How OfferZen increases your hiring team’s capabilities
For growing SaaS companies, hiring a world-class team of engineers to build your product can give you an edge on competitors that makes all the difference.
TROOP is a meeting planning platform that helps companies plan, book, and manage their meetings and events. At the end of 2021, TROOP was faced with the challenge of hiring talented developers quickly in their focus areas of South Africa, Spain and other parts in Europe, after securing their Series-A funding. Having recently secured their Series B funding, they’re now looking to further expand their global presence and product roadmap.
OfferZen Account Manager, Robin Christian, sat down with the hiring team at TROOP to discuss how OfferZen helped them achieve a 300% company growth rate.
Check out the full case study here!
Addressing TROOP’s hiring challenges
Growing the team
When TROOP secured $8m (€7.3m) in Series A funding in 2021, they had the exciting challenge of rapidly growing their business and the product’s capabilities. This coincided with their initial expansion across Europe and the US. In 2023, they secured $11million (€10m) in Series B funding to invest in their global expansion.
They achieved a growth rate of over 300% by scaling their team from 6 to 40 people by the end of 2022. Since then, they’ve grown to 50 employees in 2023. Roughly 70% of this growth occurred within their tech teams.
“OfferZen played a vital role in this growth by providing more than half of our tech team hires,” says Jono Coetzee, Talent Acquisition Lead at TROOP.
Reducing hiring costs with OfferZen’s subscription
TROOP hires globally and operates fully remotely — their chosen hiring solution had to give them access to tech talent from multiple regions.
“OfferZen has helped us hire engineers from other European regions, for example Italy and Romania. The subscription model has reduced our cost to hire quite significantly. Our return on investment was over €20K. That kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” says Jono.
Want to start saving on hiring costs and make unlimited developer hires at a flat rate? On an OfferZen subscription plan, you can make unlimited developer hires at a flat annual cost, and avoid paying individual, varying hiring fees for every hire. Learn more
Finding the right candidates
Beyond saving on their hiring budget, TROOP is selective when it comes to sourcing tech talent — finding candidates matching their culture and technical requirements is crucial to them:
“We need people that are experienced enough to hit the ground running in the startup world, where you’re often still building the plane while flying,” said Jono.
“At TROOP, we are innovators who embrace cutting-edge technology. Legacy systems have no place here. Our culture is deeply rooted in the African philosophy of ubuntu — finding like-minded individuals who resonate with this concept is crucial to us. We are at the forefront of transforming the meeting industry. Already, we’re assisting some of the world’s largest Fortune 100 companies. As we continue to grow, we are hiring individuals who are eager to be part of this incredible opportunity.”
On OfferZen, TROOP were able to find developers who were excited about their mission:
“Software developers are on OfferZen for the right reasons: They’re keen to see what’s out there and whether an opportunity ticks all of their boxes. This means we get to engage with people serious about looking for new opportunities. We’ve been extensively successful with our offer to acceptance rate on OfferZen.”
In comparison to competitor hiring platforms, OfferZen also helped TROOP quickly find all the information they need on candidates with upfront profile details. And with the help of Account Managers, they were able to foster more meaningful relationships with developers from the get-go.
The importance of speed and efficiency in hiring
Given how competitive it remains to hire developers, it’s essential to any hiring team to streamline their tech hiring process and save as much time as possible. To achieve this, TROOP were able to leverage several product features on OfferZen and make their process more efficient:
“The platform is user-friendly and allows you to narrow down your search for the ideal candidates,” says Jono. “The addition of the new “must have” and “nice-to-have” filtering options has significantly improved search results”.
“This feature has been a big help when filtering to find the best candidates that match our non-negotiable tech-stack requirements. On top of this, finding new candidates is simple and fast.”
To track the success of their hiring process, TROOP relies on OfferZen’s in-platform analytics and Account Manager’s support. “It allows us to gain insights about where we are doing well and what we need to work on, too,” says Jono.
For other members of their hiring team, the ability to integrate their ATS, Workable, as well as the calendar features have saved them time when hiring:
“Having all the candidate’s information upfront in terms of availability in the calendar and being able to directly book a meeting with them is a huge advantage. There’s less delay in waiting to schedule the first call,” says Antonieta Hurtado, Talent Acquisition Specialist at TROOP. “That’s a huge feature I’m really enjoying at the moment.”
Hands-on support with candidates
The tech hiring market often sees developers being bombarded with messages, making connecting with talented candidates much harder. In this landscape, OfferZen Account Managers can give hiring teams personalised feedback to improve the candidate experience, by collaborating with each developer’s personal Talent Advisor behind the scenes. This level of support stood out to TROOP when scaling their tech team:
“It’s been incredible, and one of the main reasons OfferZen is so successful in my opinion. You really have that trust relationship, on both sides. You get great insights on any candidate updates. From both sides, there’s really that sense of going above and beyond to ensure a good candidate experience,” says Jono.
The results
OfferZen has helped TROOP hiring 16 developers to date, across South Africa and Europe:
“OfferZen has been a vital partner in TROOP’s growth since day one,” Jono adds. “Building a strong core team is critical for any high-growth start-up, and OfferZen has been instrumental in helping us achieve that goal. We are excited to further strengthen our partnership and work collaboratively as we aim to double our growth this year!”
The TROOP team
Are you hiring software developers? OfferZen is a curated developer hiring marketplace that connects job-seeking developers with exciting opportunities at over 2000 companies in South Africa and beyond.
Hiring teams can make unlimited hires across all the roles on OfferZen, saving up to 50% compared to traditional recruitment costs.
