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How has your experience on Haystack been so far?

I'm always looking at ways to support our business in terms of better, or easier, ways to find candidates, especially for our tech roles. The thing that was really nice about Haystack was the service that I received, which I thought was brilliant. We decided to give it a go and we made a placement through Haystack in our first year of using the platform. It's been a really nice way to do it, a different way to do it.

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Were you using other platforms before launching on Haystack?

We use LinkedIn recruiter, but it doesn't always get what you want. Because of the variety of roles that we recruit for here at PayPoint, such as finance and contact centre staff, we have to look at different types of tools, so we'll still use things like Reed. We tend to post our jobs on Indeed as well, and occasionally get the right kind of people coming through.

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How does Haystack stand out from those platforms?

Certainly the personal touch that you give your customers, it's great that I can pick up the phone and have a conversation with Customer Success. What's also nice is the way that if I post a job on the PayPoint website, it will be on Haystack - you've already pulled it through without me even having to do it and I think that's a really nice personal touch. It's also nice to have someone there to answer any questions that I've got. 

If you've got a new feature that's coming out, you're really quite proud about it, and you jump on a call with me and you talk about it. It never feels like, ‘oh, here we go, it's another call’. It's actually nice, great to catch up and talk about the things that you're implementing. It's great to see how it’s getting better and evolving as a system. Also what's really encouraging is the way Haystack speaks to customers and ask ‘what do you think we could do to improve it’? I've given feedback, and I didn't think you'd ever do it, but you did. You've actually gone ahead and taken something that I mentioned I thought would be really, really useful and you implemented it, so I thought that was really powerful. Of course, you would never get that with some of the very other well-known recruitment tools.

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How has Haystack helped improve your talent pipeline?

I’m really impressed with the candidates that I'm finding on Haystack, I'm looking at them and thinking, ‘wow, this looks like a great engineer’. The suitability and quality of the candidates stands out much more than if I was to compare it to any of the other job platforms. It's just good quality candidates. I think that Haystack has certainly helped just by getting a better core pool of quality candidates.

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How has Haystack enhanced your recruitment strategies and process?

What's interesting is the ability to actually view the candidates that view your jobs and maybe don't necessarily apply, and then be able to get in touch with them directly because you've got their CVs. You're able to get in contact with them via the chat portal, or you can just get on the phone or send an email. They haven't applied, but I've used the Headhunt tool to find them. I've got a candidate that I'm calling later today because I found him on Haystack, and I don’t think we would have found him anywhere else. So really interesting, really positive stuff and it's great to see all the little implementations and improvements that have been put into the platform over the years I have used it.

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What would your recommendation be to someone struggling with their tech hiring?

I would absolutely say look at where you're struggling, what problems you've got, and consider platforms like Haystack. Absolutely, check out Haystack. I can see the platform evolving and growing, attracting more candidates, and the user interface is great. It's becoming really powerful as a tool. We certainly love it here at PayPoint!

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