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For employers
Four ways to engage, a five-stage process, and a short shortlist with written notes. Here's the detail.
Ways to hire
Mostly it comes down to how long you need someone, and who carries the employment paperwork.
We run the search, you get a shortlist. Once you've made the offer we're out of it — apart from staying close to the candidate until they've started.
They work to your direction, we stay the employer. Good for a fixed piece of work, or skills you need for six months rather than six years.
Same as contract, with an agreed date you can move them onto your payroll. Useful when skills are clear from the CV but team fit isn't.
A group working only for you — your tools, your standups, your priorities — employed and administered by us. Makes sense when the need is permanent but setting up an entity isn't.
Our process
Five stages. The first takes an hour of your time and everything else depends on it.
We want an hour with whoever the hire reports to. Not HR, not a forwarded job description — the person who'll be reviewing their code.
Adverts reach people who are looking. A lot of the engineers you'd want aren't looking, which makes an advert-only search a small pond.
The part we're strict about. A shortlist that wastes your engineers' afternoons is worse than no shortlist.
Scheduling across time zones, chasing feedback, keeping people warm. Dull work, and it loses good candidates when done slowly.
An accepted offer isn't a filled seat. The notice period is where counter-offers land and placements quietly fall over.
Screening
Right to work and employment history get checked as standard. These decide whether somebody reaches your shortlist.
Anyone can describe a project that went well. We want the outage, the bad release, the thing they'd do differently.
A surprising number of strong engineers can't. It matters if the role involves anyone outside the team.
Not what the team shipped. What they wrote. An easy question that separates people fast.
Asked first conversation, not after an offer. Better to find out about a likely counter-offer now.
Straight talk
Worth a read before you get in touch. Might save us both a call.
Questions
Depends on the role. A mid-level backend engineer on a realistic salary, about a week. A security architect who also knows your compliance regime, a lot longer — there are only so many. You'll get a real estimate after the brief call.
Every placement has a replacement guarantee, agreed in writing before you commit. We'd also want to work out why — more often than not it traces back to something in the brief we should have pushed harder on.
Permanent placements are a one-off fee when you hire — no hire, no fee. Contract and dedicated teams run on an agreed rate covering payroll, compliance and admin. You get the number in writing before anything starts.
For contract and dedicated teams, us — payroll, statutory contributions, contracts and right-to-work checks sit our side. For permanent placements they join your payroll and it's yours. We put which applies in writing before you sign.
Yes, and we'd push you towards it. A team sharing four or five hours with you sorts problems out in a conversation; a team with no overlap does it over two days of messages. We agree the overlap before anyone starts.
Good — they'll know your business better than we will. We add reach on specific hard roles, plus the fact we're not juggling twelve other vacancies for you. A lot of our work runs alongside an internal team on the roles that got stuck.
A few lines is enough to start. No charge for a search, and no obligation.
