EVONA ANNOUNCES NEWSPACE HIRING SURGE AND 610% YEAR OVER YEAR REVENUE GROWTH
Newspace specific recruitment group announces expansion plans and global hiring surge
EVONA office redesign in Bristol UK
(BRISTOL, UK March 17, 2020) Bristol-based space-sector recruitment firm, EVONA announced today an 610% increase year percentage in year-over-year revenue for the NewSpace specific Recruitment firm. EVONA is focusing on high-growth opportunities including global expansion based on a 300% increase in staff since the first year of its inception. EVONA was founded by four experienced space industry recruiters and career-shapers: Ryan Hill, Richard Joyce, Tom Kelly, and Jack Madley. The founders have made it their mission to further the progress of today’s space sector by preparing and sourcing talented members of the space workforce.
EVONA’s expansion culminated in a new office move this year to commemorate the exponential Year over year growth and the announcement of new international expansion plans. EVONA has continued to build on its successes after launching in January 2019 offering itself as the first firm exclusively dedicated recruitment and resources for New space companies and candidates. The company is reinvesting the new capital in creating a one-stop resource for new space candidates and those in industries that may not be aware of new space opportunities, focusing on high-growth opportunities for companies and candidates alike. The rebranding is signalling its readiness to expand staffing and recruiting services from the UK and Europe to serve global markets with an emphasis on the US market. A space-sector recruitment firm. EVONA positions itself to be a thought-leader in space-sector recruiting with an engaging new website.
“We’re seeing and searching for candidates from more traditional industries and job sectors, who may not even know they have very applicable and desired skills in the news space sector. We are tremendously excited to show job-seekers and our clients just how simple and painless recruiting can be. We realized the big difference that impassioned, newspace-focused recruiters can make on a space-sector startup’s trajectory. We are lowering the barrier for those interested in joining the revolution. We want people to look at every position in NewSpace and see someone who looks just like them. It is the only time in our day when it’s not rocket science,” said Tom Kelly Co-CEO and Co-Founder of EVONA.
EVONA Co-Founders – Ryan Hill, Jack Madley, Richard Joyce, Tom Kelly (L-R)
A key component of EVONA’s mission is instilling an interest in and passion for space-sector careers in school-age students, as they represent the next generation of minds who will help move humanity beyond Earth in the decades to come. EVONA’s in-school programs and online curricula aim to inspire and prepare students to take the steps necessary to pursue careers in the space industry. EVONA’s tagline, “Never Go to Space Alone,” encapsulates the company’s intention to foster a global network of passionate industry talent and companies who will work together to elevate the potential of humankind.
EVONA have committed to maintaining a paper free office and this initiative has been in place since moving to our new office in October. Going paper free was really important too us for many reasons; the environment, the current Covid-19 situation, employee accessibility and digitising the company.
So far, the effort from our team has been fantastic and our paper usage is now next to none! If you’re wondering how we’ve managed to achieve this over the past year – these are some of the things we have introduced to make this possible…
Documents are created as PDF’s
Everything is signed digitally
We use a cloud to store and share documents
Moved to online accounting software – meaning no paper payslips
Hot desking policy only means each space needs to be kept tidy, so it encourages only having a laptop and no extra mess
Employees use email calendars
Companywide no printing policy
Paper coffee cups have been banned and staff have been provided with a reusable EVONA coffee cup (pictured above) which can be taken to local coffee shops
No paper CV’s any applicants must submit these online
Company intranet to share company news/data/information rather than handouts and lengthy handbooks
February 2021 – Young Minds pledge to raise £1,000
Mental health is a big issue. Roughly 3 children in every classroom has a diagnosable mental health disorder and as half of all mental health problems manifest by the age of 14, acting fast and giving young people the support they need will make a remarkable difference to the overall mental health of the population. We have the power to help change the stigma surrounding mental health issues, but with less than 1% of NHS budget attributed to children’s and young people’s mental health, more must be done to help.
March 2021 – Family Food For Free Easter Donations
This month EVONA have focussed on what we can do to help our local community.
