CASE STUDY
Vention swapped agency fees for fractional recruiting, raising the bar on how it hires.
"It's like they worked for me. They were my recruiter, without the noise."
Sara Tibshirani, VP People & Culture, Vention
About
Vention is a Montreal-based automation company. Its cloud platform lets manufacturers design, automate, order and deploy factory equipment from a web browser.
Industry
Industrial automation software
Employees
350+
Founded
2016
Headquarters
Montreal, Quebec
When Sara Tibshirani joined Vention in 2018, the company had 30 employees and she was a People team of one. Eight years later, Vention has grown to more than 350 people, with a European headquarters opening in Munich and a US office planned for 2027.
Growth like that doesn't arrive in a straight line. Hiring spikes during annual planning, then goes quiet in the summer. Decisions move fast. For years, Sara's options were the usual two: hire full-time recruiters and risk idle capacity, or pay agencies a percentage of every salary and own most of the process herself.
In late 2024, she tried a third option: fractional recruiting with InTandem Talent.
One search that earned the next ten
The first search was personal. Vention's People function needed to scale, and Sara needed an HR business partner for her own team. A close contact referred her to InTandem.
Sara admits she was hesitant. "I'm always hesitant with agencies and outsourcing external partners," she says. "You never know what you're going to get."
What changed her mind was how quickly InTandem understood the role. After every candidate, they asked what worked and what didn't, then adjusted their sourcing. The shortlist sharpened fast. "If they reached me, it was already the right candidate," Sara says.
The role was filled. Then Vention's growth picked up in 2025, and more roles followed. "The trust gained through that one role allowed us to give them more roles," she says. Two years later, InTandem runs full-cycle recruiting for Vention's go-to-market teams, from sourcing through offer and onboarding handoff.
Recruiting capacity that flexes with the business
Agencies charge a percentage of each hire's salary, so costs rise and fall with every role. InTandem works on a flat monthly retainer. "You know what your budget's going to be every month," Sara says.
That structure gave Vention something a full-time hire couldn't: the ability to scale recruiting with demand. During a hiring spike, InTandem might carry ten roles. If five close quickly, Vention keeps five open with them, then scales back up to ten when the next wave hits.
"We were able to turn it on and turn it off when we needed," Sara says, without the risk of a permanent recruiter sitting idle in a slow quarter.
Sara is candid that the model isn't always the cheapest line item. At sustained high volume, a monthly retainer needs to be justified with value. Their conclusion so far: the output is worth the cost.
The bigger difference is ownership. Agencies typically source, screen and hand off. InTandem owns the whole candidate experience, including prepping candidates and hiring managers, following up after every interview, and kicking off onboarding workflows. Candidates experience InTandem as part of Vention. "They really are a part of your business, just outside," Sara says.
Raising the bar on the whole recruitment function
The result Sara values most wasn't on the original brief. "They raised the bar on our recruitment process structure and how we operate," she says.
With recruitment outside her core background and a junior team at the time, InTandem challenged tools and habits nobody else had questioned.
"I don't think anyone would have challenged the ATS that we had," Sara says. Vention moved from SmartRecruiters to Teamtailor, a more flexible system that's easier for candidates and connects to AI tools for internal reporting.
The hiring process got the same scrutiny. For every step, InTandem asked who it served, whether it could be automated, and whether it could be combined with another. Vention cut its process from 20 steps to 10.
Hiring managers noticed the pace. Within minutes of an interview ending, a message from InTandem arrives asking how it went. The urgency keeps searches moving while candidates still get a good experience.
Sara's advice for other companies is direct: the best fit is a growing team without a mature recruiting structure, one that needs a partner to hire and to challenge how hiring works. Asked what InTandem could do better, she couldn't name anything.
"It's above and beyond what I would have expected."
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