A pre-validated shortlist of 3–5 senior engineers per role.
One report per candidate. 5 days.
Instead of a stack of CVs, you get one AI + human report per candidate — CV match, technical interview, recruiter notes — and a recruiter owns every decision. Permanent hires across the EU (incl. Ukraine), Latin America and North America, at a success fee well below the 22–33% classical agencies charge. 90-day replacement guarantee.
The three questions every CTO asks first
Where do your candidates come from?
We source across the EU — Ukraine and Poland are our deepest networks — plus Latin America and North America, matched to your timezone, budget and work-authorisation needs. Channels: LinkedIn Recruiter, DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT, regional communities and our private network. All candidates are remote-ready.
Do you integrate with our ATS?
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.
Who owns the candidate data?
The candidate. Consent-first processing, GDPR-compliant, data deleted on request. We never share candidate information with third parties without explicit consent.
Built for Series A–C engineering teams
2.4x is illustrative, modelled on a $70K role: time saved, faster hire, lower bad-hire risk, lower fee. Run your own numbers →
Validated across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups in UK, DACH and the Nordics, sourced across the EU, Latin America and North America. Pass rate vs ~20% typical agency submit-to-interview rate.
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 LLM Engineer 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 LLM Engineer position. With 6 years of backend experience and 3 years shipping LLM-backed features to production, they exceed the core requirements: RAG architecture, fine-tuning, and inference cost optimisation. Strong culture fit signals and salary expectations within budget. Minor gap in multimodal pipelines, addressable through onboarding.
Matched Skills
Skills Gap
Missing Core
Get this exact deliverable as a redacted PDF
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, direct outreach, and regional networks across the EU (DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT), Latin America and North America — plus our private candidate 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 — up to the fully locked-down Recruo Secure Browser. 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, direct outreach, and regional networks across the EU (DOU, Djinni, Just Join IT), Latin America and North America — plus our private candidate 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 — up to the fully locked-down Recruo Secure Browser. 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
Pricing
Success-fee pricing.
Every $1 in fees returns ~$2.40.
You only pay when you hire — at a fee well below the 22–33% classical agencies charge. ~$2.40 is modelled on a $70K role: time saved, faster hire, lower bad-hire risk, lower fee.
Standard
Scale-ups hiring 3–10 engineers/year, mixed seniority.
10–20%
of first-year salary — typically 15%, paid only 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)
Hybrid
Your first engagement with Recruo — we share the risk before you commit to a full mandate.
Upfront + fee
a small upfront engagement fee, credited 100% against a reduced success fee
- Same full 6-step flow as Standard
- Shortlist of 3–5 candidates per role
- Upfront credited in full on placement
- Reduced success fee vs Standard
- 90-day replacement guarantee
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
More ways to work with us
Fixed-Fee — a flat fee per placement, quoted for your region. Best for junior/mid roles or procurement-led buying.
Learn more →Pipeline-as-a-Service — a monthly retainer for teams running 3+ concurrent roles.
Learn more →Performance pilot — pay per delivered, screened candidate. Zero commitment.
Learn more →For context: a wrong senior hire costs $50K+ in its first 90 days, average time-to-fill runs 6+ weeks, and screening agency CVs eats ~20 hours of your team's time per role. Our model returns ~$2.40 in value for every $1 of fee — the calculator below shows the other side of the ledger. Run your own numbers before you judge our fee.
Bad hire cost calculator
Edit the values below to see your number
True cost of this bad hire
£220,850
That's 1.7× the engineer's annual salary — not 30% like the old SHRM rule.
Avoiding this is also cheaper on your time: hiring through Recruo takes 2–3 hours of your team's time per role, vs 15–25 hours screening agency CVs.
Prefer a straight fee comparison? Run the fee & ROI estimator on the pricing page.
Pilot-friendly: start with a single role
Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer, no upfront fees on Standard — you pay on placement, same 5-day shortlist, same guarantee.
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. Included on Standard, Hybrid, Retained, and Fixed-Fee.
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 |
| What you end up with | A hired engineer, 90-day guarantee | A hired engineer | Depends on your pipeline | A ranked CV list — hiring is still on you |
| Structured AI report per candidate | Yes | No | No | Partial |
| Your engineering time per role | 2–3 hours | 15–25 hours | 5–10 hours | 10–20 hours |
| Human culture-fit interview | Yes | Partial | Yes | No |
| AI skills validation (optional) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Cross-border hiring specialisation (EU · LATAM · NA) | Yes | Partial | No | No |
| EU AI Act compliance | Yes | N/A | N/A | No |
| Proprietary anti-cheat browser | Yes | N/A | N/A | Partial |
Benchmarks from SHRM 2025 Talent Trends and Bullhorn GRID 2026. Recruo figures: medians across our first 20 placements (2025–2026).
EU AI Act
Compliant by design,
not bolted on.
AI hiring is high-risk under Annex III — the EU AI Act's list of high-risk uses, which includes hiring. Operate a screening tool yourself and you become the deployer: audit trails, bias audits and human-oversight duties land on your team. Recruo runs the AI system and hands you hired engineers. The operator burden sits with us, not with you.
Recruo is human-in-the-loop by design: AI recommends, a human recruiter owns every decision. Because we operate the system end-to-end, the deployer obligations — candidate notification, audit trails, bias audits, human-review rights — are carried inside our process, not added to your team's workload. You get the hire. We carry the paperwork.
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.
And the 2027 deferral doesn't pause GDPR or existing bias-audit duties — those apply to AI screening today.
FAQ
Questions CTOs
actually ask.
The objections we hear most — and our honest answers. The three biggest ones are answered up top.
Our success fee is 10–20% of first-year salary — typically 15%, confirmed before the search starts based on seniority, scarcity and region. On a $70K placement at the typical rate, that's $10,500 versus $15,400 with a classical 22% agency — roughly $4,900 back per hire.
Yes. Most clients start with one open role to validate the flow before signing a multi-role mandate. No retainer required, no upfront fees on Standard — 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 the second shortlist still misses, you owe nothing on Standard — and on Hybrid or Retained we refund what you've paid upfront. Our 80% client interview pass rate means this rarely happens.
On every engagement, 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, ask about our Fixed-Fee plan — a flat fee per placement, quoted for your region — 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.
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, DACH and the Nordics, 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.
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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.
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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 skip the wait and book a 30-min call directly below.
Pay on placement
No upfront fee on the Standard plan
90-day guarantee
Free re-search if hire leaves
EU AI Act ready
Compliant by design
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