As proud Bristolians, we love the city we live in but we know that lockdown measures and furlough schemes have hit our community hard, so we set about trying to make a difference. We spoke to our local food bank in Bristol, Family Food 4 Free (FF4F), to see what we could do to help and the response was that they were desperate for Easter Eggs.
Challenge accepted…
Family Food 4 Free are a registered food bank supporting Bristol and surrounding areas since March 2020
Throughout both lockdowns FF4F, lead by Aimee and Daniel Waters, have served the local community with emergency food parcels, freshly made meals and charitable donations.
Knowing they wanted to bring a little extra joy to the people of Bristol and surrounding area with chocolate egg-shaped happiness, the EVONA crew initially set ourselves a target to donate 300 Easter eggs, agreeing we would each add a few to our weekly shop or donate cash so we could coordinate discounts to buy in bulk.
We raised over £250 between us and purchased 346 Easter Eggs and 150 Creme Eggs! Which is enough if you put them end-to-end to stretch the length of a full-sized football pitch or the width of the International Space Station. It was so much, that FF4F had to come and pick them up in a van!
Aimee from FF4F said “Massive thank you for your Easter donations, we are now able to help local families, elderly, hostels support services and even young youth groups.”
Head of Marketing, Adele Fox hands over the Easter Eggs to Daniel Waters of Family Food 4 Free
Family food 4 Free an boot loaded with Easter eggs! EVONA donated 346 Easter Eggs and 150 Creme Eggs
The team did an amazing job coming together to make this happen. Well done, crew!
April 2021 – Carbon Neutral pledge
Tree-Nation are a reforestation initiative tackling climate change
As Earth day takes place in April we knew how important it was to action the commitments we have make to the environment in our pledges this month…
The serious of the climate crisis is continuously escalating but as we grow, we are becoming more aware of our own impact on the environment. EVONA are continuously looking for ways to incorporate greener strategies into our business and that’s why this year we have pledged to reduce our carbon footprint.
In true EVONA style we not only set out to reduce our carbon footprint, but we wanted to achieve net-zero… completely carbon neutral
This month with the help of Tree-Nation, a fantastic reforestation initiative aiming to stop climate change by planting trees.
We have now begun growing the EVONA forest – planting 2 trees per employee per month.
You may have also noticed this little icon below on our website, not only have Tree-Nation helped us offset our internal carbon emissions but that of our website too (who would have guessed that in reading this article you are helping offset carbon on our website)
Headed up by our Marketing Exec Danni, in May we kicked off our campaign to support Young Minds by taking part in the Everest Challenge. To raise money for Young Minds our whole team is tackled the Everest Challenge – walking the equivalent steps from base camp to the summit and back within the month.
The challenges of fighting mental health can feel like having a mountain to climb and no child or young person should have to fight this battle alone, which is why we wanted to take on the biggest mountain of all!
We raised over £1,250 from donations.
EVONA take on the Everest Challenge
July 2021 – South West STEM Fest & Webinars
EVONA are all STEM Ambassadors, doing what we can to get more young children into STEM careers and lifting the curtain on the space sector so everyone knows they can have a role in space. In July, we teamed up with South West STEM Fest creating a presentation resource for KS4 and KS5 pupils to help demystify the sector for the next generation.
August 2021 – Octopus Electric Cars Initiative launched
This month we introduced a salary sacrifice benefit available to all our employees – it’s like a ‘cycle to work scheme’ but for electric cars. Working with Octopus Electric Cars, the scheme means we could help our crew save up to 40% on a brand new electric car – great for the team, good for the business and kind to the planet.
October 2021 – Hello Yellow Day
EVONA went yellow for a whole day and hosted our own Hello Yellow event raising over £250 for Young Minds. We sold cupcakes, decorated faces, turned the office into a homage too all things yellow as well as giving our employees top tips on how to look after their own mental health.
November 2021 – Winning Awards and donating over £11,000 to Charities
On the 9th November we attended the Lloyds Bank Business Excellence Award ceremony as finalists in the New Business of the Year category. Not only did we walk away with the award, coming first in our category and winning the accolade but also this (right) equally impressive status symbol from the nights’ charity auction supporting the excellent work of mental health charity, Mind.
