This episode is an interview with Matt Birtchnell, Talent Specialist at Xero (c.400 UK staff).

Matt has almost 15 years’ experience in the recruitment sector across a wide range of industries. He joined Xero as their first inhouse dedicated recruiter, as has been heavily involved in building up their resourcing capability. Xero is a young “hyper growth” organisation and this presents lots of challenges to the recruitment function. Matt and his colleagues are challenged to recruit highly talented people at volume (c. 170 hires this year).

This was a wide ranging discussion that includes how:

• COVID-19 lockdown is affecting their working practices and the outlook for their hiring in the near future.
• Xero is promoting their community connect programme even during lockdown (whilst socially distancing).
• They look to create and share content on social media and how they do this whilst staying inline with their employer brand and their organisation’s “tone of voice”.
• Their brand is focused on standing out from other traditional software companies and how this is then reflected in their Employer Brand.
• They outgrew their old ATS (Jobvite) and how they decided on their new ATS (Lever) which is being rolled out globally.

You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn, and take a look at the Xero’s career opportunities on their website, here: https://www.xero.com/uk/about/careers/

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Maintaining great communication during the lockdown with tools like Slack, see: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/
• Creating graphics for social media via Canva, which is free, see: https://www.canva.com/en_gb/
• Xero’s new ATS, which is Lever, see: https://www.lever.co/
• LinkedIn Recruiter, see: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/recruiter
• Fintech Insider podcast, see: https://11fs.com/digital-insights/podcasts