StudentCrowd was started in 2014 by graduates frustrated with the lack of real and helpful information about key aspects of their student experience. StudentCrowd is a student review platform that allows students to broadcast their opinions on all things related to university life from accommodation and courses to jobs with the aim of helping prospective students make more informed decisions about their university experience.
StudentCrowd had been successful in their hiring to date but taking on venture funding marked a new phase in their team growth. It was time for them to find a trusted talent partner to help them scale and diversify their talent pool. That’s where ISL Talent came in.
Our success with RoleMapper led to a connection with Mercia, an investor who value our strong startup community presence.
This relationship resulted in referrals to Distil.ai and StudentCrowd. Mercia's £2.55 million investment in StudentCrowd, with a significant portion for talent acquisition, needed a reliable talent partner to facilitate their business growth.
After being referred, StudentCrowd’s Founders Paul and Pete met with Alan and Emily to discuss hiring plans. Paul and Pete wanted more than CVs. They wanted advice and support across all things talent, to help them plan the right hires and make sure they retained the great team that had got them to this point.
StudentCrowd chose to work with us on our Base_down product, which resulted in six successful hires across the three divisions of Sales, Marketing and Partnerships.
The Results
As well as recruiting six excellent hires, StudentCrowd also benefited from:
Solid support system
Our project kicked off way before the first CV was sent. We spent time with the founders to work on salary benchmarking, organisational chart planning and interview process design. Alan and Emily got to understand StudentCrowd and their culture, as well as carrying out research into the EdTech industry. The extensive work carried out pre-campaign launch meant that we were able to move quickly when the time was right, securing six outstanding candidates within three months.
The support continued throughout the process, and there were weekly meetings scheduled to keep StudentCrowd updated on the campaign’s progress as well as to consult them on any challenges.
Time efficiency
Management of the hiring process was all done by our Talent Partner, Emily, who filtered through over 1000 job applications to find only the best to put forward for interview. Equipping Emily with her own personal StudentCrowd email address meant that she was able to directly access the Hiring Manager’s diaries to book interviews, saving StudentCrowd a lot of time screening candidates and finding times for interview slots.
Team integration
One of the most successful elements of our campaign was going to market as StudentCrowd, rather than ISL Talent. When advertising and approaching candidates, Emily introduced herself as a member of StudentCrowd. This not only helped with getting StudentCrowd’s name out there, but it meant that we were able to attract the best and most relevant talent and get them connected with the brand at an early stage.
Bespoke marketing
A key part of our work with StudentCrowd was collaborating with them on a co-branded marketing campaign. As part of this, we built a bespoke microsite to showcase the business and allow prospective candidates to get to know StudentCrowd. To maximise reach, we also ran a co-branded campaign on our social media platforms in which we collected testimonials from StudentCrowd’s team to showcase their voices and bring the business to life.
An ongoing relationship
With six key roles filled, we’re proud to be continuing our support of StudentCrowd in 2024 and beyond.
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