Senior data and product hires, straight from our shortlist
For a pharma marketing SaaS, the client hired its Senior Data Engineer from just 2 presented candidates and its Senior Product Manager from 4.
On our side
Checks run before the client spent any time.
Both are interviews, so they share one scale.
For the client
Candidates presented and hired. One dot is one person.
2 for the Data Engineer, 4 for the Product Manager.
Client
A marketing SaaS for the pharma industry.
The challenge
Every role sat at a rare intersection of skills. Senior data engineers had to combine large-scale pipelines on GCP (BigQuery, Spark, Iceberg) with LLMs in production. Product leads needed hands-on knowledge of ad platforms and media buying in a regulated pharma domain. On top of that: an AI-first engineering culture, a clear ownership mindset, and one rule from the client: with teams of three, any doubt meant a decline.
What we did
- Agreed the red flags before the search.With the client we defined what disqualifies upfront: NDA-heavy CVs with no concrete contribution, resistance to AI-first workflows, service mindset in leadership roles.
- Took the first three checks onto our side.Every candidate went through a pre-screen, an HR interview on the client's values, and a technical validation by us. Across the search, we ran 90 HR interviews and 74 technical validations before the client spent any time.
- Sent a decision-ready dossier, not a CV.For every candidate: screening overview, values scoring with rationale, recruiter concerns stated openly, a separate technical assessment, and salary and location expectations.
- The client focused on the final call.Its interviews met only candidates who had passed every check above.
The decision-ready dossier
What the client received for every candidate, instead of a CV.
The result
- Senior Data Engineer hired from just 2 presented candidates.
- Senior Product Manager, a rare mix of adtech and pharma marketing, hired from 4 presented candidates.
- 1 in 3 presented candidates was hired, and more than half of those we presented were invited straight to the client's technical interview.
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