Meet the BackStretch Team

We're Talent Acquisition Experts. We've got your back.

We are a modest but mighty boutique agency with a team of talent acquisition experts committed to creating a genuine, candid, and enjoyable hiring experience.

We share the values of honesty, transparency, trust, innovation, and results. We have a singular focus – recruitment – which allows us to not be distracted by other service offerings. We are passionate about finding the perfect fit for our clients and the candidate.

Matthew Heiydt

Founder | Partner

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Matthew Heiydt, Founder | Partner

Over the past 20 years, Matthew Heiydt has been dedicated to the ever-changing industry of Recruitment and People Strategy.

After graduating in Commerce, Matt started his career by spending 6 years with an international Workforce and HR Solutions firm in Vancouver, focusing in permanent and executive recruitment. After being a part of 1,000 + hires, assisting 300 + companies and 3 leadership positions, it was time for a new challenge.

Matt then joined Gener8, a Vancouver Technology company to lead all things people growth. As part of the leadership team, he owned recruitment strategy in a very tight labour market and grew the business from 5 to 150 staff, including 63 hires in less than 3 months.

Matt founded BackStretch Recruitment Group in 2011 with the vision to address the service gap in the industry, where traditional “recruitment firms” and HR consultants were operating with antiquated models and no longer delivering. BackStretch is leading the way companies hire.

Profoundly committed to innovation, responsiveness and building a company that attracts and retains the best in the world who have dedicated themselves to the art of recruitment.

Under Matt’s leadership, BackStretch has become the recruiting partner of choice for many of Canada’s fastest growing technology companies and provides recruiting services across North America.

In his spare time….

Matt does mentoring work with UBC, BCIT, and SFU in Career Education with the goal of bringing an industry perspective to the academia mindset.

Whenever possible, you will find Matt being a dad, doting over his daughters Jasmine and Violet or on the golf course. He originally moved to BC from Ontario to pursue professional golf, and still holds a 0 handicap, so feel free to call him up when your company golf tournament needs an extra body!

Alison Fleischauer

Partner

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Alison Fleischauer, Partner

Alison is an 18-year veteran of the recruitment and executive search industry, working in a variety of roles. She brings a unique ‘candidate perspective’ and insight to BackStretch having spend years as a senior career advisor at the Art Institute of Vancouver Art Institute, and also as a job placement specialist supporting new immigrants to Canada in their job search.

For the past 6 years, Alison has been working as a recruitment consultant, dedicated to helping companies recruit and retain the best talent possible. She has extensive experience in operations and managing full cycle hiring on behalf of employers.

At Backstretch, Alison has directly placed over 250 hires and conducted more than 3,000 candidate interviews. Working as the recruiting lead for a BackStretch partnership client, Alison has directly placed more than 70 candidates in the past 12 months in marketing, product, sales and operations roles – VP level and frontline.

Prior to starting her career in recruiting, Alison held director level positions for 10 years, including serving as a former director of Berlitz Vancouver. She has had the privilege of living and working in London (UK) and South Korea.

Alison has volunteered with MOSIAC as Career Coach to assist immigrant and refugee status Canadians and is a sought-after speaker on recruitment and interview coaching.

What Alison loves most about working at BackStretch…

The variety! Talking to people – lots of people. Learning about different jobs, and how teams are structured and how they work together. Connecting the threads between the candidate and the company/role and helping a team “win” the person that they want on it, collaborating with hiring managers/leadership and helping them execute on their vision.

Something Alison can’t live without…

Coffee to start, wine to finish, books that engage and inspire, a good hard laugh and my family to love.

Nelson Cook

Director of Strategic Growth and Operations

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Nelson Cook | Director of Strategic Growth

Nelson is a seasoned Staffing Professional bringing over 17 years of recruitment experience with a focus on leading high performance recruitment teams. This experience was gained as a top performer within industry leaders including, The Allegis Group the largest private staffing firm Globally, The Adecco Group the largest publicly traded staffing firm Globally, Robert Half the largest privately held staffing firm in North America as well as other notable staffing industry leaders.

Nelson’s experience is broadly scoped with a focus and proven track record of building & leading both sales and recruitment delivery teams across industries, with a focus on Information Technology. His specialties include; Territory Planning, Staffing Solutions, Talent Attraction, Staff Acquisition, Business Development, Account Management, Recruiting Strategy/Processes, Headhunting, Strategic Sourcing, Staff Retention, Results Driven Leadership, Brand Development and is a subject matter expert in Recruitment and Staffing as a whole.

Nelson is passionate about recruitment and enjoys a customer centric approach to forge long term deep relationships driven by transparency, tenacity, and a partnership mentality to enable our customers to attract and retain top talent. Having placed over 2,500 people in his career to date, Nelson attributes his success to deep diving into clients’ true needs, and getting to know job seekers’ unique skills, goals and career interests, to ensure win wins for both client and candidates.

