How Highsnobiety Cut a 3-Month ATS Migration to Teamtailor Down to Days with ClonePartner

TL;DR

Customer: Highsnobiety (Global Creative Agency, ~250 employees)

The Move: Greenhouse to Teamtailor

The Scope: 5,439 Candidates, 39,505 Activities, and 672 Scorecards seamlessly transferred.

The Roadblock: A 2-to-3 month wait time and high, tiered fees for a native migration, with internal engineering fully booked.

The Outcome: Years of candidate data, scorecards, and historical emails flawlessly migrated in a matter of days.

By the Numbers

• Candidates: 5000+
• Applications: 5800+
• Historical Activities: 40,000+
• Jobs Managed: 250+
• Application Scorecards: 650+
• Time Saved: Transitioned in days instead of the quoted 2–3 months.

The Challenge: 3-month wait time

Highsnobiety is a dynamic, fast-paced creative agency. For years, their recruiting team relied on Greenhouse. While Greenhouse had been a flawlessly stable platform for handling large volumes of applications, Highsnobiety’s lean team of 250 employees realized they needed a system better suited to their specific agile, "rock and roll" workflows.

They wanted a platform with a modern UX, automated scheduling, and AI-driven prioritization, which led them to choose Teamtailor.

The problem wasn't the destination; it was the journey. Moving years of candidate history, scorecards, and email threads presented three distinct hurdles:

• Manual entry was impossible.
• Internal Engineering was operating at half-capacity and fully booked with vital brand project launches.
• Native Migration through the new platform carried a quoted timeline of 2 to 3 months and a significant, tiered fee. They needed a faster, reliable alternative.

The ClonePartner Solution: A Tailored Custom Engineer-Led Migration in Days

Highsnobiety’s Head of Engineering discovered ClonePartner. Because ClonePartner’s team could "speak developer language" and demonstrate a clear, programmatic approach to the data transfer, the engineering team confidently green-lit the project.

For Christina, the HR lead, the biggest win was the translation of complex tech into a manageable, human-centric process.

The process included:

• Custom Scripting: Tailored to Highsnobiety's specific historical cut-off dates (moving only data from recent years).
• Pre-Flight Sample Runs: ClonePartner ran a sample migration first. This proved critical, as it allowed Christina to spot a data protection setting in the new system that was prematurely deleting candidates without explicit consent. ClonePartner easily adjusted, re-uploaded the missing records, and proceeded securely.

"I liked it because the sample gives you the opportunity to have a first check. You are already writing a script, doing all of this work, so we can together look and refine the process."

The Results: Months of Waiting Erased

Instead of waiting a quarter of the year to fully transition, Highsnobiety’s historical data was safely housed in Teamtailor in a matter of days.

The operational impact was immediate. Hiring managers were able to instantly connect their calendars and schedule their own interviews, bypassing old bottlenecks. The HR team reclaimed hours of their week, allowing them to focus on securing top creative talent rather than wrestling with software transitions.

Christina’s Advice for Teams Planning a Switch:

If your team is planning a migration, Christina offers this hard-earned advice:

• Clean House First: Make executive decisions on what data actually needs to move. For example, Highsnobiety chose to only migrate data from recent years to keep their new system clean.
• Check Data Protection Rules: Ensure your new tool’s data deletion and privacy settings are configured perfectly before the data arrives.
• Over-Communicate: Don't just rely on emails. Jump on quick calls with your migration partner to ensure your exact operational needs are understood.