How Paymentsense Increases Their Chances of Quality Hires

The Client

Paymentsense is Europe’s largest merchant services and card payment provider. Over 70,000 small business customers in the UK and Ireland count on Paymentsense to handle £10 billion in transactions each year.

The Challenge

As a fast-growing FinTech company, Paymentsense is always on the lookout for customer service representatives. Paymentsense has fixed start dates, so they’re proactively recruiting year round. Every six weeks, they onboard 16 people as employees. Each hiring campaign lasts between three to four weeks, and they receive about 1,000 applications from job seekers during each campaign. That means they can be screening ~10,000 applications a year.

“The problem is there’s such a large volume of applicants; we don’t have time to interview everyone,” explains Luke Govier, head of talent acquisition at Paymentsense. “Even if we wanted to, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to give every single person a chance.”

While it’s great to be so sought after as an employer, it presents a problem from a recruitment perspective. Paymentsense needed a tool that could help them screen thousands of applicants to hire “people-people” with a customer-first mindset.

The Solution

Paymentsense’s recruitment team evaluated several HR tech options, and ultimately chose VidCruiter’s pre-recorded video interviewing solution.

“With some applicants, it’s blindingly obvious that they have the experience for the job,” explains Govier. “Other candidates may not have relevant experience on their CV, but we see potential. That’s where VidCruiter comes in.”

When job seekers begin, they’re welcomed with a video of a recruiter from their local office explaining what to expect from the video interview and why they’re doing it. Then, each interview question is asked via video by real people in their organization.

“We’ve been really careful crafting the candidate experience,” says Govier. “The videos are much more personable than just having a written question. I know it’s not the same as a real-time interview, but there are still real people’s faces. It’s the little things. We’ve had candidates greet hiring managers in their answers, so we know it feels a bit like they’re talking with somebody.”

Answering five predefined video questions

Solving 10 math questions

Writing a response to a common, scenario-based customer question that they’d likely encounter if offered the job

This step in Paymentsense’s recruitment process allows candidates to make a case for themselves and play up their strengths. Some applicants will excel in one area more than another. They could be terrible at math, but have strong written communication skills and present themselves well in the video interview.

Shortlisted candidates still talk with recruiters, but instead of it being an interview, it’s a conversation about the role itself. “At that point, we can say: ‘Great work. You’ve opened a door for yourself. We’re interested. Let’s tell you more about the opportunity,’” says Govier.

The Results

VidCruiter’s pre-recorded video interviews widen Paymentsense’s candidate pool, giving people a chance who would’ve otherwise been ruled out. The new process helps them assess more aspects of candidates during the screening phase, allowing them to select stronger hires as a result.

“Here’s an example that cements it perfectly for us,” says Govier. “A hiring manager recently messaged one of our recruiters to ask them how they found such a promising candidate. The person’s CV was terrible, just really poorly laid out. Ordinarily, we’d never have interviewed this person because their background was so off. But, because of VidCruiter, they got the interview, met with the team manager, and met with the COO, who thought they were ‘absolutely brilliant.’ Now that person has a job. And if we hadn’t offered them a video interview, they wouldn’t have had that chance. Some people just need a break.”

Roughly 40% of customer service applicants now receive an invitation for a VidCruiter pre-recorded video interview. They can complete the interview whenever and wherever they’d like. “Applicants can choose to ignore the invitation, if they don’t want to do it,” says Govier. “But it’s 25 minutes of your time, and you could get a job at the end. So, why not?”

The pre-recorded interviews have also helped Paymentsense’s diversity efforts. “Recruiters are naturally drawn to people who come from call center environments for customer service roles,” says Govier. “It’d be naive of us to ignore the people that have relevant experience. But, especially in our local markets where there aren’t millions of employers, there’s risk of hiring employees from the same companies. Then you end up with a bit of an echo chamber where you’re inheriting loads of different cultures. We’re not just hiring people from call centers. Since our people come from many different backgrounds, we’re creating our company culture, rather than just inheriting it.”