Gem > Case Studies > Leveraging Gem for Diversity and Efficiency in Wheel's Engineering Team Recruitment

Leveraging Gem for Diversity and Efficiency in Wheel's Engineering Team Recruitment

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Buildings
Cement

Applicable Functions

Procurement

Use Cases

Building Automation & Control
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

Testing & Certification
Training

About The Customer

Wheel is a healthcare technology company based in Austin, Texas. The company provides a platform that empowers clinicians and organizations to deliver high-quality virtual care at scale. Companies can use Wheel's infrastructure to build care services under their own brands, and clinicians can manage their practices through a single site. Wheel was founded by Michelle Davey, who has a background in talent acquisition. The company has over 125 employees and has delivered nearly half a million patient visits. In May 2021, Wheel announced a $50 million funding round to scale in a post-pandemic world.

The Challenge

Wheel, a healthcare technology company, faced significant challenges in building a diverse workforce of clinicians. The company lacked top-of-funnel data to share with leadership, especially regarding diversity. There was no visibility into what content and messaging resonated with different demographic groups. The company also struggled with the notion that diversity and hiring speed were mutually exclusive. Long-term nurture of potential hires was not feasible due to manual follow-ups. The company's Senior Technical Recruiter, Greg Troxell, was determined not to sacrifice diversity amidst the company's rapid growth. However, the lack of budget for investing in recruitment tools like Gem posed a significant challenge.

The Solution

Greg Troxell, a firm believer in the capabilities of Gem, decided to invest in it out of his own pocket. Gem provided a solution to Wheel's challenges by offering features like gender and race/ethnicity stats for outreach, which helped the company understand how many female engineers they were reaching out to and how many they needed to reach out to for gender equity in their pipelines. Gem's Outreach Stats feature allowed the team to test out links and experiment with different subject lines, helping them understand what content resonated with the demographics they were not a part of. Gem also automated and personalized outreach to underrepresented groups in tech, tracking recipient behavior and helping recruiters check their biases. The tool also provided top-of-funnel data, which was previously manually kept on a spreadsheet, making it difficult to ensure accuracy.

Operational Impact

The use of Gem has resulted in significant operational improvements for Wheel. The tool has provided the company with valuable insights into what content and messaging resonate with different demographic groups, enabling them to tailor their outreach efforts more effectively. The automation of outreaches and the provision of contact information have saved time and increased efficiency. The company has also been able to implement long-term nurture campaigns, building rapport with potential hires over time. This has been particularly beneficial for engaging with underrepresented talent, who may need more time to establish trust. The data provided by Gem has also helped Wheel's leadership understand the value of the talent function, ensuring its importance is recognized within the organization. Furthermore, the data has informed the company's employer branding strategy, helping them understand how to better position themselves to attract talent.

Quantitative Benefit

Wheel's leadership now regularly sees diversity data, from outreach and reply stats to how many reachouts the team needs to send for gender equity in their pipelines.
Wheel has made 38 hires with Gem, which is nearly a third of the hires made since Gem was fully onboarded.
Wheel went from zero to 29% female representation and zero to 64% underrepresented representation in eight months.