Dunelm is the UK’s leading Homeware Retailer but before they joined Haystack they weren’t seen as a top destination for Tech talent. We worked with the team to help them engage the tech community, increase tech hiring and reshape how their brand is perceived within the tech space. Since joining Haystack, they've used our advertising, sourcing and branding features to make key hires.

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We spoke to Conor and Martin from their Talent Acquisition team to discuss how their partnership with Haystack has helped them raise brand awareness and take their tech hiring to the next level!

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Why did you choose Haystack as your tech hiring partner? 

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Conor: We saw it was a personable, friendly company, which was a good start. We liked that you’re a growing company as well, and it sounded like you were listening to your current client base in terms of adding new functionality, features, and capability to the platform. We saw over the months a lot of new features were getting delivered, which makes us think that going forward, it's going to be an ever stronger platform and partnership for  both for our brand and recruitment. 

The key selling point for me were the talent pools outside of London. A lot of other platforms we spoke to had a huge talent pool for London in particular, but not really much outside of London. And with our two offices, one London, one in Leicester, having access to talent pools in the Midlands, Yorkshire, even Manchester, Newcastle etc. really opened up a lot of doors for our recruitment.

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How has the experience as a Haystack partner been for you so far?

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Conor: Yeah, really good. We made a hire before Christmas, and we’ve found the candidates on the platform have been really responsive and quick at getting back to us. We spoke to some good candidates over the last few months and we've had a number of strong interviews. Even if they haven't always got the job, they've all interviewed well with us.

Martin: It feels like our relationship with you has been more collaborative, more of a partnership. I think historically when we've worked with some other partners, it's not been as collaborative as we found since onboarding with you. It feels like as Haystack grows as a business, we're going to be on that journey with you and can share our input.

Reflecting on the candidates you've discovered, how would you rate their responsiveness, level of engagement, and overall alignment with Dunelm?
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‍Connor: In terms of responsiveness, they get back to us really quickly, and all of the candidates have been at a good level. We're pretty picky at the moment with our hiring requirements, as a lot of companies are, so sometimes they have interviewed well, but may or may not have got the job. But Haystack’s candidates do well and come across well when we speak to them, and have the right tech that we're looking for.

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Thinking about yourselves and the challenges you face, how has Haystack helped you in your own roles throughout our partnership?

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Martin: It's given us access to a talent pool of candidates that we wouldn't have had access to. Like Conor touched on earlier, one of the reasons why we opted to go with Haystack was the talent pool of candidates you have throughout the country. Partners that we've worked with previously haven't had such a talent pool throughout the UK, so that's been a really good solution to what’s been quite a big challenge for us.

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Finally, how would you summarise your experience on Haystack so far?

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Martin: In the run-up to onboarding with Haystack, we'd been having a few challenges with recruiting people within budget or that could have their home location as our Leicester site. All of a sudden we've gone from not having access to a talent pool, to actually having a vast number of candidates at the ready for us to approach, talk to and engage with. Haystack has been a golden solution to something that was really a problem for us.