Mast Reforestation
How a small startup scaled from 3 employees to 18 team members with a limited budget and without a internal recruiting team.
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Seattle, WA
Industry
Environmental Technology
Size
Startup: 20 employees
IQTalent Hires
12
Length of Engagement
18 Months
Services
Consulting, Employment Branding, Research, Sourcing
Roles
Hardware Engineers, Software Engineers, UAS Operators
The Company
Mast Reforestation works in post-fire environments to plant native trees and vegetation using drone swarms and spray to protect them. Mast Reforestation is FAA approved and serves all 50 states. The company is approved to use drone swarms to deliver agricultural payloads such as herbicides, fertilizer and water. Mast Reforestation is the only company in the US approved to fly unmanned aircraft over 55 pounds. Clients include governments, nonprofits, and private landowners.
The Challenge
Time management and budget: The founders of Mast Reforestation needed to scale the business to keep up with growing demand but did not have the time to search for new employees, review resumes, or conduct interviews. Further, as a startup, the budget was limited. Without more staff, their growth would become stagnant. The founders had no experience in hiring, matching salary expectations with candidate experience or in creating a candidate profile that matched their most important qualifications.
The IQTalent Solution
The IQTalent on-demand model matched the budget and hiring needs of Mast Reforestation exactly. We immediately assembled a team of consultants to bridge the gap between Mast Reforestation management and job candidates. Our experienced consultants became the virtual Mast Reforestation talent acquisition department and quickly created candidate profiles and refined the job descriptions. By leveraging our research technology and candidate database, we rapidly mapped salary expectations and began filling the candidate funnel.
IQTalent was a phenomenal choice for us as a startup.
IQTalent was a phenomenal choice for us as a startup. IQTalent was able to scale up when we needed it and scale down when we didn't, maximizing our capital versus having a full-time in-house HR person.
CEO
Mast Reforestation took full advantage of the innovative IQTalent on-demand model
They increased their consulting hours when they needed an important role filled immediately and decreased the hours, or turned off the service entirely, when hiring needs slowed. They controlled their costs by managing the search hours on a weekly basis.
The IQTalent consultants quickly found experienced, high-quality candidates who matched Mast Reforestation’s culture and mission, creating an effective cost per hire and an average time-to-hire of under 45 days per role.
Grant Canary, CEO of Mast Reforestation, said, “Our relationship with our engagement leader was great. We have a very specific hiring process, and the IQTalent team was able to become a part of it rapidly and scale the process with us. The team was excellent at understanding what is important to us in candidates and experienced at reading people effectively, so our candidate funnel was of much higher quality than what we could have created on our own. I trust the team completely, knowing the candidates they send would not only be qualified but also fit our mission.”
