How we helped Starling scale their engineering team by 225%

person icon
225%
Growth of engineering team
timer icon
£184,766
Saved vs. agency model
star icon
10.39%
Effective rate
Headquartered in London, Starling Bank is a digital, mobile-only challenger bank that focuses on current and business account products. Founded in 2014, the company has since raised £363 million in backing and was voted “Best British Bank” three years running from 2018 to 2020.
Download Case Study

Talentful really allowed us to shift the goalposts for what was achievable. More than doubling the size of our engineering team in the space of a year unlocked previously out of reach opportunities, whilst the foundations and training put in place by the Talentful team meant it wasn’t just a short-lived spike of growth for us.

Becci Freeman
People Business Partner

The Challenge

Before partnering with Talentful, Starling Bank was entirely reliant on agencies and direct applications for new hires. Candidates were managed through the hiring process by a variety of people from differing teams, creating large inefficiencies in between stages. While the hiring process wasn’t completely broken, Starling’s agency spend was high, and focus was being pulled away from growing the Engineering team and other high priority areas of the business.

In September, the focus of Engineering hiring shifted to Starling’s Southampton office. This created the added challenge of a more limited pool of candidates and reinforced the need to approach talent in a more tailored and personalized way.

  • steps icon
    Reliance on agency hires
  • talentful icon
    Disjointed hiring process owned by multiple different teams
  • magnifying glass icon
    Challenging location for hiring technical roles

The Solution

Two of our Talent Partners joined Starling Bank’s team onsite for 12 months to help hire a minimum of 40 engineers, scaling their engineering function from 60 to 100 people.

During this time, our talent experts centralized Starling’s hiring function and established a more formal headhunting approach with quick success. Talentful trained the in-house team to ensure sustainable results from the partnership and provided up-to-date documentation on best-practice hiring.

  • Headhunting approach
  • Training for in-house team
  • Creation of documentation

The Result

Over a 12 month partnership with Starling Bank, Talentful delivered against an initial target of increasing the Engineering team from 60 to 100. When this target was amended to 120, Talentful once again surpassed it, ultimately leaving Starling with 135 engineers in total (225% team growth across the project).

On top of this, the Talentful team was able to deliver training to the in-house team, provide valuable documentation for future success and host three tech events to raise Starling’s profile. Over the course of the project, Starling Bank saved £184,766 vs. traditional agency models and enjoyed an effective rate of 10.39%.

  • person icon
    225% growth of engineering team
  • timer icon
    £184,766 saved vs. agency model
  • star icon
    10.39% effective rate

Are you ready to join the Talentful revolution?

Get in touch today and find out how we can help

Recommended for you

5 Key Tech Recruiting Challenges (And How To Overcome Them)
Agency, RPO & In-House Recruitment: A Comprehensive Comparison
7 Talent Acquisition Trends That Will Define 2023