Case Study: Building a Talent Acquisition Function from the Ground Up at Neon One
About Neon One:
Neon One is a B2B SaaS company providing technology that helps nonprofit organizations manage fundraising, donor engagement, events, and day to day operations. Serving a growing customer base across North America, Neon One delivers an integrated platform designed to reduce administrative complexity and empower mission driven organizations to operate more effectively.
HighlightTA was initially engaged to support a high impact hiring initiative focused on building a new onshore support team in Oklahoma City. This project required rapid hiring, location based strategy, and close collaboration with leadership to deliver results under tight timelines.
Through the discovery period for this engagement, it became clear that the immediate hiring challenge was part of a broader issue. Neon One’s People and Culture team was intentionally lean, and while the business did not need a full time internal recruiter, it did need a more scalable and flexible talent acquisition function. The Chief People Officer recognised the opportunity to address both the project delivery and the longer term TA gap at the same time.
As the partnership evolved, Neon One moved from solving a single hiring problem to building a talent acquisition function that could support steady hiring, adapt to spikes in demand, and provide strategic guidance without adding permanent overhead.
27
Hires made
50+
Days average time to hire
1
Complete TA function
The challenge
Neon One’s People and Culture team was responsible for supporting the business across a wide range of priorities. Outside of project hiring, volumes were typically modest, averaging two to three roles per month, and were being managed directly by hiring managers with support from People and Culture.
This approach created challenges. Hiring managers were spending significant time reviewing inbound applicants, with limited proactive sourcing or market outreach. At the same time, the People and Culture team did not have the capacity to deliver a full end to end talent acquisition function, and hiring a full time internal recruiter did not make sense given the variability in demand.
Compounding this complexity, Neon One was hiring across a wide range of roles, from operational and go to market positions through to highly specialised technical and engineering roles. Teams were distributed across the United States, Canada, and APAC, and there was no dedicated applicant tracking system or recruiting infrastructure in place to support scale.
Neon One needed a partner that could deliver immediate hiring outcomes while also building a longer term talent acquisition capability that could flex with the business.
“HighlightTA is the employment acquisition partner I had been searching for, truly exceeding all expectations. They do what they say they will do! They have multiplied our small HR team by delivering an awesome candidate and hiring manager experience allowing us to meet our goals for hiring quality candidates, staying within our compensation budget, and improving our overall time to fill for Neon One.”
Key challenges
Supporting a lean People and Culture team without adding permanent headcount
Hiring across a wide variety of role types and seniority levels
Operating across multiple geographies and time zones
Lack of dedicated talent acquisition tools or infrastructure
Balancing steady hiring with sudden spikes in demand
The delivery
HighlightTA partnered closely with Neon One to build and operate a flexible, embedded talent acquisition function.
Building the foundation
The first priority was establishing the right infrastructure. HighlightTA implemented the Ashby applicant tracking system, providing a recruiter friendly platform designed specifically for talent acquisition. A new careers page was launched on Neon One’s website, improving candidate experience and employer branding. An internal referral hub was also introduced, enabling employees to refer talent into a structured process.
A central hiring tracker and dashboard provided visibility across open roles, priorities, and progress. Weekly working sessions were established to review hiring plans, blockers, and upcoming needs.
End to end talent acquisition delivery
HighlightTA took ownership of the full recruitment lifecycle. This included intake calls with hiring managers, interview process design, proactive sourcing, market mapping, offer management, and onboarding coordination. Live market and compensation data was shared regularly, allowing Neon One to adjust expectations and pivot quickly where needed.
Strategic alignment and leadership access
Through introductions from the People and Culture team, HighlightTA worked directly with senior leaders across the business. These conversations enabled deeper understanding of team goals, evolving priorities, and workforce planning needs, allowing hiring strategy to be shaped proactively rather than reactively.
Scaling with the business
While hiring volumes initially aligned with expectations, demand increased significantly over the year. In addition to business as usual roles, Neon One continued to scale following the Oklahoma City hiring initiative. HighlightTA flexed its approach, aligning the right talent partners with the right skill sets to deliver against shifting priorities and tighter timelines.
Across the year, hiring expanded well beyond original expectations, with over 50 hires delivered across functions including quality assurance, sales operations, software and AI engineering, product, payments, and incident response roles.
The impact
With the right systems, expertise, and processes in place, Neon One gained confidence in its ability to hire effectively across the business. Hiring managers were supported with clear guidance and proactive communication, reducing time spent on recruitment while improving outcomes.
While the engagement began with a focused project, outcomes quickly surpassed expectations. Hiring velocity improved, processes became more consistent, and leadership gained confidence that hiring could flex quickly and reliably as priorities changed.
This approach allowed leadership to stay focused on core business priorities, while HighlightTA equipped teams with the right people to hit their objectives. The People and Culture team gained a trusted partner in talent acquisition, capable of thinking strategically at a leadership level while executing day to day hiring across all role types.
Rather than pointing toward the need for a single full time recruiter, the engagement demonstrated the value of a flexible talent acquisition model that could adapt to changing hiring volumes, role complexity, and geography without introducing fixed overhead or capability gaps.
As hiring needs evolved and volumes increased, the model scaled seamlessly, providing Neon One with a complete, end to end talent acquisition function to support both steady growth and periods of accelerated hiring.
“Our mission is to help nonprofits grow by building stronger personal connections, and that starts with building the right team at Neon One. The HighlightTA team has been instrumental in helping us find the right people during a pivotal stage of growth.”
“HighlightTA has become an indispensable extension of our HR team. Their recruiters don’t just fill roles — they take the time to understand our culture and our people, which makes all the difference. I truly couldn’t do this job without them.”