In his spare time…

Outside of recruitment, Nelson is well traveled having visited over 29 Counties and fortunate to have lived and worked in 4 countries across North America and Asia. He is a husband, father, and sports enthusiast, having been collegiate golfer in University and an active coach and player in hockey, golf, tennis, squash and softball leagues.

Jaafar Jabbar

Manager, Recruitment and Hiring Partnerships

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Jaafar Jabber | Manager, Recruitment and Hiring Partnerships

Jaafar has over 8 years experience working in talent acquisition in multiple areas including executive search, technical recruitment, and as a consultant with a focus on technical roles.

He has a track record of driving growth through innovation, and candidate/client engagement. He excels at technical recruitment, executive search, training and development, P2P sales, client and stakeholder management and customer satisfaction and retention. Jaafar also has project management experience in marketing and sales and activation planning.

Jaafar has worked on behalf of clients to hire globally, in regions including North America, Europe
Middle East/MENA, and South Asia.

He has recruited for the software, IT, Oil & Gas, Education, Healthcare, FMCG industry and conglomerates.

He is passionate about having a profound impact on the professional career of all his candidates and making lifelong friendships along the way.

In his spare time…

Jaafar is an avid gamer, amateur coder, and social psychology aficionado. When asked what he can’t live without… Coke Zero, Coke Zero, Coke Zero – did we mention Coke Zero?

Christie Weber

Manager, Recruitment and Hiring Partnerships

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Christine Weber | Manager, Recruitment and Hiring Partnership

Christie has worked in the recruitment and event planning industry for the past 9 years. Prior to BackStretch, Christie worked as a recruitment coordinator for Save-On-Foods, and as a recruiter/HR generalist at Inventa.

She also has years of experience in the event planning industry, and with recruiting temporary labor across Canada for the promotional industry, which showcased her project management and coordination skillset.

Christie has a Diploma in Marketing Management, and an Associate Certificate in Human Resources from BCIT. A passionate life-long learner, she is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Human Resources and Labour Relations.

She loves being the consistent contact for candidates throughout the whole process, and if they are fortunate to be offered a position, to be able to call them and share the great news which can be life changing. It’s so rewarding to have such a positive impact on a person’s life.

In her own words:

“I wouldn’t call us an agency. I would call us a hiring partner. Somebody who is a member of your team, and you have continuity in your relationship with whomever you’re working with us.”

In her spare time…

With three young kids, two being twins, what’s “spare time?”

Christie can’t live without coffee, family and the feeling of adventure! If I’m not planning a trip somewhere, redecorating or taking a class – something always needs to be changing, exciting, and challenging to keep her going!

Lauren Poelzer

Recruitment Specialist

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Lauren Poelzer | Recruitment Coordinator

Coming Soon…

Jilian Cruz

Technical Recruitment Specialist

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Jilian Cruz | Technical Recruitment Coordinator

Coming Soon…

Alina Montia

Recruitment Specialist

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Alina Montia | Recruitment Specialist

Alina has worked in the recruitment industry for over a year. Prior to BackStretch, she worked as a recruiter for Clio and a talent coordinator for Vidyard. Alina’s expertise lies in talent sourcing, and she additionally has experience in driving full-cycle recruiting across a variety of roles. She also has experience in people operations, where she can showcase her skills in coordination and organization.

She has a diploma in Human Resources Management from Conestoga College, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto. Her industry and educational experiences have enabled her to develop strong research skills and a resourceful mindset, which enable her to source top candidates using innovative means.

More broadly, Alina is interested in trends and developments within the field of recruitment. She is excited about the potential of BackStretch to drive the evolution of talent acquisition practices.

In her spare time…

Alina is an avid foodie, voracious reader of sci-fi & fantasy, and minder of one very cute cat. She can’t live without earl grey tea, her e-book reader and her cell phone.

More comments from our clients on their experience working with BackStretch:

I view BackStretch as an extension of my HR department, and really a partner in so far as attracting the best talent to help us grow our business.

They've allowed us to stay really lean when it comes to our operations management of our business, and they kind of fit pretty seamlessly into what we're doing.

The depth, definitely the "do-say" ratio is high. When Matt says, or anyone on this team says that they're going to do something, I know with certainty that it will happen.

BackStretch has kind of been our recruiting arm. They've helped us with language and employment agreements, understanding what the market will bear and where we may be off with salaries, or other non-monetary kind of components of compensation, and what other businesses in the industry are doing. They've been like a consultant and a recruiter for us.

Meet the BackStretch Team

We're Talent Acquisition Experts. We've got your back.

Matthew Heiydt

Alison Fleischauer

Nelson Cook

Jaafar Jabbar

Christie Weber

Lauren Poelzer

Jilian Cruz

Alina Montia

More comments from our clients on their experience working with BackStretch:

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