Making Diverse Hiring Simple

Build a diverse remote team while managing a busy startup

Pointed Copywriting is a small team that packs a punch. 👊🏼

Founder and Content Chief Brittany Ryan has dedicated her time to creating killer content since 2008. She’s ghostwritten thought leadership articles on behalf of multi-million-dollar startup CEOs, written web copy for eight-figure tech startups and crafted UI content for Fortune 100 brands.

Wow.

And when it comes to Pointed’s vision, Brittany’s just as dedicated.

We’re a small startup with a big voice,” says Brittany, “We have strong values we stick by no matter what. For example, we only work with brands who have a positive impact and as a content and copywriting agency, we need to make sure we have the kind of team that can help these brands deliver.

But with only five part-time, remote employees, no dedicated recruiter and a constant stream of candidates from various sources, hiring-fatigue was a real challenge for Brittany and her team.

Pointed’s Content Lead, Maddy Bartlett, explains:

Brittany and Maddy knew they needed a tool to help keep up with the avalanche of applicants and create more time to focus on increasing scaling the business in an inclusive and sustainable way.

The small and scrappy team at Pointed had their work cut out for them. They needed to create a scalable hiring system that would help them attract, evaluate and hire diverse candidates fast.

A central hiring system that grows with you

Brittany already knew about Breezy—so the choice was simple.

Their main aim was to increase team diversity—and they knew it was worth it.

“Since we’re a remote team, we’ve never had a problem with candidates applying for roles—we get a steady stream through our careers page, LinkedIn and job boards, and often they’re well-qualified. But we realized pretty quickly that this still wasn’t going to get us the diverse talent we wanted. We needed to get the bird’s eye view of our entire candidate pool so we could prioritize applicants from underrepresented communities and the talent we knew we needed.”

But with the clock ticking and the client deliverables stacking up, Brittany’s ad hoc system consisting of a recruitment inbox and Google sheet made it impossible to rapidly identify their best candidates.

Brittany called up Maddy for the transition.

“Breezy was really simple to set up. You get an initial 30-min tutorial that talks you through it, and from there it’s just a case of customizing the process and pulling in data from our hundreds of spreadsheets. There’s this small initial time investment, and then it saves you so much time—I can’t stress how awesome it’s been. Breezy has really changed things for us.”

But it's not just about connecting with candidates, Breezy has also impacted team communication.

“Being able to chat to remote team members within the tool is a life-changer. Normally we’d be switching between email, Zoom, Asana and Slack to discuss candidates, but now we can keep track of conversations all in one place. We love it.”

More time, more diversity

Brittany and the team use Breezy to create a streamlined candidate experience and connect with the best diverse talent remotely.

“Breezy makes life so much easier. The reusable questionnaire templates and automated emails mean we have much more time to focus on the parts of the process that lend themselves to an inclusive approach—like concentrating on using the right language in our job ads, taking the time to look at each top candidate holistically, and creating a nurture campaign to stay connected with applicants who took the time to reach out to us.”

And thanks to Breezy, Brittany and her team are well on their way to achieving their diversity goals.

“It’s been a learning curve and we’re by no means perfect—we know there’s a long way to go. But the first step is being open about what we want to achieve. We live in a biased world, so it’s important to us to lay our cards on the table and say, ‘This is what we believe’—and Breezy definitely helps us do that.”