For those unfamiliar, this is a photo from one of the episodes of comedy show ‘Only Fools and Horses’ shot in the centre of Bristol – the home of EVONA. Fuelled by one or two glasses of champagne, Ryan (co-founder) might have been pressured into the buy by our Head of Marketing, Adele – who mainly fell in love with it as a Bristolian child of the 80s. The things we do for our crew!
In addition to this piece of Bristol history, EVONA also chose to support Mind UK with a second sizable donation on the night. It’s our belief that no one should face a mental health issue alone and it’s why we’ve chosen to support such charities this year.
This same month, our Principal Consultant Sam also raised £150 during Movember for men’s health charities by growing a moustache that even Tom Selleck was jealous of (not really, but close!)
December 2021 – St Mungo’s Donation
It’s St Mungo’s vision that everyone should have a place to call home and can fulfil their hopes and ambitions. Despite best efforts, homelessness has continued to rise in the UK with the number of people sleeping rough ever increasing. The global pandemic exacerbated the precarious housing ad financial situation of many people n the UK who had no other choice but to abandon their homes.
In December we donated hundreds of goods in the fight to stop homelessness in support of St Mungo’s work in a drive headed up by our Account Manager, Glen.
We donated:
18 Bags of groceries – including biscuits, chocolates, pasta, crisps, cereals, rice, noodles, tea, coffee, sugar, dried milk, and tins and tins of food!
3 Bags of toiletries – including deodorant, shower gel, toothpaste, towels, shampoo and soap
At EVONA, we want to run our business differently.
From the Geospatial organisations we work with that helped track the COVID pandemic, predict natural disasters, and keep us safe, to propulsion companies that launch those satellites, push the forefront of space exploration and tourism as well as robotic companies that make the once impossible, possible…
We’re constantly inspired by the space sector we work in.
We work alongside inspirational businesses day in and day out; enabling the growth of the space sector through its workforce. Their achievements inspire us to be better, and work harder at trying to make a difference – not only to the planet that we live on, but the communities we live and work in.
That’s why this year, we’ve decided to put our money where our mouth is, push our bodies to the limit, give back to our community, strive to be environmentally friendly, raise as much money as we can for our chosen charity and make 3 pledges to run our business differently to make a difference.
EVONA’s Pledges
How we’ll be making a difference
As part of these pledges we’ve identified a few key ways we can achieve our objectives:
EVONA pledge to help reduce our carbon emissions and clean up our oceans
Reduce and offset our carbon emissions
The science is now clearer than ever; our world is getting warmer. We all know the reason: the emission of greenhouse gases (the main contributor of which is Carbon Dioxide) creating an atmospheric layer which allows the suns rays to enter but prevents it from escape. Without real efforts to reduce carbon emission, the globe is not only in danger of irreversible damage, but life will struggle against increased natural disasters, poor crop yields, species extinction, slower economic growth and more. It’s our responsibility to reuse, recycle and reduce. We’re going to commit to:
Planting trees in our own grove to help offset carbon emissions
Banning disposable coffee cups in the office
Going paperless in the office
Using energy saving lights to light the office
Encouraging our team to ditch the car at least once a week
Recycle all relevant waste from the office
Help clean up our oceans
No one in the UK is more than 75 miles away from a beach and as an island nation we have a hefty responsibility to our shores as well as the world’s oceans. The amount of litter found on UK beaches has risen year on year for the last 20 years. 8 million pieces of marine litter enter the seas every single day causing an estimated 1 million sea birds and 100,000 mammals to perish annually from ingestion of entanglement. Avoiding single use plastics and being responsible with our waste will make the difference. We’ll pledge to help clean up our oceans. We’re going to commit to:
100 hours of beach cleaning
Consciously reducing our reliance on single use plastics
Mental health is a big issue. Roughly 3 children in every classroom has a diagnosable mental health disorder and as half of all mental health problems manifest by the age of 14, acting fast and giving young people the support they need will make a remarkable difference to the overall mental health of the population. We have the power to help change the stigma surrounding mental health issues, but with less than 1% of NHS budget attributed to children’s and young people’s mental health, more must be done to help. We’re going to commit to:
Raising as much money as we can for this worthy cause and have already signed up as a team to attend Tough Mudder. More on how to support us later!
