How Orbital Witness used Otta to scale hiring with a single-person talent function

This was originally posted on Otta’s website here on May 8th, 2024.

“Seeing how we made our hires last year, it’s scary to think, what if we didn’t have Otta? If we were using other platforms or free job boards, it would have been really, really difficult to be in the position that we’re in today”

– Conrad Swift, Talent Acquisition Manager at Orbital Witness

Orbital Witness is on a mission to make property transactions radically more transparent, creating a world where anyone can understand property, in an instant.

To keep up with new product launches, the company needed to nearly double its headcount with only a single-person talent team in-house to help. With Otta, they were able to find top candidates efficiently while building the employer brand to stand out in the competitive hiring market.

Ultimately, this meant they could hit ambitious hiring targets while also ranking in the top 10% of most loved companies on Otta over the last 12 months.

Challenge: Scale the technical team

Faced with an exciting opportunity to transform the way the legal and real estate industries work, Orbital Witness successfully raised a £7.5M Series A funding round in May 2023.

Bringing together cutting-edge AI, deep legal expertise and insurance, Orbital Witness had bold and ambitious plans to release a number of new products to their property diligence automation platform. It quickly became essential to grow the technical team in order to achieve this and ultimately scale the business.

However, they faced challenges in engaging with the best tech talent in a notoriously competitive market. There was no internal talent function at the time and other hiring tools weren’t successfully getting their employer brand across to the right candidates, something that’s particularly essential for a mission-driven startup.

“Before using Otta, I dreaded the early stages of the hiring process as it was such a chore sourcing suitable candidates. Our hiring cycles have drastically reduced in length as the quality from Otta is a step change difference”

– Aisha Tummon, CRO at Orbital Witness

How Otta Helped: High quality matching, plus a focus on employer brand

Last year, the company’s single person talent team grew the business from 35 to 60 people, with a third of hires coming from Otta. A number of these were hard-to-fill roles, including a Tech Lead, Multiple Product Engineers and an AI Product Manager.

“We have hired some outstanding software engineers through Otta in the last 18 months. These individuals consistently demonstrate a deep understanding of software development principles and exhibit a strong passion for solving complex problems in a fast paced start-up; something that isn’t easy to find in candidates, but definitely needed when building solutions using the latest technologies”

– Andrew Thompson, CTO at Orbital Witness

Hiring was not just limited to the technical side of the business, Orbital Witness was also able to build out its Commercial function (expanding the Customer Success team, hiring Account Executives, and multiple BDRs).

“Otta is so efficient, which is super important. When you’re a startup, you can be pulled in all sorts of different directions, wearing lots of different hats.”

“Seeing how we made our hires last year, it’s scary to think, what if we didn’t have Otta? If we were using other platforms or free job boards, it would have been really, really difficult to be in the position that we’re in today”

– Conrad Swift, TA Manager at Orbital Witness

When sourcing candidates, the filters meant they could search for specific skills and take a more targeted approach than on other platforms.

“We’re very focused on what’s important when hiring and the talent & skills that we’re looking for. So being able to use those sourcing filters and be quite specific is really useful.”

– Conrad Swift, TA Manager at Orbital Witness

This targeted approach had great results, with a candidate response rate of 47% and approximately 1 out of 5 interviewed sourced candidates later being offered a position. It also meant they could move at speed to find and progress the right talent, with an engineering role being accepted in less than a month of the first message being sent.

Otta not only connected Orbital Witness to relevant candidates, it strengthened the employer brand. Working with a dedicated Customer Success Manager, they leaned into expert insights to make sure the company vision was clear and emphasised to candidates.

On top of this, the company took a candidate-first approach when hiring. This involved posting all salaries publicly on job descriptions, responding to every application within 2 weeks, and featuring multiple employee endorsements on their profile.

Combined, this meant Orbital Witness achieved “Otta Certification”, an accomplishment that is visible to candidates on their jobs. It’s evident the company stood out, ranking in the top 10% of most loved companies on Otta.

“One big thing for us as a company is that Otta allows us to display who we are as a business really well. Specifically our Otta Certification: this is a real testament to us being transparent as an employer and reflects how important candidate experience is to us! For us, the candidate experience starts before the candidate even applies”

– Conrad Swift, TA Manager at Orbital Witness

Meet a candidate hired by Orbital Witness through Otta

Clare had been searching for a job on Otta for three months before coming across Orbital Witness. It was the mission of the company and industry opportunity that got her most excited when deciding to apply for a sales role.

“Otta is unlike a lot of platforms out there, it’s super user friendly, concise in descriptions, transparent on benefits and company offerings and has a great mobile user experience for when on the go.

What was different with Orbital Witness versus other job postings was the sector in which the technology is looking to transform. Having worked with multiple industries in tech, the legal/property industry excited me as I feel there’s a huge opportunity here.”

– Clare Davern, Account Executive at Orbital Witness