Xampla

Xampla has created the world’s first plant protein material for commercial use. Their next generation material performs like synthetic polymers, but decomposes naturally and fully, without harming the environment. Their mission is to replace the everyday single-use plastics you see all around, like sachets and flexible packaging films. And the less obvious, such as microplastics within liquids and lotions.

Xampla

Background

Cranleigh Stem started working with Xampla in January 2021, just before the Covid Pandemic struck the UK. At the time Xampla were a newly formed, small spin out company from Cambridge, with just 5 employees. Cranleigh Stem were initially engaged to help support the business with specific appointments across the R&D function, which lead to 2 successful hires by the summer of 2021 (this was particularly impressive given the lockdown restrictions the UK faced at the time). As the company kept developing and went through further successful rounds of investment funding, Cranleigh Stem continued to assist with technical and operational appointments across the business through 2021 and into 2022.

Challenge

By mid- 20222 the company had ambitious plans to continue with its hiring strategy but with a internal HR department severely stretched with growing priorities across the business, Cranleigh Stem was appointed to implement an RPO strategy.

Solution

Through working closely with the HR department at Xampla to understand the 'growing pains', the company was facing Cranleigh Stem put in place a ATS (Applicant Tracking System). This had the advantage of helping all departments within the company to act swiftly in the recruitment process and engage with one another (even when people were working remotely), to help secure the best talent in the market.

Cranleigh also helped to identify areas of improvement that were needed with a small but rapidly growing team of hiring managers (some of whom had very limited hiring experience), and delivered an onsite training workshop to 10 employees with the aim of helping to implement best practice in the recruitment process whilst also providing the team with insight and guidance around how to best prepare and conduct interviews.

Result

Xampla is now a strong position to continue with its growth plans heading into 2023, which Cranleigh will continue to assist with through the effective management of the RPO model that has been adopted and implemented.