Sllick | Case Study
Launched in March 2020 Sllick helps businesses become more financially efficient and automated through apps and accounts. We also help businesses streamline their internal processes by providing a virtual finance team.
“It was a chance to try having someone in the door without committing to it full time but also just giving us the freedom to say,”Hey, actually, can you just run with the social media side of things? And we’ll just say yes or no and be that endpoint, rather than getting involved with the nitty-gritty?” – Nicole Christie, Sllick Co-Founder.
WHAT KIND OF PROBLEMS WERE YOU FACING BEFORE COMING TO UDRAFTER?
We were so busy doing the day-to-day, that we knew we had to get on to our social media and our marketing side of things but couldn’t purely down to a lack of time. So, the idea of taking on an intern really appealed to us as we’re big advocates of giving people experience and giving people that opportunity to get into work or learn new skills directly in the workplace. So for us, it was a chance to try having someone in the door without committing to it full time but also just giving us the freedom to say, “Hey, actually, can you just run with the social media side of things? And we’ll just say yes or no and be that endpoint, rather than getting involved with the nitty-gritty?”
HAVE YOU USED INTERNS BEFORE AND WHY DID YOU THINK YOU NEEDED AN INTERN SPECIFICALLY?
No. So that was our first time hiring an intern. My journey into accounts was actually a school leaver position. So my career spans for 10 years now and that’s purely from leaving school and getting straight into work. But from a uni perspective, it’s so pivotal to get that first role and there’s so many businesses that are looking for five years’ experience with a degree but you’re straight out of uni, and it doesn’t make any sense. We’re quite a modern firm and the idea of having someone that’s using social media day-to-day in their personal lives, made complete sense rather than trying to have someone that was learning social media.
HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT HIRING AN INTERN FOR THE FIRST TIME?
We were probably more nervous with what we would need to do to support them, rather than what they could do for us and the reality is that she’s [Jolan – Udrafter Intern] such a self-starter.. So, yeah, we just didn’t know what we would need to do to support her, but we were so excited. Albeit a little bit nervous, not knowing what their experience would be like, but it is the best thing we’ve done so far.
WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU’RE HIRING? IS IT PURELY SKILLS BASED OR ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A CULTURE FIT?
To be honest, it is more a culture fit than skill set. Skills can be taught so long as someone’s keen to learn. For us, our business is all around change and managing change. So one of the key things that we need to understand is whether the people we’re hiring can accept change as well. At the end of the day, we’ll move really, really fast on things and change processes, and the way we do things. So we need our team to be the exact same as what we need from our clients.
WHAT WERE THE BENEFITS OF HIRING A UDRAFTER INTERN?
Time would be the biggest thing for us and if you can somehow quantify the stress relief, that would be another. The other side of it was it really made us think about outsourcing this work and whether we needed to. So from a financial perspective, it saved us a couple thousand pounds a month by actually long term we’d be better going internal and taking her [Jolan] on board.
When we spoke to other companies initially about doing our social media, they were maybe wanting to charge five, six, seven hundred quid a month to do it. When the reality is that it’s nothing particularly complex. It just needed a bit of thinking and a bit of doing, so why not give that opportunity to someone that actually needs the experience and could benefit from that experience?
WHY UDRAFTER OR OTHER METHODS OF RECRUITMENT?
For us, it was probably the ease of use. I don’t know if I’m just in a generation that has anxiety any time someone phones, but I much prefer being able to do things in my own time. So the fact that it’s an online platform meant that if I had time on a Friday night and nobody was about, I could still go on and put up my project or we responded to messages and things like that.
I’d much prefer to have everything in one place. Just knowing where everything is and being able to go in and kind of action it was perfect. Things like the app, being able to approve timesheets and see messages.
HOW LIKELY WOULD YOU BE TO RECOMMEND US AND WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO COULD BE LISTENING TO THIS RIGHT NOW?
I would recommend Udrafter any day of the week. For us, it eliminated the risk of hiring. It then lets you test the water. It lets you come away and say, “Do we have the infrastructure to support an intern? How would we do it? What are we looking for?”. I think it’s so difficult for people to get into a career path just now, especially so if you’ve got the facility and the finance and the infrastructure, really think about it.
We’re lucky to be where we are but there’s people that are just starting out and why not give them a shot? So yeah, I’d recommend you every day of the week.
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