Help those in poverty
Food poverty and homelessness is on the rise, with charities stating that this is likely to soar in the coming months due to the pandemic. With an estimated 8.4million people in the UK living in food poverty, and one in 200 people in England without a home, campaigners have said without urgent action we’ll soon find ourselves unable to support the people who need it. We’re in the privileged position to be able to help so we commit to:
We’re experts in our field. What we know, is recruitment. As passionate STEM ambassadors it’s important to us that we lift the curtain on where a STEM career can take you (spoiler – into space and beyond!) We commit to:
EVONA are pleased to announce our partnership with Space Talent, the online portal for careers in the space industry and its broader ecosystem.
A subsidiary of Space Capital – the early-stage venture capital firm focused on the Space economy – Space Talent aims to help address the current surge in demand for space employees with the help of specialist space recruitment and headhunting firm, EVONA.
The Space Sector is estimated to be worth $3 trillion by 2040.
This growth will rely on attracting individuals with transferable skills from outside the sector, nurturing the talent within and demystifying the sector to appeal to the future space workforce of tomorrow. Platforms like Space Talent along with partners like EVONA have the objective to work together to connect these dots and facilitate the sustainable fast-paced growth of the sector.
“The current pace of innovation and incoming investor interest indicates that the space economy will be one of the fastest-growing sectors over the next decade, which will require an increasingly diverse workforce to unlock the value of these space technology stacks.” – Chad Anderson, managing partner of Space Capital.
Announcing the launch of the platform yesterday, Space Capital introduced Space Talent as a career hub matching credible employers with top talent while providing insights into an ecosystem with an ever-expanding range of opportunities. Key features of the platform include: Job Board; Job-Seeker Resources; Start-Up Tools including access to funding to help entrepreneurs build their own ideas and ‘Open Pitch’ helping founders experiment, build, and finance new businesses by providing resources and the opportunity to receive up to $1.5M in funding from Space Capital and its affiliates.
Speaking about the partnership with EVONA, Justus Kilian, Principal at Space Capital, Founder at Space Talent said:
“EVONA has been an incredibly valuable partner in our own recruiting needs as well as supporting numerous companies through Space Talent. They’ve demonstrated the ability to find great talent at all layers of the space technology stack and fill a wide variety of business and technical roles.”
Tom Kelly Co-Founder of EVONA added:
“With the ever increasing need for high quality candidates to fuel growth of the sector, more and more companies are turning to the likes of EVONA to fill hard-to-recruit-for positions. We’ve been working with Space Talent since 2019 and are delighted to be announced as their formal recruitment partner to help support their mission and assist space corporations of all sizes find the talented workforce they need, quickly and efficiently.”
As STEM ambassadors with strong connections to universities and colleges, EVONA have recently started a webinar series entitled Space Spectra aimed at students and professionals looking to take their next step into the sector. The Space Talent platform supports this effort with details of internships and other opportunities for students and recent graduates.
EVONA announce our pledges to use 2021 to 
We announce our official charity as 
This month we introduced a salary sacrifice benefit available to all our employees – it’s like a ‘cycle to work scheme’ but for electric cars. Working with Octopus Electric Cars, the scheme means we could help our crew save up to 40% on a brand new electric car – great for the team, good for the business and kind to the planet.
On the 9th November we attended the Lloyds Bank Business Excellence Award ceremony as finalists in the New Business of the Year category. Not only did we walk away with the award, coming first in our category and winning the accolade but also this (right) equally impressive status symbol from the nights’ charity auction supporting the excellent work of mental health charity, Mind.
It’s St Mungo’s vision that everyone should have a place to call home and can fulfil their hopes and ambitions. Despite best efforts, homelessness has continued to rise in the UK with the number of people sleeping rough ever increasing. The global pandemic exacerbated the precarious housing ad financial situation of many people n the UK who had no other choice but to abandon their homes.
