Growing One of Berlin’s Most Exciting Tech Companies

Contentful is an API-first Content Management System (CMS) platform that lets developers and designers build innovative things

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About Contentful

Contentful is an API-first Content Management System (CMS) platform that lets developers and designers build innovative things — not just websites and apps, but the technology that powers virtual reality, cars, ships, the internet of things, and more. You name it, Contentful supports it. As the world realised the value of Contentful’s services, the demand for their product grew, and so did their recruitment needs.

The Value of Acelr8

Setting up the strategy and hiring world-class talent

Challenges that we faced while working with them varied a lot throughout the three years of our collaboration — from setting up their recruiting strategy to hiring world-class talent that fits into their unique and vibrant culture.

The Results

Growing the company

When Contentful and us kicked-off the collaboration in 2016, we sent two Talent Partners — Mark, and our Founder, Michael — with one more, Isabel, joining later. We helped the company through two pivotal stages of growth as they expanded from 15 to 150 people over the course of two years. Our service included:

  • Creating a talent acquisition strategy and hiring the TA team
  • Using a data-driven approach to optimise the cost-effectiveness of the hiring process
  • Giving advice on employer branding to increase inbound applications
  • Providing recruitment training for Contentful employees
  • Growing teams in engineering, sales and operations

1. Close collaboration between recruitment and engineering

One thing we were particularly proud of at Contentful was our efforts to encourage the engineering and recruitment teams to work together more closely. This meant that engineering managers were more hands-on and involved in the hiring process, allowing their hiring needs to be met faster and more effectively. We achieved this through training engineering managers on how to recruit effectively, giving them a better overall understanding of the recruitment process.

2. Growing teams across every department

Contentful used our services once again in the middle of 2019. This time, our Talent Partners Angela and Cait, helped the company in growing their teams in Sales, Customer Success, HR, Product, Engineering, and Marketing. At that time, Contentful already had over 200 people on board, but a recent Series D funding of $33.5 million allowed them to grow even further. They used the money to get their products into the hands of businesses that are less technical, including Marketers and Practitioners.

3. Growing the company by 20 people in 2019

Cait and Angela grew Contentful's team by another 20 people, including some key marketing roles. One of them was the Senior Product Marketing Manager, who was formerly a Head of Product Marketing at Bynder in Amsterdam.

4. Collaboration on recruiting events

Besides successes in hiring, Contentful took a big part in our series of events on scaling startups — Talking Talent. We had a chance to host two meetups in their Foobar as well as to have two speakers from the company presenting. One of the events was focused on how Engineers become Engineering Managers — something very close to Contentful’s technical product.

5. Impact of the company's growth through several stages

Contentful is one of the first companies we worked with since starting our operations in Berlin. We are proud that we had such a big impact on the growth of the company and we are looking forward to future opportunities to help them again.

Website
https://www.contentful.com/
Sector
Content Management
SaaS
Snapshot
In-house
Executive
Agency
Strategy
Expansion
Consultancy
Training