Answer Digital helps organisations improve their digital capabilities. Whether that’s by architecting innovative end-to-end solutions with national impact, planning and delivering cutting-edge transformation programmes, or providing people with the technical skills to extend digital project teams.

We spoke with Jonny, Talent Acquisition Lead at Answer Digital and their recent Senior Data Engineer hire, Harry about their experience using Haystack.

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What kind of people do you look to hire at Answer Digital? 

Jonny Hiles - Here at Answer, we do a lot of work in the healthcare, financial and retail sectors so we try to find people who understand those industries and the challenges our customers might face, which can significantly reduce our pool of talent. 

However, we also have a specific challenge that’s very unique to us - Answer is an employee-owned organisation, which essentially means every employee is a shareholder. For us, there’s another layer of added complexity when it comes to recruiting - not only do our people have to be great at their jobs, but we need people to fully buy into our culture - and who are passionate about making us better.

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What tech hiring challenges were you facing? 

Jonny Hiles - We have the same hiring challenge as everyone else, i.e. it’s really hard to find tech people and we’re competing with other great businesses. But we also need our people to understand the problems our clients face and how we can articulate that into great outcomes. Take Harry for instance, he came from a healthcare background  and knowing how the NHS works is ultra-valuable to us. It’s meant he’s been able to hit the ground running and start to really add value.

Additionally, this year we really wanted to build out our data capability, which as a stand alone service offering is quite new for us. So, not only were we hiring for a relatively new skill set, but the candidate we were looking to hire also had to be a brilliant person with relevant industry experience, who can help build a team and data function at Answer. Can you start to see our challenge now?

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What other solutions have you used in the past? 

Jonny Hiles - We’ve used all of the usual suspects. We advertise and source on LinkedIn and other job boards, we work with specialist agencies when needed, and we’ve tried other hiring platforms (without much success). We also try to do a lot of stuff ourselves, for example, we get involved with events and community stuff to get our name out there.

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How has Haystack helped you overcome your tech hiring challenges?

Jonny Hiles - Haystack’s values really align to ours, they care and protect their community and its candidates, that’s very clear as soon as you use it. ‍

‍Being employee-owned, we have to make sure that new people joining are right for us, and we’re right for them so I love that the platform focuses on matching the right person to the right job - for us, that’s the number one thing. 

For anyone in the industry struggling with tech hiring and finding those really niche candidates, I’d highly recommend using Haystack. Ultimately Haystack helped us find great candidates that we couldn’t find anywhere else.

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Harry, what was your experience like with Haystack? 

Harry Kelleher - Haystack really helped me on my hiring journey. I wasn’t actively applying for lots of roles and I wasn’t urgently looking to leave my current position - I was more just keeping an eye out. The role at Answer was initially highlighted to me by Jack (Talent Delivery Manager at Haystack), he helped outline the organisation and requirements of the role and gave me the confidence to put forward my application. I knew I had the NHS background but in terms of the core technical skills required for the role, I thought there’d be other strong candidates, so initially, I wasn’t sure about applying. It was Jack’s encouragement and guidance that helped me land the role. 

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How are you finding life at Answer Digital?

Harry Kelleher - It’s great. Honestly, the cultural element was really important and everything Jonny outlined earlier around the culture and values of the business really resonated with me. There’s such a strong emphasis on people, which is essentially the currency of our business. It’s a great collection of people, all from different walks of life and different professions.

There’s a really strong sense of identity at Answer and that identity is built around being compassionate and working to be your best every day, and that’s helped me grow and learn as a professional.