freelancing, as I have realized, is an out-of-focus, misty picture to me because of one infectious reason: discipline. I failed to maintain monotony in my work-life balance (abhorrently yes, monotony is good). Thankfully, as I got acquainted with the product and the idea behind it, it wonderfully fit into my game of thoughts for 3 reasons:

1. Talent Acquisition and Management is not a one-man army task. There are various stages and processes that come into the picture when an organization is hiring. You might walk in as a new employee, excited for your new job, but the recruiter might have gone through 100s of applicants before deciding to hire you. And that’s not all. It’s a time-consuming and costly affair too. It excited me to think about a product that could categorically automate every stage of hiring and provide an end-to-end hiring solution. And oh! the cherry on the cake (and as candidly as it could be), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI)? I told myself — that’s some new, estranged territory but exciting learning scope, girl!
2. I was looking for an opportunity where I could take ownership over things and build from scratch. Something that I could holistically contribute to and that would help me learn a lot more than I thought I was capable of. Push the boundaries higher up. Through the hiring rounds, I realized TurboHire’s Marketing plan, or may I be precise, Content Marketing strategy had to be put in place for the Product to become a brand. Secondly, the social media channels had to be revamped. Thirdly, the content on the website needed a fresh dose of life. Fourthly, the newsletters had to come out of the dormant state (to begin with). It was a goldmine of an opportunity because the level of challenge and difficulty was going to be pretty high. But on the prospective side, it would also mean a great learning opportunity.
3. It’s easier to be in a big team for an established brand knowing whom to allocate what tasks, having resources and collaterals available, having already accomplished brand advocates, and having a more-than-ambitious team to brainstorm with. My team was going to be small with limitations but my dreams were big and that gave me an adrenaline rush. Things get eerily challenging (read: fun) when you wipe the slate clean and give a fresh start.

Curating all the above points in my head, I decided to set sail on the TH boat.

The Embryo Stage

“Content is going to be your baby! Take full ownership and give your best.”

Those words rang a thousand bells in my head. They were the words from Aman, who helped me significantly with the Marketing efforts of TurboHire until early 2021, post which he started focusing on the Partnership and Strategy plans of TurboHire along with the overall Product. I will forever be grateful for the kind of trust he showed in me. It was a great motivating factor. Before I could grasp the realm of things and the endeavor to scale it, I was on it. The feeling was quite satisfying that I could be trusted upon with crucial responsibilities.

September 2020 was when I joined TurboHire. In the initial few weeks, I started creating a plan and branching out the various channels we could begin with to put the Marketing plan in place. My first strategy as a newbie Content Marketing Specialist in the organization (and quite excited at that! :D) was to get the social media engine and content resources on the website running.

My Hulk-moment (pun intended) was when I realized,

1. Our LinkedIn handle, which is our primary social channel, had approximately 500 followers, and our secondary social channel Instagram had approximately 100 followers. It was doable to start fresh.
2. In context to resources, we had some 25 blogs and an eBook on the website, giving an understanding that the website resources were going to be no less than Noah’s Ark in the making.

Astonighly scary as I think of it now, but I did create my first Content Marketing plan on a Google Document — it was crap. I created and created some more until one of those sketchy documents did start making sense to work upon. Thankfully, I was introduced to tools such as Hubspot, AHrefs, SEMrush to make life convenient.

The next few months were a stem-winding roller coaster ride.

The Cell Maturation Stage

October 2020 was when I created my first newsletter and had the first eBook published. I had not one clue on how to write, design, and generate a newsletter via Hubspot. The exact word count was 155 but it took me 3 hours to be very sure about the content. One great learning here was also knowing how to categorize contact lists and knowing what emails to send to whom. It would be dampening all efforts if I was to send a newsletter meant for Subscribers to Customers and vice versa. Do you get my point? All I knew was the newsletter had to be perfect. Luckily, it was liked. And I got hooked to creating more thereafter, to be honest, a lot more. While I am not into using jargon too often just because I am acquainted with it, some Marketers call this Account-based Marketing — marketing based on account/contact-type awareness.

