EVONA

Tom Kelly sat down with Hishem Azzouz on the Recruitment Mentors Podcast and talked about scaling to 68 people and what that cost the business. He didn't share the polished version of EVONA's background, but the real one. The mistakes made and the lessons learned. What came out of that is the version of EVONA that exists now: A team that measures output, not headcount. A team that's leaner and sharper, with stronger numbers than it ever did at three times the size. A team that just did its best quarter ever two months in a row. Watch the full episode: https://lnkd.in/erFHW6Aa #WhereSpaceFindsItsPeople

A niche search closed in under half the time these roles usually take. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The search was hard; RF signals has a narrow candidate pool, and the company had already spent months looking without the right people coming through. Three things changed it. 1. The qualification call was specific. Not a job description read aloud, but what the work actually involved and which skills genuinely mattered. That made the role explainable to candidates, which is most of the battle on a niche search. 2. The timeline was agreed before the search started. How many resumes in week one, how many first stages in week two, finals in week three. Both sides committed to it and both sides held it. 3. The previous search before EVONA became useful. Going back through who had applied before and where they'd missed the mark in interviews showed exactly what the shortlist needed to look like. The hire ended up relocating, and it still closed in 17 days. None of this works without partnership. The plan was ours, but holding to it was theirs. On a search this narrow, that's the whole difference. #WhereSpaceFindsItsPeople

Another record breaking quarter at EVONA. 14 new hires, circa 200 people placed into their dream Space job. How did we do it? 1 - Clarity. From interviewing with us, to week 1 to year 6, it's the same message. We measure output not input. We give you flexibility to be yourself, but provide a clear framework of how to be successful. Client and Candidate always come first. 2 - Compounding. 8 years recruiting for 1 sector. We have NEVER been about the size of the fee like many recruitment companies. We are about he longevity of the relationship. 3 - Collaboration. I have spoken with some of our newest hires Dave Sharman, Elliot Dayeh-Bunce, Jesse Bam, Maleka Moalusi and we all agree the collaboration is immense. Everyone is happy to help one another. 3 - Evolution. We're obsessed. It what EVONA means. We constantly evolve, get stronger, faster. Collectively this has meant an NFI per head 3 x the elite level. A time to fill of 40 days YTD for some of the Worlds hardest vacancies. If you want to be a part of this, and you're an elite recruiter please DM me!!

Southern California has been the center of commercial space hiring for years. This year, Colorado matched it for the space roles we filled. Over the past 12 months, each state made up about a quarter of our US space placements. Colorado's share kept growing as the year went on. Pay was almost the same in both. The big difference was whether the person you hired already lived there. If you're hiring in either state, that changes how you hire. Swipe through to get the full picture. These figures come from our own placements, so they show what we saw on our desk rather than the whole market. We'll be watching to see if Colorado's share keeps growing into next year.

Most founders in space want roles filled faster. The market is tough, but the process is the part you control. A GNC engineer with flight experience might be one of a handful of qualified people in the country (and they know it). They're bombarded with calls. So when a strong candidate slips away, it's often because another company moved faster. Even if you're using a recruitment partner, you have a part to play. Here's what you can do: 1. Be clear at the intake call. Know your non-negotiable skills, your salary band, who signs off on a CV and what good looks like beyond the job title. 2. Stay reachable. Agree on a channel for anything urgent, such as Slack, Teams or a text thread. If email is your only channel, a good candidate found on Tuesday can be gone by Friday. 3. Show up for 15 minutes a week. A short weekly check-in keeps you informed and keeps the search moving. That's where a founder's involvement can really make a difference. A good talent partner takes care of the rest. Read the full blog here: https://bit.ly/3Vmft2L

Starship is about to go for orbit. But today's trip will be different from previous ones: Starship is on the pad at Starbase, Texas, and the countdown is running. Flight 14 is Starship's first attempt to reach orbit. Every earlier flight was suborbital and planned to last about an hour. Today's flight is planned for much longer. Here's the plan: -Booster 21 and Ship 41 lift off together. -The ship carries 26 Starlink V3 satellites and releases them in orbit. -It then circles Earth up to six times. -The Super Heavy booster splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico. The ship comes down in the Pacific off Chile, about 10 hours after launch. Whether you're catching it over coffee or at your desk, SpaceX's livestream is already running on X and spacex.com. Without a team of experts, including propulsion engineers, GNC teams, test crews and pad technicians, a flight like this wouldn't be possible. These are the kinds of people we talk to every day.   Good luck to everyone at Starbase.

Most counter-offers are decided before they arrive.   Josiah recently placed a Principal Satellite Systems Engineer. Josiah checked in periodically, running roles past him until the right one and the right timing lined up.   When the counter came from his employer, it didn't change the outcome. Two things made the difference.   The first was preparation. Josiah had talked it through with him before it landed. They covered what accepting a counter usually means for future pay growth, and how often people who take one end up leaving anyway. By the time it arrived, he had already made his decision.   The second was the offer itself. The company opened with a bonus, a sign-on, and a stronger benefits package, and it never needed improving. At the senior end of satellite systems, experienced engineers are rarely looking. A strong first offer carries more weight there than any late adjustment.   If you're hiring senior space talent like this, that first offer is the part you control. The engineers you want are rarely looking, and their current employer will usually try to keep them. An offer that already reflects their value means the decision is made before the counter arrives.

Flexible work is one of the strongest draws in space hiring. It's also the one thing many employers can't offer. In our own placement data, more than half the roles we filled over the last three months were fully on-site. For permanent engineering roles, fewer than 1 in 10 were remote. ITAR, classified work and the hardware itself means a lot of space work needs to be on-site. Interestingly, those on-site roles also paid less. Over the past year, the permanent roles we filled paid a median of $148,000 on-site against $177,500 remote (sales and executive roles excluded.) The discrepancy is partly due to the type of work, but the result is the same: the least flexible offers are often the lowest paid. If flexibility isn't on the table, pay needs to make up for it.

Are you hiring for the runway you have? This is the only hiring roadmap you need from seed to IPO. Four stages, four completely different hiring models: 1. Pre-seed and seed calls for part-time expertise, without the full-time cost. 2. Fresh off a round you'll need contract hiring, so you're not betting a permanent salary on a guess. 3. Series A to B calls for hiring capacity that scales with volume. 4. Series C and beyond needs partner-led searches built for diligence over speed. The startups that make it change tack at every stage. Swipe to find out why.

Two space companies just raised $1.8 billion between them in the last 8 days. - Stoke Space closed a $1 billion Series E on September 8.  - Impulse Space extended its Series D by $308 million on September 16, bringing the round to $808 million. These companies do completely different things. Stoke is a single-rocket company, working on one fully reusable launch vehicle, Nova. Impulse has four different vehicles, each doing something different in orbit. Both these companies are after the same few hundred people: propulsion, GNC, and production engineers who've shipped hardware that flew. Nearly 3 million people work as engineers in the US but only about 3 percent of them are in space-supporting industries, according to a RAND report published this month. And that 3 percent doesn't isolate the people with flight heritage. Flight heritage only comes from a handful of companies that have launched something in the last decade, so these two companies are competing for a fraction of an already small pool of space engineers. For these engineers, it means leverage. Raising funding is a milestone on its own. But the founders who scale successfully have a plan for finding talent before they land the money.