AI-screened. Human-interviewed.
Shortlist in 5 days.
3–5 senior engineers per role, in 5 days. Save 32–55% vs 22% contingency or 33% retained search. 90-day replacement guarantee.
Trusted by Series A–C engineering teams
Validated across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups in UK, US and DACH, sourced from Eastern Europe.
The problem
Hiring engineers in 2026 is a tax
on your engineering time.
Every week you spend hiring is a week your engineering team isn't shipping.
$50K+
Cost of a wrong senior hire
Salary, onboarding, opportunity cost, ramp-down — all gone in the first 90 days.
20h/req
Time you spend on agency CVs
15 CVs per role, 8 interviews, 1 hire. Your calendar knows.
6+weeks
Average time-to-fill
Longer in 2026: candidates use ChatGPT to game every screening stage.
And the two default options — hire another agency, or hire an in-house recruiter — both double down on the same broken pipeline.
How it works
From job description to shortlist.
Six steps. Five days.
AI does 80% of the screening. A human decides who makes the shortlist.
Intake call
30-min scoping call. We capture the JD, must-haves, culture, budget, timeline.
Output:
Signed mandate
Sourcing
LinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, direct outreach, our private CEE network.
Output:
60–120 raw candidates
AI CV screening
Every CV scored against the JD. Only 70+ scores move forward.
Output:
Top 15–25 ranked
Soft-skills interview
20–30 min call: motivation, culture fit, salary, English, availability.
Output:
Structured notes
AI technical interview
AI-conducted technical interview on video with adaptive follow-ups and anti-cheat checks. Every result is reviewed by a human recruiter.
Output:
Hard-skills report + score
Shortlist delivery
3–5 candidates delivered in a single document per role.
Output:
Full candidate package
- 0
Intake call
Human (AM)30-min scoping call. We capture the JD, must-haves, culture, budget, timeline.
Output: Signed mandate
- 1
Sourcing
RecruiterLinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, direct outreach, our private CEE network.
Output: 60–120 raw candidates
- 2
AI CV screening
AIEvery CV scored against the JD. Only 70+ scores move forward.
Output: Top 15–25 ranked
- 3
Soft-skills interview
Recruiter20–30 min call: motivation, culture fit, salary, English, availability.
Output: Structured notes
- 4
AI technical interview
AI AgentAI-conducted technical interview on video with adaptive follow-ups and anti-cheat checks. Every result is reviewed by a human recruiter.
Output: Hard-skills report + score
- 5
Shortlist delivery
Human + AI3–5 candidates delivered in a single document per role.
Output: Full candidate package
The deliverable
What you actually get.
Every role ends with one document like this — per candidate, 3–5 candidates per role. Below is a real shortlist (redacted) for a Senior Java Developer at a Series B UK fintech.
Candidate A
ActiveAI Match Result
EXCELLENT MATCH
Based on job requirements analysis
AI Executive Summary
Candidate A is an excellent fit for the Senior Java Developer position. With 8 years of backend experience and deep expertise in distributed systems, database design, and API architecture, they exceed the core technical requirements. Strong culture fit signals and competitive salary expectations within budget. Minor gap in event-driven architecture experience, addressable through onboarding.
Matched Skills
Skills Gap
Missing Core
Browse by role
Hiring a specific senior engineer?
Each role page covers the salary band, hiring context, and CEE talent depth specific to that engineer.
Why Recruo
How we compare.
Forward this to your Head of People or CFO.
| Recruo | Classical agency | In-house recruiter | AI tool only | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per senior placement ($70K salary) | $10.5K | $14–15.4K | $6–8K/mo salary | $250–750/qtr + your time |
| Time to shortlist | 5 days | 10–15 days | Variable | Instant, unvalidated |
| Structured AI report per candidate | ||||
| Human culture-fit interview | ||||
| EU AI Act compliance | N/A | N/A | ||
| Your engineering time per role | 2–3 hours | 15–25 hours | 5–10 hours | 10–20 hours |
| AI skills validation (optional) | ||||
| Proprietary anti-cheat browser | N/A | N/A | ||
| CEE → EU cross-border specialisation |
Benchmarks from SHRM 2025 Talent Trends and Bullhorn GRID 2026. Recruo figures reflect Phase 1 targets — Q2 2026.
EU AI Act
Compliant by design,
not bolted on.
AI-driven hiring is classified as high-risk under Annex III of the EU AI Act. Penalties reach €35M or 7% of global turnover.
Recruo's model is human-in-the-loop by design: AI is a recommendation engine, a human recruiter owns every decision. That maps directly onto what regulators require — not something we added after the fact.
Compliance checklist we publish per engagement
Candidate notification of AI use, in writing, before interview.
Full audit trail of AI scoring decisions, retained 5+ years.
Bias audits across gender, age, disability and ethnicity — published quarterly.
Right to human review on any AI-rejected candidate, enforced at the platform level.
CE marking and EU database registration tracked and timestamped.
No fully-automated rejection — ever. A human recruiter sees every decision.