November 2020 was when TurboHire got its first round of funding. What ran in the backyard was the preparation for a post-PR marketing campaign. It was a milestone moment for all and it had to be executed in all its grandiosity. Aforementioned, we are a small (but ambitious) team, and almost overnight I along with a bunch of folks in the team got together to set the guns blazing across every channel where we had even the remotest presence. From preparing blogs to brainstorming on the design collaterals, to sending out announcement emails across different contact directories, to announcing on social media — what I initially thought to be ‘just the usual marketing stuff’ was a lot to take on the plate. The best part about it? It was satisfying to see the results :)

Towards the end of the year our social channels and website work was racing to the newer horizon:

1. We had 1500+ followers on LinkedIn,
2. 500+ followers were recognizing our Instagram activities,
3. Our website was revamped with newer resources such as Comparison pages, Case studies, Annual Industry Reports,
4. Our blogs began ranking with keywords and we were curating guest blogs, internally,
5. Our newsletter subscribers were increasing by 43%
6. Our website had crossed 300,000 page views/month.

Aforementioned, Aman helped me a great deal in creating a vision for the Marketing and Branding of TurboHire. The one line from him that always stays in my head through turbulence is,

“Nobody wakes up to be a bad person” — Aman Gour

Through our various rounds of debates, discussions, and brainstorming one thing became very clear that in the end, what really matters is what you bring to the table and what results they show. And the results were starting to show steadfast growth.

The Fetal Stage

January 2021 was when the Marketing team was graced with Shoan Shinde, who is the Marketing Director at TurboHire.

In a journey, if you are lucky enough, you meet a pathfinder who set the roadmap out for you. You know the road is right, you just need the right direction. You might, if blessed, chance upon this person who can give you that direction. That’s a brief about how you can project Shoan for me and the entire Marketing Team at TurboHire.

ISB alumni and with 10+ years of experience in Marketing, we are blessed to have Shoan with us. Under his guidance, our marketing efforts became even more organized and radically shifted to valuing the need for documentation of processes (from docs and bland excels to colorful sheets and reports).

March 2021 was when we shifted from creating monthly plans to quarterly planning, meaning 3 months of planning. It was a big leap. In the initial few weeks, I was unsure if I would be able to live up to expectations. When you have someone directing you and you need to submit regular reports and updates, things start to take shape but it’s very important to keep everything timely organized, reviewed, and reorganized. It’s a never-ending process but it was about time we began it. With having a Marketing Director now, things began scaling up incessantly not only on an organizational level within the team but also in terms of execution.

I was thrilled and anxious if I could live up to expectations but I knew we were going to be doing great things under Shoan’s guidance.

The Birth of a Brand

2nd Quarter 2021 is when you can say the Branding engine at TurboHire was born.

• We had a Marketing plan in place for the quarter because of the plannings we have been documenting in the previous quarter.
• Our campaigns shifted from targeting user personas to knowing our niche audience.
• We were now going global, and the tone of voice and brand personality had to have a global standard as well.
• Our social media engagements became more consistent and regular.
• We began doing more A/B testings to analyze what was working for us and what is not.
• There was a demand for more resources to be created and we began clustering as many knowledge-based and user-engaging resources as we could.

Without boring you with numbers, in a nutshell, we now had a design-thinking and user-centric Marketing team and we were ready to push our branding efforts to the next level.

A Growing Marketing Engine

3rd Quarter 2021 was when our small Marketing Team became a slightly bigger one. Our bigger dreams were now becoming constraining for the team, so we had to hire.

This was when Pansy and Anant Mishra joined the team and became my too-good-to-be-true support system. When you think about interns, you might wonder how the training process has been going, right? Bible, they are doing commendable work and are extremely cooperative. I thank both of them for being responsive and giving wings to the plans I had in the making for the team.

None of this, of course, would be possible without Shoan. But can you see how the allocation of responsibility has passed on super-smoothly? The core of this smooth sailing is Trust, from both ends > that reflects in easier communication > that goes on to reflect in the tasks undertaken > that reflects in response to deadlines > that further reflects in the results.

I am teary-eyed as I write this but I have witnessed this team grow in leaps and bounds. Not saying, we have established it for ourselves but we have come far enough to realize there has been steady growth.

