Hiring for startups & scale-ups

Some hires are too important to get wrong.

I help startups and scale-ups find the people they need to build what comes next — with a particular focus on technical and hard-to-fill roles.

I can run the search from start to finish, work alongside your existing recruitment team, or help you improve the way you hire.

Tell me what you're hiring for See how I work

When the role matters

The role is important. The hiring process shouldn't be the thing holding you back.

Hiring gets harder as the roles become more important.

The market is smaller. The candidates are harder to reach. The interview process needs more thought. Hiring managers need to agree on what they're actually looking for. And a weak decision can cost far more than the recruitment fee.

Sometimes you need someone to take a difficult search off your hands.

Sometimes you need someone to challenge the brief before the search starts.

Sometimes you already have a recruiter — you just need additional expertise, capacity or a different perspective.

That's where I come in.

You might need me if…

01You have an important technical or leadership hire that you cannot afford to get wrong.

02A critical search has been open for too long without producing the right candidates.

03Your hiring managers aren't aligned on what they're actually looking for.

04You know what you want to hire, but you're struggling to reach the right people.

05Your recruitment process has grown organically and now needs more structure.

06You have an internal recruiter or talent team, but need additional expertise or capacity for a difficult role.

07You're entering a new stage of growth and want to make sure your hiring process can keep up.

08You need someone who can challenge the brief, not simply execute it.

What I do

The people you need. The process to find them.

Most of my work falls into two areas: finding the right people and making sure the process around them works.

01 — Tech recruitment

Find the people who can actually do the job.

I work primarily on technical and hard-to-fill roles across engineering, product, data, AI and technical leadership — with the flexibility to work on other roles when the situation calls for it.

I take the search from understanding the role and defining the profile through sourcing, outreach, interviews, assessment, candidate management and closing.

That means you don't get a list of CVs.

You get a recruitment partner who understands the role, knows how to reach the right people and stays close to the process until the right person signs.

Talk about a role

02 — Hiring advisory

Build a hiring process people can actually work with.

Sometimes the problem isn't finding candidates.

It's the way you're hiring.

I work with founders, hiring managers and internal recruiters to design or improve the parts of the process that determine whether good people get hired: role definition, scorecards, sourcing strategy, interview structure, assessment, decision-making, candidate experience and closing.

The aim is simple: make better hiring decisions, with less wasted time and less guesswork.

Improve your hiring process

How I work

Good recruitment is a lot more than finding profiles.

A successful search starts long before the first candidate enters the pipeline.

01 — Get the role right

Before I search, I understand what you're actually hiring for.

What problem does this person need to solve? What will they own? What does good look like six and twelve months from now? What kind of person can succeed in your particular environment?

We turn that into a clear profile and hiring bar that everyone involved can actually use.

Because if the brief is wrong, better sourcing won't fix it.

Why work with me

Technical depth. Startup judgment. Hands-on recruitment.

Technical depth

I understand technical hiring beyond the job title.

I've spent years recruiting across engineering, product and technical leadership, and I understand the difference between hiring someone who looks right on paper and hiring someone who can actually solve the problem your company has.

I'm comfortable getting into the substance of a role, asking the uncomfortable questions and working with technical leaders without pretending to be the technical expert.

Startup judgment

The right person on paper isn't necessarily the right person for your company.

A VP who succeeded in a 500-person organisation may struggle in a 25-person startup. A brilliant engineer may not thrive in an environment where priorities change every week. Someone who looks perfect in an interview may be completely wrong for what the company actually needs next.

I assess candidates in context: your stage, your team, your constraints, your pace and what this person actually needs to accomplish.

A partner, not a CV supplier

I don't believe recruitment is about sending enough profiles until someone eventually sticks.

I work closely with whoever is responsible for the hire — founder, CTO, hiring manager or internal recruiter — and stay involved throughout the process.

I'll challenge a weak brief, question an unrealistic expectation, tell you when the market isn't giving you what you're asking for and push the process forward when it starts to stall.

You get an experienced recruitment partner who is accountable for the quality of the search, not just the number of candidates submitted.

The difference

I don't just recruit for the role. I understand the context around it.

A technical hire doesn't happen in isolation.

The role sits inside a team. The team sits inside a company. And the company is usually changing faster than its hiring process can keep up.

That's why my work often extends beyond the immediate search.

If the role is unclear, we fix the role.

If the interview process isn't giving you useful information, we fix the process.

If hiring managers aren't aligned, we get them aligned.

If the candidates you're attracting aren't the right ones, we work out why.

The recruitment is the execution. The thinking around it is what makes the execution work.

The person behind the work

Recruitment expertise, with a deeper understanding of people.

I've spent more than eight years working in tech recruitment, including with startups and growing companies across Europe.

Alongside recruitment, I've trained in clinical psychology and psychotherapy and have worked as a coach.

That combination influences how I work.

I'm interested in more than someone's CV. I pay attention to motivation, communication, decision-making, patterns of behaviour and the context in which someone has actually succeeded.

Because hiring is ultimately a decision about people. And important decisions about people deserve more than keyword matching.

8+ years in tech recruitment

Startup & scale-up experience across Europe

Clinical psychology & psychotherapy training

Coaching experience

What clients say

The best recruitment work is felt by everyone involved.

“We worked with Ana during the pivotal initial phase of our product. Her dedication, market insight, and professionalism were evident throughout. She helped us assemble a team of highly skilled developers — not just technically proficient, but a perfect fit for our culture.”

Cotyso Bodea

CTO, Everon

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Have a role to fill?

Tell me what you're hiring for.

Tell me about the role, what you're looking for and where you're getting stuck. I'll tell you how I think about it — and whether I can help.

Tell me about the role

Tell me what you're hiring for.

A little context is useful.

What role are you hiring? What's making it difficult? Who is currently involved in the process? What have you tried so far?

I'll get back to you personally.