EU AI Act Rollout
Feb 2025
Prohibited AI practices ban
Aug 2025
GPAI + governance obligations
Dec 2027
NextHigh-risk AI (hiring) obligations
delayed from Aug 2026 (AI Act Omnibus)
Aug 2028
Embedded AI systems + €35M penalties
Recruo is ready today
Human-in-the-loop is our default, not a retrofit. Every engagement ships with a full compliance checklist.
Pricing
Transparent pricing.
32% cheaper than classical agencies.
Success-fee model. You only pay when you hire.
Standard
Scale-ups hiring 3–10 engineers/year, mixed seniority.
15%
of annual salary, paid on placement
- Full 6-step flow
- Shortlist of 3–5 candidates per role
- AI CV screening + technical interview
- Human soft-skills interview
- 90-day replacement guarantee
- Unlimited roles in the month
- AI Skills Validation (optional add-on)
Fixed-fee
Junior/mid roles below $60K salary, or when you want capped cost.
$8,000
per placement, predictable spend
- Same full flow as Standard
- 90-day replacement guarantee
- Capped cost per hire
- Ideal for volume hiring
Retained
Urgent VP/Head/C-level roles where you need dedicated sourcing and the deepest possible validation.
Custom
1/3 up front, 1/3 at shortlist, 1/3 on placement
- Dedicated recruiter assigned
- Exclusive search + passive headhunting
- AI Skills Validation included
- Recruo Secure Browser included
- Weekly progress calls
- Executive reference checks
Savings calculator
Risk-free start
90-day replacement guarantee — if your hire leaves or is let go in the first 90 days, we re-run the search at no cost. First placement at 50% fee for qualifying scale-ups closing their first mandate with us.
The numbers
What changes when you stop
buying CVs and start buying shortlists.
Targets validated across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups in UK, DE, NL and Nordics.
5 days
Time to first shortlist
Median across our first 20 placements. From signed mandate to 3–5 candidates in your inbox.
32%
Cheaper than classical agencies
15% success fee vs the classical 20–25% contingency. Plug in your salary and currency in the savings calculator on /pricing.
80%
Client interview pass rate
4× the industry benchmark. When we send a candidate, your team meets a real fit — not a CV.
2–3h
Your engineering time per role
Down from 15–25 hours with classical agencies. Your team interviews finalists, not pipelines.
How we hit these numbers
Our 6-step flow combines AI CV screening and AI technical interviews with human sourcing and culture-fit calls. AI does the volume work; humans own every shortlist decision.
Your point of contact
Two people own your shortlist.
No SDR queue. No account-handover. Olena scopes the role, Sofiia runs it week-to-week — and you have both on the same thread.
Owns the buyer side of every Recruo engagement — from the first discovery call to the 90-day retention check-in. Places senior engineers for Series A–C scale-ups across UK, Nordics, and DACH, and turns vague briefs into measurable mandates on the 30-minute intake. A decade across Sales, Customer Success, and GTM — startups through a successful B2B SaaS M&A exit. Most CTOs meet her first.
[email protected]
Owns the product side of every Recruo engagement — what 'good' looks like for your role, and how the screening engine measures it. Translates your hiring brief into the evaluation criteria each candidate is scored against, calibrates seniority signals to your stack, and feeds buyer-side data back into the product roadmap. Two years of B2B AI product delivery behind her.
[email protected]FAQ
Questions CTOs
actually ask.
The objections we hear most — and our honest answers.
On a $70K placement, a classical 22% agency charges $15,400. Recruo Standard charges $10,500 — you save $4,900 per hire. For high-volume hiring or junior roles, our $8K fixed-fee plan is even more predictable.
Yes. Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer required, no upfront fees — you only pay on placement, with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Median across roles in our first 20 placements. VP/Head roles take longer (10–14 days). The clock starts when we have a signed mandate and approved JD.
We re-run sourcing at no extra cost. If after a second shortlist there's still no fit, we refund the engagement fee. Our 80% client interview pass rate means this rarely happens.
For Standard and Fixed-fee plans, our anti-cheat layer flags screen-sharing, suspicious latency, copy-paste behaviour, and eye-tracking anomalies — and flagged candidates are re-interviewed by a human. For Retained mandates, the interview runs in our proprietary Recruo Secure Browser, which fully locks the candidate session: no tab switching, no external apps, no second-screen ChatGPT. Available as add-on for other plans.
Yes, but our economics work best at mid/senior. For junior roles, we recommend the Fixed-fee plan at $8,000 per placement for predictable spend.
Recruo is compliant by design. Every engagement ships with a compliance checklist covering candidate notification, audit trails, bias audits, and human review rights. See our whitepaper for the full breakdown.
Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable via native exports. Others via CSV/Zapier. We deliver shortlists in a single document — most clients forward it directly to their hiring channel.
80% CEE (Ukraine, Poland, Romania), 15% Southern Europe, 5% other. All remote-ready, most with EU work authorisation. We use LinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT, and our private network.
The candidate. Consent-first processing, GDPR-compliant, data deleted on request. We never share candidate information with third parties without explicit consent.
Get started
Ready to stop losing
engineering time to hiring?
Fill out the form and we'll reach out within 24 hours to scope your first role. Or book a 30-min discovery call directly.
No upfront fees
Pay only on placement
90-day guarantee
Free re-search if hire leaves
EU AI Act ready
Compliant by design