Helping Talent and Culture keep pace with fivefold growth

Offer acceptance

95%

Faster time-to-fill

25%

Saved renegotiating recruitment vendors

$300K

Saved a year by consolidating systems after the acquisition

$200K

Why it mattered

When I joined Myplanet, now Orium, in 2021, the company had about 60 people and was about to grow faster than anyone had planned for. In 2022 alone we onboarded more than 100 new people, and within about a year the company had nearly doubled. At its peak, it had more than 300 people across Canada, the US, Mexico, and Latin America.

Growth came from the whole company winning work. My job was making sure the people side kept pace. Without that, hiring quality would have depended on who happened to run each search, new people would have started before anyone was ready for them, and a fast-growing remote company would have slowly stopped feeling like one place.

About 60 peopleMore than 300 at its peak

1. 1Foundation 2021
   • Recruiting for every function
   • Culture carried into remote-first
   • A weekly company Lightning Talk
2. 2Growth 2022
   • A Talent and Culture team of up to five
   • Structured hiring for every search
   • Leaders planning hiring earlier
3. 3Integration 2024
   • One hiring system across two companies
   • Local ownership in both countries
   • Systems reviewed and consolidated
4. 4Lasting capability 2025 to now
   • Onboarding that hears hire and manager
   • A recruiting toolkit others run
   • AI with a person owning decisions

How I approached it

Establishing the foundation. Going remote-first meant culture could no longer live in shared rooms, while a very small team was hiring for every function. I led recruiting and culture for the whole company, took over the weekly company Lightning Talk, helped carry the culture into remote-first, and later set up local channels so colleagues who lived near each other could actually meet.

Supporting rapid growth. Demand outran process. At times we had up to 30 open roles at once, from developers to a VP of Sales. I focused on the parts of hiring that decide quality: a consistent intake for every search, scorecards for each role family, structured interviews, and timelines candidates could rely on. I encouraged hiring teams to forecast their needs earlier instead of reacting to them, and designed an employee lifecycle that supports managers from Day 1 to Year 1. Along the way I was promoted twice in fifteen months and built and led a Talent and Culture team of up to five.

Working with leaders, not just for them. A lot of the job was conversation. There were moments when a role needed filling faster than a good process allowed, and requests where the right answer was a different role, structure, or timing. Working through those trade-offs openly with leaders, instead of simply executing requests, mattered as much as any process.

Integrating across countries. When Orium acquired a company in Mexico in 2024, I led the talent side of the integration. Recruiting moved onto one platform with one way of hiring for both companies, and ours was the first function fully integrated across both. I also led the listening and local ownership that help people from different companies feel part of one, while respecting the ways of working each side brought. Today, weekly staffing conversations with leaders in both countries decide which roles are real, which are urgent, and which are waiting on budget.

Building lasting capability. A small team supporting a large company can’t hold quality through effort alone. Some new hires were starting before their manager had connected with them, or before their first project was clear, and early struggles surfaced later than they should have. So every new hire now has a named manager and a first project before they start, with check-ins that hear both the hire and the manager. In recruiting, I built a toolkit our recruiter runs end to end, with AI handling the drafting and a person owning every decision about a candidate.

Throughout, I treated people work as part of how the business runs: renegotiating recruitment vendors, reviewing our systems after the acquisition, and training leaders to interview, include, and engage their teams.

What changed

Offer acceptance reached 95%, and time-to-fill dropped 25% for the roles we hired again and again. Recruiter output rose 40% after we improved our recruiting systems. Renegotiating recruitment vendors saved $300K, and consolidating systems after the acquisition saves $200K a year.

The people side held up as the company grew. More than 100 people were onboarded in 2022 alone. My own team kept a 100% engagement score across three years, and the company reached its highest engagement scores in more than five years.

What another leader can learn

• Standardize what decides quality, not everything. Consistent intake, criteria, and interviews protect hiring quality at speed. In an integration, the same idea means one system for everyone and respect for local ways of working.
• Plan hiring with the business, not for it. The best hiring decisions happen in the regular conversation about which roles matter, long before a job posting.
• Treat cost as a people decision. Renegotiating vendors and consolidating systems freed real budget, and reading the numbers changes the seat a People leader gets at the table.
• Build for the team after you. A system worth keeping is one someone else can run, improve, and push back on.