Adyen doubles its workforce without compromising quality or compliance

With Greenhouse as its structured hiring foundation, Adyen strategically grew from 2,200 to 4,800 employees in 3.5 years while keeping interviewing standards consistent, staying audit-ready and achieving universal platform adoption across four global regions.
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Key results 

• Grew from 2,200 to 4,800 employees (~118% headcount growth) with a consistent, structured hiring process
• Brought 95%+ of all hiring in-house, reducing reliance on external recruitment agencies
• Achieved universal platform adoption with minimal training sessions required for hiring managers or interviewers

About Adyen

‍Adyen is a global financial technology platform that provides end-to-end payment solutions for some of the world’s largest businesses. The company also holds multiple banking licences and is regulated by the Dutch Central Bank, which means its hiring practices carry the same audit and compliance expectations as any financial institution.

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Adyen has grown to approximately 4,800 employees across Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

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The challenge

‍‍Adyen nearly doubled in size over three and a half years, growing from about 2,200 to 4,800 people. Greenhouse was already in place when Geto Getov joined the company as Head of Recruitment and Employer Brand – but scaling while protecting quality, consistency and compliance meant making the system work the same way, everywhere.
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Maintaining consistent hiring quality as application volume increases
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Adyen processes hundreds of thousands of applications each year – and that number continues to grow. At the same time, the company sets a high bar: every new hire should meet the same standard of excellence, regardless of role or region. Without a consistent way to evaluate candidates, that standard becomes harder to maintain. The team needed a system that could bring structure to interviews, reduce subjectivity and help recruiters clearly identify the strongest candidates in increasingly large pipelines.
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Ensuring continuous compliance in a regulated environment
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As a regulated bank, Adyen must maintain a complete and auditable hiring record for every candidate, including scorecards, structured feedback and documented decisions at every stage. Internal audits review this data regularly, and even small gaps can create risk. Compliance needed to be embedded directly into the hiring workflow so every step is captured as the process moves forward.
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Driving adoption across a globally distributed hiring team
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Beyond the global recruiting team, hundreds of hiring managers and interviewers across four regions need to actively participate. If the system creates friction or requires training, adoption drops quickly – and when that happens, both hiring quality and compliance start to break down. Adyen needed a platform that feels intuitive from the start so participation, and the data that comes with it, stays consistent at scale. 

Quality of hire is really our number one priority. We want to be the place for talented people. To get to that point from a recruitment perspective, you need a lot of consistency.

^{– Geto Getov, Head of Recruitment and Employer Brand, Adyen
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The solution

‍‍Greenhouse provided the structured hiring infrastructure Adyen needed to scale – embedding consistency, compliance and usability directly into the hiring process so the system does the heavy lifting.

Pipeline visibility, talent filtering and structured evaluation to improve hiring decisions
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Using Report Builder, Adyen gains clear visibility into pipeline quality – including where strong candidates are coming from and how roles are performing. That insight helped the team identify which roles could be handled internally, supporting their shift to 95%+ in-house hiring. Combined with essential Greenhouse tools like Talent Filtering and Talent Rediscovery, the team can quickly surface top candidates through a sea of applicants.

To ensure those candidates are evaluated consistently, Adyen uses role-specific scorecards tied to defined competencies, so every candidate is assessed against what actually matters for the role. Feedback sequencing requires interviewers to submit input before seeing others’ assessments, helping preserve independent judgement and reducing bias.

Built-in compliance workflows that ensure audit readiness
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Greenhouse allows Adyen to configure workflows, permissions and requirements so compliance is enforced automatically. Every stage requires documented feedback, and every hire includes a complete record. GDPR and equal-opportunity requirements are managed within the platform, without additional follow-up. 
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An intuitive platform experience that drives full adoption
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Adyen didn’t rely on formal training to get teams started – just light guidance through interviewer sessions and documentation. Hiring managers log in, quickly understand what’s required and complete their tasks without friction. That ease of use drives consistent participation across regions, ensuring data is complete and reliable. With bi-directional integration into their HRIS and real-time reporting, recruiters and leaders have clear visibility into hiring progress, from approved headcount to active pipelines.

I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘Oh, Greenhouse is really difficult to go into and submit feedback.’ I don’t think we have received that feedback ever.

^{– Geto Getov, Head of Recruitment and Employer Brand, Adyen
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The results

Adyen’s outcomes show how a structured hiring system performs under pressure – rapid growth, high application volume and strict regulatory requirements. The impact is visible across hiring quality, compliance and adoption.
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Hiring quality remained consistent throughout 118% headcount growth
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At the pace and scale of Adyen’s growth, maintaining quality depended on keeping hiring decisions aligned across teams, regions and interviewers. With clear visibility into pipeline quality and a structured, consistent way to evaluate candidates, the team can focus earlier on the strongest applicants, even as volume increases. That combination keeps hiring decisions grounded in the right signal and aligned across roles and regions.

It also gave the team confidence to bring 95%+ of hiring in-house. With both the visibility and the structure to assess candidates consistently, Adyen could take full ownership of hiring while maintaining a high bar as the company scaled.

Compliance operates consistently in the background
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Now, hiring activity is consistently documented across every role and region, giving internal audit teams clear visibility into how decisions are made. Because requirements are built into the process, compliance is maintained as part of day-to-day hiring rather than through manual checks. This allows Adyen to stay audit-ready even as hiring volume and complexity increase.
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Full adoption enabled trustworthy data and better decisions

Because the platform is intuitive, teams successfully adopted it with minimal guidance. Across all four regions, hiring managers now use it consistently as part of their day-to-day workflow.

That consistent participation results in complete, dependable data across the hiring process. As a result, Adyen can confidently support audits, inform leadership reporting and guide strategic hiring decisions with a clear, real-time view into pipeline performance.

Greenhouse allows a very distributed global team to do that very easily … to self-monitor itself and develop into a very well-oiled modern recruitment function.

^{– Geto Getov, Head of Recruitment and Employer Brand, Adyen}