How hipages cut time-to-hire by 38% and built an award-winning candidate experience with Greenhouse

How hipages built a streamlined, candidate-first experience that strengthened their employer brand and drove better hiring outcomes
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Fast facts: Key results

• Time-to-hire reduced by 38% (49 days to 31 days)
• 100% positive candidate satisfaction + TIARA Award winner‍
• $2.8M AUD/ $1.9M USD saved in agency fees across two fiscal years

About hipages

‍hipages Group is Australia and New Zealand’s number-one leading platform connecting homeowners with trusted tradies (tradespeople) and home improvement professionals across ANZ. At hipages Group, their purpose is to transform the trade industry and build better lives for everyone while remaining the most trusted partner in the industry.

They continue to drive the digital transformation of one of the last industries to modernise, resulting in better outcomes for tradies and homeowners alike.
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The challenge

With nearly 350 team members across 4 countries and rapidly growing – including the acquisition of the NZ-based tradesperson marketplace Builderscrack – hipages needed to scale hiring to match growth in the very talent competitive ANZ technology industry, while maintaining consistency and delivering a standout candidate experience. And with word of mouth moving fast, every candidate touchpoint needed to help strengthen hipages’ reputation and attract stronger talent.

With hipages scaling fast across multiple regions and cost pressures to keep their talent acquisition team lean, they needed to keep momentum without adding TA headcount or leaning too heavily on recruitment agencies. In short, hipages needed a more efficient, transparent and aligned way to hire.

Manual coordination slowing hiring down: With limited automation, everything took longer: scheduling interviews, collecting feedback, tracking candidate progress, managing offers, sharing notes. Delays crept into the process and their TA team spent more time chasing actions than guiding strategy.

Inconsistent interview processes: Because hiring managers were interviewing without shared questions or frameworks, candidates had very different experiences depending on the role, team or interviewer. Decisions leaned heavily on intuition rather than comparable evidence, making it tough to confidently evaluate fit or align expectations between candidates and hiring teams.

Limited visibility into hiring performance: With limited reporting or shared data, the team couldn’t easily see where time was being lost or where stakeholders needed support. Process improvements were reactive instead of intentional, slowing progress even further.

Costly reliance on external agencies: Agency partners helped fill urgent roles, but they came with a high cost-per-hire and occasionally mismatched placements. To scale sustainably, hipages needed to strengthen recruiting capabilities in-house, without slowing down the pace of hiring.

If we hadn’t fully utilised Greenhouse’s functionality for tracking feedback, decision-making and candidate communication, the process would have involved significantly more manual work, not allowing for valuable time to be spent with candidates.

^{– Jason Lau, Head of Talent Acquisition, hipages Group}

The solution

hipages turned to its ATS Greenhouse, in particular, newly released AI and automation functionality, as a foundation for structured, scalable and candidate-friendly hiring. The goal wasn’t just to digitise steps. The team wanted to utilize the Greenhouse platform for improved decision quality, increased speed and provide a great user experience for everyone involved in the hiring process.

AI-powered efficiency tools: hipages embraced GH’s AI features to shave hours off manual work. Scorecard summaries helped synthesise interviewer input instantly, AI-generated questions aligned interviewers on core competencies and talent filtering helped quickly identify the strongest candidates. Recruiters could now redirect the time saved from administration to high-impact conversations.

Structured interview kits and scorecards: Instead of every hiring manager reinventing the wheel, hipages built standardised interview kits. Every role included defined competencies, questions and criteria, creating consistency across teams and fairer evaluations for candidates. Scorecards also made it easier for first-time interviewers to step in with confidence.

Candidate-friendly workflows: Automated survey distribution, templated communications and integrated offer workflows ensured that candidates always knew where they stood. The TA team no longer had to track touch points manually, and candidates benefited from more timely responses and transparent expectations.

Reporting and insights that drive improvement: Custom reporting dashboards made hiring trends visible. Time-to-hire, offer conversion and bottlenecks could now be tracked in real time, turning hiring manager enablement into a proactive, data-backed function instead of guesswork.

Greenhouse gave us structure, speed and clarity. AI cuts the admin, interview kits keep everyone aligned and the dashboards show us exactly where to focus.

^{– Jason Lau, Head of Talent Acquisition, hipages Group}

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‍The results

‍‍Once the team maximised the functionality in Greenhouse, it became the shared home for hiring. The impact was felt across every corner of the business – in speed, quality, collaboration and in how candidates experienced hipages along the way.

Dramatic reduction in time-to-hire: In just one year, average time-to-hire fell from 49 days to 31. That 38% improvement had a ripple effect: roles stayed open for less time, team capacity increased and hiring managers received qualified candidates sooner. Recruiters could shift attention from triaging backlogs to supporting sourcing, onboarding and strategic workforce planning.

A candidate experience that elevated employer brand: hipages hit an astounding 100% positive candidate satisfaction and earned a 2025 TIARA Award for Candidate Experience – an industry honour recognising excellence in talent acquisition. Candidates consistently praised clarity and communication – a standout experience that strengthened hipages’ employer brand and attracted stronger talent.

Reduced dependency on agencies – without sacrificing quality: As internal capability and consistency grew, hipages naturally reduced its reliance on external agencies. Over two fiscal years, the team saved $2.8M AUD / $1.9M USD in agency fees, all while sustaining hiring velocity. Most importantly, quality never dipped. hipages maintained a healthy quality of hire score, proving the team could scale smarter, bring more work in-house and still hire the right people.

Increased alignment across the business: Scorecards, structured interviews and centralised decision-making helped interviewers articulate why a candidate should be advanced or rejected. That clarity strengthened relationships between TA and hiring managers, reinforced fairness and ensured final hiring decisions were confident and well-supported.

I would definitely recommend Greenhouse. Interview kits and scorecards have made hiring easier for everyone – managers know what they’re responsible for, interviewers feel prepared and confident and collaboration across teams is seamless. It’s removed the stress and subjectivity from our process.

^{– Jason Lau, Head of Talent Acquisition, hipages Group}