Case
studies

The brief, the search,
the hire that stuck.

Real engagements, told the way we work them.

By industry

A Product Lead for an AdTech founding team, on a budget the market said was unrealistic.

Tech / AdTech
RoleProduct Lead
ScopeSenior, founder-facing hire
RegionCross-border, US market focus
Challenge

A highly specific senior search for a product leader with hands-on AdTech experience, partnering directly with the CPO and CEO. US market exposure was non-negotiable since the client's competitors and customers operated there. Compensation was anchored to a lower-cost market, which meaningfully shrank the senior pool we could reach. The brief asked for leadership and technical depth at the same time: subject-matter fluency in ad operations, software architecture, and performance frameworks.

Our approach

Targeted sourcing into a niche pool of AdTech operators, not a broad PM funnel. Culture-first screening for value alignment and long-term fit before checking domain depth. Personalised outreach to convert passive senior candidates into engaged conversations. The role was published with a public salary, which pulled the eventual hire in inbound, on top of the active search. Curated shortlist kept tight to protect founder time.

Outcome

Full hiring cycle from intake to hire completed in six weeks. The candidate exceeded the original brief: consistent AdTech product leadership, prior early-stage scale experience, direct US market exposure from working in San Francisco, and bilingual communication that fit the regional team. Hired through a process the founders described as fit, quality, and time-to-value, in that order.

6 wksintake to hire
CPO + CEOfounder-facing search

An Account Executive who could open a North American market from outside it.

B2B Sales
RoleAccount Executive / Account Manager
ScopeExternal Talent Partner, MD-led
RegionMulti-region, ~30 countries searched
Challenge

A B2B sales hire for a Managing Director who needed a builder, not a closer. The talent market threw up four real bottlenecks at once: candidates who lacked advanced English for North American buyers, profiles written in native languages that buried qualifications, widespread confusion in some markets where "Account Executive" reads as accounting rather than B2B sales, and generalist commercial backgrounds that the client treated as a red flag. We searched broadly across Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and Latin America to find sales operators with consistent quota-carrying experience.

Our approach

Intake call to clear hanging points from the brief, then a candidate calibration step where we sent three benchmark profiles to lock in must-haves: quota history, deal cycle type, market experience, selling approach. Deep sourcing on Indeed and LinkedIn Recruiter with strict filters. Heavy curation kept the shortlist to a maximum of three. Pre-screening, expectation setting, and work-test coordination handled inside the search so the MD only saw signal.

Outcome

Placed in three weeks. Our candidate received an offer on the spot as soon as she completed the work test. Founder confidence on the hire never wavered through onboarding.

3 wkstime to hire
100%open rate (26 contacted)
50%response rate
503screened out for fit

A Head of Operations to replace the founders' grip on day-to-day ops.

eCommerce / DTC
RoleHead of Operations
ScopeFounder replacement, 8-figure DTC
RegionEastern Europe, South Africa, LATAM, then onward
Challenge

A fast-growing 8-figure eCommerce company in the health and wellness space, operating globally with multi-country manufacturing and a direct-to-consumer model. Many of the operational systems still ran through the founders. This was not a maintenance role and not a delegate-and-disappear hire. It was a founder replacement at the operational core of the business: someone who would design, own, and evolve the operational backbone, with the trust to make decisions independently. The hire had to be a value-add to the company from week one, not a learning curve waiting to happen. Trust-heaviness made the search delicate. Get the wrong person in this seat and the founders quietly take the work back.

Our approach

We searched widely across Eastern Europe, South Africa, LATAM, and onward, mapping markets with strong systems-thinking operational talent at compensation that fit the role. Screening went past the resume and into behaviour: how candidates think in workflows, dependencies, and failure points; how they react when handed ambiguity rather than a checklist; whether they prefer fixing broken systems or talking about them. We pressure-tested their comfort with ownership directly with the founders. The shortlist was deliberately narrow.

Outcome

We spotted the top person early in the search. They were hired. The founders moved out of the day-to-day operational seat with a partner they trusted to design the next phase of growth.

Top of poolidentified early
Founderreplacement, trust-heavy

A six-month embedded talent partnership that built a recruitment function from scratch.

People / HR
RoleTalent & People Success Partner
ScopeEmbedded, six-month engagement
RegionAdTech media, multi-market
Challenge

An AdTech media company without a recruitment or people framework, hiring across markets and roles with no shared infrastructure. Candidate experience was inconsistent, employer brand was thin, and the hiring team had no way to evaluate volume or signal at scale.

Our approach

Designed and rolled out the full recruitment and people framework end-to-end. Inclusive, transparent candidate journeys built in collaboration with marketing for an aligned employer brand. Full-cycle hiring across inbound and outbound pipelines. Eleven new HR and recruitment tools introduced across teams, including a candidate-experience-first ATS implementation. Structured check-ins and feedback systems embedded so every interviewed candidate received meaningful feedback.

Outcome

Five strategic hires made inside six months. Thirty percent of new applicants arrived through referrals, driven purely by candidate experience. Over ten thousand applications evaluated across roles and markets. Consistent inbound testimonials calling the process the best interview experience of the candidate's career.

5strategic hires in 6 months
10K+applications evaluated
30%applicants from referrals
11tools introduced

High-bar engineering sourcing for a US boutique across seed to pre-IPO.

Tech / Engineering
RoleSourcing & Interview Support
ScopeExternal partnership
RegionUnited States
Challenge

Engineering hiring with high pass thresholds, including bar-raiser style interview loops, across companies ranging from seed-stage startups to pre-IPO scale-ups. The bar was set by who the client was already hiring from: Bloomberg, Palantir, Amazon, TikTok, and similar.

Our approach

Sequenced outreach into a curated audience of engineers from top-tier companies. Messaging that treated senior ICs as peers, not as inventory. Tight interview support so every candidate landed in front of the hiring team in the right context.

Outcome

Consistent delivery of candidates from top-tier companies into the client's pipeline. Open rate of 87.28%, well above industry norms, on the contacted pool.

147candidates contacted
87.3%open rate
Top-tierpipeline source
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