How Holland Bikes replaced manual hiring and cut time-to-hire from two months to two weeks

Holland Bikes rents, services, and sells bikes across Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, and New York. Fanny Pineau, Recruitment Manager, leads hiring for the group, working with hiring managers across each location to fill roles from mechanics and retail advisers to seasonal park managers, all through Join.

The challenge

When growth outpaced a manual hiring process

Before Fanny Pineau took over recruiting at Holland Bikes, hiring ran entirely on email and the messaging tools built into individual job boards. Job ads went out manually, candidate updates were relayed to hiring managers one email at a time, and interviews were coordinated message by message. Nothing lived in one place.

By the time Fanny joined, the gap was already visible. Roles spanning mechanics, retail staff, seasonal park managers, and freelance guides across four cities had outgrown what a manual, unstructured process could support. Follow-ups slipped through the cracks, not from carelessness, but because there was no shared system behind any of it.

Recruiting scattered across email and job board inboxes: Job ads, candidate updates, and interview coordination all lived in separate channels, with nothing tracked centrally. “The lack of reach and the lack of centralisation were really the two things that were holding us back,” said Fanny.

Manual coordination overwhelmed a growing hiring team: Publishing job ads, tracking candidates, scheduling interviews, and writing rejection emails all had to be handled manually, a workload that outgrew what the old process could sustainably support as more hiring managers got involved.

Limited reach on every job ad: Without a way to publish to multiple channels at once, each job ad reached a small slice of the market, and applications trickled in slowly.

Adding hiring managers without an exploding software bill: As Holland Bikes grew, more managers needed to be involved directly in hiring decisions, something many recruiting tools make expensive by charging per seat.

“I heard how it was before Join, and I know we would have missed a lot of great talent. The lack of reach and the lack of centralisation were really the two things that were holding us back.” — Fanny Pineau, Recruitment Manager at Holland Bikes

The solution

Everything they needed, priced for their size

Holland Bikes evaluated its options with two priorities in mind: a tool with everything the team needed, and pricing that made sense for a company of 11–50 people. Many applicant tracking systems charge per seat for every hiring manager added, a cost that climbs quickly for a team that wants managers directly involved in decisions. Join’s model, which lets companies add hiring managers without extra cost, made the choice straightforward.

One pipeline replaced scattered coordination

Using Join’s pipeline management, every candidate lands in a single structured view instead of scattered emails and job board messages. Fanny and Holland Bikes’ hiring managers now work from the same view of who’s in the process and at what stage.

Automated emails freed up hours every day

Confirmations, rejections, and interview reminders that once meant writing individual emails now happen automatically through Join’s messaging and templates. Paired with calendar sync for scheduling, hiring managers book time with candidates directly, with no back-and-forth required.

Multiposting multiplied reach overnight

Using Join’s Multiposting, Holland Bikes’ job ads go out to more channels at once, reaching a far wider pool of candidates than publishing each ad manually ever could. The first job ad published through Join drew ten times the usual number of applications.

All managers included, with no growing software bill

Join lets Holland Bikes add every hiring manager to the software without paying per seat.

“Join really positions itself in a way that makes growth, centralisation, and collaboration possible, without exploding your budget. You can include all your managers without having to pay thousands of euros just to add people from your own company.” — Fanny Pineau, Recruitment Manager at Holland Bikes

The results

• 10× more applications from day one: Holland Bikes reports that its first job ad on Join brought in ten times the usual number of applications.
• Fanny estimates that automation saves three hours a day on admin: Confirmations, rejection emails, and interview reminders no longer need to be written individually.
• Fanny estimates that time-to-hire fell from about two months to about two weeks.
• Every hiring manager included, at no extra cost: Holland Bikes added all its hiring managers to Join without paying more per seat, letting more people take part in hiring decisions as the team grew.
• A top recommendation score: Holland Bikes rates Join a 10 out of 10 when asked how likely they are to recommend it, the highest response on Join’s Net Promoter Score survey.

“If Join disappeared tomorrow, we would have to immediately find a comparable solution. We simply cannot go back to the way we worked before.” — Fanny Pineau, Recruitment Manager at Holland Bikes

Beyond the numbers, hiring managers now work from the same pipeline as Fanny instead of scattered updates. Spontaneous applications keep a live talent pool open between campaigns, so strong candidates aren’t lost just because a role isn’t active yet. Message templates and threads keep candidate communication consistent across the team, even as more hiring managers get involved directly.

Join remains Holland Bikes’ primary hiring channel today, supporting close to 25 hires a year across its French locations and New York. The team continues to grow how it uses Join, from templates for interview follow-ups to a Join application widget built directly into its career site.

Holland Bikes replaced a hiring process built on email and job board messaging with a single hiring pipeline shared across hiring managers in four cities.

“To any company still hiring through email alone: you are losing money, time, and great talent.” — Fanny Pineau, Recruitment Manager at Holland Bikes

Holland Bikes isn’t the only lean team making Join part of how it scales. See how Taikonauten cut recruiting admin by 98% while keeping its hiring process centralised as the studio grew.