Growing Pains? Here's How HIP Creative Nailed Their Hiring Process (and Tripled in Size)

Ever try juggling multiple job posts on Indeed while keeping track of hundreds of candidates in your inbox? That's exactly where Sarah Jaksich found herself when she joined HIP Creative as Director of People Operations.

Fast forward two and a half years and they've not only tripled their headcount but just acquired a company their own size. Talk about a growth spurt! Here's the story behind their hiring success.

From scattered tools to one central hub

Sometimes the best solutions come from a friend. That was the case for Sarah when she started hunting for a better way to handle HIP's exploding hiring needs.

"When I first came on board, the agency was at about 20 employees," Sarah remembers. "We were writing job postings, posting on Indeed, and managing applicants through email. With the amount of positions we were hiring for, we needed to streamline the process and get everything organized."

For a tech-savvy company like HIP, playing email tag with candidates wasn't cutting it. Sure, they knew what an ATS was, but hadn't really needed one... until suddenly, they really, really did.

"Having all these different forms of communication was bonkers," Sarah laughs. It was time for a shift in HIP’s recruiting process. Luckily, that’s when her recruiter friend recommended Breezy.

Finding the perfect fit

Before settling on an ATS, Sarah checked out the usual suspects like Bamboo HR and even gave Crelate a spin. But Breezy's end-to-end recruiting platform won them over big time. How much did they love it? 

When their talent firm tried getting them to switch to Crelate, HIP flipped the script and told the firm to hop on Breezy instead.

"Their platform does nothing that we couldn't do better with Breezy," Sarah says. "We're all about customization. We use the automations, custom pipeline stages, tagging—you name it, we're probably using it."

A hiring process that actually works

So what does efficient hiring look like? HIP's got it down to a science with their customizable pipeline:

1. Quick initial chat with Sarah
2. Deep dive with the hiring manager
3. Hands-on test project or mock call
4. Meeting with the director
5. Final round with founders

But here's where it gets really cool—they've automated everything that isn’t quality face-to-face time with candidates.

Breezy's stage actions handle all email and SMS triggers, questionnaires go out automatically, and candidates flow through the pipeline without having to wonder what’s next.

"We move fast around here," Sarah explains. "Take our Predictive Index assessment—it's all automated. I just move a candidate to the next stage and boom—the email goes out automatically. No more manual back-and-forth."

The proof is in the numbers

Since starting with Breezy, the team at HIP Create:

• Grew from a cozy team of 20 to a bustling crew of 65
• Landed (and smoothly handled) an acquisition that's doubling their size to 130
• Built custom pipelines for every type of role
• Got their communication game on point with automated email and SMS
• Made the whole system so user-friendly that even their "less tech-forward" folks got the hang of it

"It's kind of amazing," Sarah notes. "Even our new director of sales—definitely not a tech person—picked it up like it was nothing. That's pretty much how it goes with all our hiring managers now."

Want to see what all the fuss is about? Try Breezy free for 14 days and watch your hiring process transform.