The team knew it needed engineers. The final job descriptions were still taking shape.
That gave us a starting point, not a finished search brief. We needed to understand what strong looked like in practice: what someone had built, how much they had owned, and why they would want to join this particular team.
First, make the brief usable
We drafted the initial role descriptions from the founder conversation and put the open questions in a shared brief. When the hiring team supplied its own descriptions, we used those to continue the discussion.
On the follow-up call, we asked for examples of people the team had already hired. We also asked why those people had joined. That gave us more to work with than a list of previous employers or technologies: the team wanted people who were drawn to ownership and the opportunity to build early.
We checked practical assumptions too. Was the working arrangement a hard requirement or something the team could discuss? What would candidates be asked to do during the interview process? Which parts of the package still needed confirmation?
Show the hiring team what the brief means
Next, we shared a set of example profiles in the client's Slack channel. Each included a reason for the possible fit.
The distinction mattered: these were profiles for calibration, not a queue of people who had agreed to interview. We explicitly marked candidate interest as unconfirmed. The hiring team could indicate whom it would want to meet and explain why; that signal did not itself contact the candidate.
This made the brief something the team could react to. Instead of asking whether a description sounded right, we could ask whether a particular person's work matched what the team needed.
Make a recommendation, including the open questions
As the search progressed, the recommendations went beyond a CV. They described the relevant work, why the person was considering a move, practical fit, and what the client should still test in interview.
For example, one recommendation highlighted end-to-end ownership while flagging a specific depth-of-experience question for the hiring team. It was a reason to meet someone, not a claim that every question had already been answered.
In a separate recommendation thread, the client asked to meet a candidate. We helped coordinate the next step, and the hiring team confirmed the call was scheduled.
Outcome
The engagement resulted in a completed hire. Company and candidate details remain private. The examples above describe the search process, not the individual hiring journey of the person ultimately hired.
What this shows about Refery: the network brings people into view. The work is turning those people into clear decisions, with context about the fit, honesty about the gaps, and a concrete next step.