I would like to complement Pansy and Anant for the dedication they have shown, thus far. The willingness to learn is what gets me eager to communicate with them and groom them to the best of my abilities. With this level of commitment, I am confident they have kick-started their careers on a high note. Let me give a brief introduction of these 2 wonderful colleagues:

• Pansy is our Content Marketing Intern, who assists me in all of the content work. She’s also a great helping hand in our secondary social media handles such as Twitter and Pinterest. One of the most trustworthy and responsible colleagues I have managed so far, Pansy is a hustler! A Computer Science Engineer in the making, Marketing is something she wants to pursue going forward.
• Anant is our Communication Design Intern, who helps me visualize the brand’s social media efforts. All collaterals that you see across our social media platforms since the last couple of months have been created by him. He has a great sense of vision and with his commitment and generous efforts to ensure that he puts his best foot forward, he has a bright future ahead of him.

In the current scheme of events, here are some statistics to throw light upon how far the Marketing Team at TurboHire has come:

1. 60k monthly new users to the website,
2. 3800+ followers on LinkedIn, garnering on an average 75k impressions,
3. 2000+ followers on Instagram,
4. 1400+ Newsletter Subscribers and counting,

Additionally, we create new resources on a quarterly basis. Some of the most noticeable one’s are:

1. Annual Recruitment Reports (2020, 2021)
2. HR Toolkit
3. Recruitment Dictionary
4. Rachel & Bob — our comic strip characters
5. Extending/revamping social visibility to channels such as Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest.

There are a lot more in the making. The one thing to be satisfied with about the team here is that we have created and witnessed organic growth with our Marketing efforts so far, or what is popularly called Zero-cost Marketing. And I feel proud to say, the efforts conducted have burnt no hole in the Marketing budget.

Our branding exercise is a religion the team abides by, for only one reason: “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room” (Jeff Bezos). And I want TurboHire’s branding journey to be a worthy of telling story that unfolds across all customer touch points.

Every stage of this journey has been eventful for me and oh boy! what a great learning experience. What began as an effort to learn as much as I can on the go became some sort of self-proving effort to keep growing and growing like there’s never going to be an end to getting better than before.

3 Value-Addition to My Life, Working at TurboHire

1. Consistency

One has to be consistent with one’s efforts. Rome was not built in a day. Similarly, nothing worthwhile will be achieved if the efforts and learning are not consistent. This is directly implied in our Marketing vs Branding efforts.

Marketing is what we do on a daily basis, but the output of consistent Marketing is what becomes Branding.

The same goes for life. The by-product of consistency becomes a habit.

2. Learning

Learning never stops. TurboHire has taught me to grab any learning opportunity, at any given chance. A lot of the things I have learned here have been opportunistic. The situation demanded that I learn and execute and it helped me imbibe a great deal of wisdom in life. I joined TurboHire as a Content Marketer but my thirst to keep learning has, by God’s will and my team’s faith, helped me become a Digital Marketer today. But that’s not enough either. Because no amount of knowledge will ever be enough.

Thanks to TurboHire for teaching me that it is important to keep learning as much as possible so that we grow old to become wise(r).

3. With Power Comes Great Responsibility

When you get ownership, no matter that is for a single project, team management, or strategy — you are not just taking responsibility but you are also accountable for the results of it. TurboHire taught me that to thrive, and not just survive in any industry, one must always have prepared for the future. One must always focus on not just present but keep an eye on the bigger picture. This trait in our lifestyle is imperative if we want to become the next big fish in the market.

If you are happy being a manager who just assigns tasks to the team, then it is time to start broadening your perspective.

In my closing lines, I would like to thank everyone at TurboHire for believing in me and always encouraging me to go above and beyond. I hope I have been able to live up to expectations. It is imperative that you all continue to place your trust in me because “TurboHire is a beautiful picture in the making”. And I am glad to be a part of the team preparing the driving wheel. I hope and wish that I get to celebrate many more years with TurboHire.

— Good wishes and warm regards, Dhrishni ‘Dee’ Thakuria aka The Hulk ;)