Case Studies

Mystic, Connecticut

Enko

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One of the most difficult challenges for growing tech startups is finding skilled people who can help push the business forward. Read on to see how one hyper-growth startup leveraged CI’s support to reach its hiring goals.

Beyond Funding: When Investors and Startups Become Talent Allies

The Challenge

Mystic-based Enko discovers and develops novel products that help farmers protect their crops from pests and disease. After completing a series C raise, the company found itself with a “massive amount” of roles to fill in several areas, including R&D, human resources, project management, facilities management, software engineering, and marketing and communications.

The Solution

After learning about the human resources support that Connecticut Innovations offers, the team at Enko contacted the VC for help. Bo Bradstreet, CI’s talent acquisition director, met with the company’s leadership team, including CEO Jacqueline Heard, to discuss Enko’s commercialization plan and timing, strategic priorities and investment plan, as well as the company’s culture and people needs.

Bradstreet learned that the Enko team had two related goals: to hire quality employees and to improve the company’s interview and recruiting process.

After the initial meeting, Bradstreet partnered closely with Enko’s talent manager, Michaela Motta, to build out a new recruiting infrastructure and manage the day-to-day recruiting process. He helped Motta enhance the candidate experience by creating consistent and compelling job description templates, by developing branding assets that answered the question “Why Enko?” and by creating more frequent touchpoints throughout the hiring process. To help ensure that the company was making competitive offers, the CI and Enko team reviewed and leveraged data from compensation surveys.

Beyond supporting numerous direct placements, Bo would play a pivotal role in identifying, selecting and managing top-tier recruiters for niche science roles, further augmenting the company’s reach.

The Outcome

Bo’s support proved transformative for Enko, yielding tangible benefits in terms of time and cost savings, and, most important, quality hires. The company grew its headcount by 50 percent in just over a year.

what they said...

“Without Bo’s help we likely would have had to spend time vetting recruiters for these roles and then managing those relationships,” said Enko’s talent manager, Michaela Motta. “We likely would have spent more money and, even worse, not have received the quality candidates that Bo recruited and vetted for us.”

Need help with your people strategy? CI can help you:

save time and resources

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save money

Leverage CI’s expertise, vast network and talent infrastructure before considering the use of external recruiting firms, or leverage CI’s preferred recruiting firms at reduced fees.

find quality hires

Work with a partner who understands your needs and can conduct targeted searches for your business.

enhance efficiency

Fill hard-to-find roles more quickly.