Case studies
Six signed offers. Two real engagements.
Client names stay anonymous by default. Engagement outcomes come from our searches; fee comparisons use current Standard pricing.
Around 9 in 10 candidates we present pass every stage of the client’s assessment process. Recruo also reports a 5-business-day median time to first shortlist. The pass-rate scope was clarified on 14 September 2026; the individual cases below describe separate engagements. In a 2026 UK fintech engagement, 3 of 4 shortlisted backend candidates reached the final round and the offer was signed on day 14. At current Standard pricing, an £85K salary would mean £3,400 saved versus a 22% agency fee. In a five-seat LATAM data-engineering search, 430+ applicants were screened down to 10 shortlisted candidates, 9 of whom passed the client's technical loop — a 90% pass rate — producing 5 signed offers.
Senior Backend Engineer
Time to shortlist
5 days
Candidates shortlisted
4
Reached final round
3 of 4
Time to signed offer
14 days
Fee saving at current 18% pricing
£3,400 saved
90-day retention
Retained ✓
Timeline
Day 0
Kickoff call
30-minute scoping call. Captured the JD, must-haves, salary band, and remote setup.
Day 1–4
Sourcing + AI screening
78 raw candidates pulled across LinkedIn, DOU, Djinni and our private CEE network. AI CV screen kept the top 19.
Day 4
Recruiter + AI technical interview
Six 45-minute candidate calls: 20–30 min soft-skills with the recruiter (motivation, salary, remote setup), then 12-minute AI interview on hard skills + English assessment, with the recruiter co-piloting on the same call. Outputs a structured score per candidate.
Day 5
Shortlist delivered
4 candidates per role package — CV analysis, AI hard-skills report, recruiter notes and a scorecard. See a sample scorecard →
Day 9
Client final rounds
3 of the 4 reached the client's final loop. One was filtered for limited event-driven background.
Day 14
Offer signed
Hire chosen on cross-team communication signal — the dimension hardest to test in a CV.
Day 90
Retained
Hire still on team, shipping. Replacement guarantee never triggered.
Three of the four candidates we sent ended up in the client's final round. They picked the one with the stronger cross-team communication signal — exactly the dimension that's hardest to read off a CV. The replacement guarantee was never triggered: hire is still on the team 90 days in.
Outcome notes from the engagement
5× Senior Big Data Engineer
Seats to fill
5
Time to shortlist
10 days
Applicants screened
430+
Shortlisted to client
10
Passed client tech interviews
9 of 10
Offers signed
5
Sourcing funnel
430+
Sourced + applied
61
Passed AI CV screen
12
Passed tech pre-screen
10
Shortlisted
9
Passed client loop
5
Offers signed
Of 430+ sourced and incoming candidates, 61 passed the AI CV screen and 12 passed the technical pre-screen. We shortlisted 10 for the client, and 9 passed the client's technical interviews.
Five senior data engineers hired for one delivery team, on a search where hundreds of applicants never made it past the pre-screen. Only 1 of the 10 shortlisted candidates was filtered out by the client's own technical loop — a 90% pass rate. Time to shortlist ran 10 days instead of our usual 5: multi-seat LATAM searches carry heavier sourcing volume, and we'd rather show the real number.
Outcome notes from the engagement
“Recruo changed the economics of our hiring. Filling one seat used to cost us 20–25 technical interviews — all senior engineering hours the team was struggling to absorb. The shortlist we received was already technically validated, so our interviews could focus on what only we can judge: project fit and culture fit.”
Svitlana TupytsiaProject Manager, AI/GenAI delivery — client-side hiring manager
Track record
Measured across 20+ placements with Series A–C scale-ups
5 days
Business days to first shortlist
Median across our placements with Series A–C scale-ups.
≈9/10
Pass every client assessment stage
Approximate company-wide observation reported by Recruo’s founder, with scope clarified on 14 September 2026; not a role-specific cohort or a hire rate.
£3,400
Fee saving at current Standard pricing
Illustrative comparison on an £85K salary: our current 18% Standard fee is £15,300, versus £18,700 at a 22% UK agency.
Why client names stay anonymous
Recruitment is a trust business. We won't publish a client name, logo or quote without written approval — even when it would help our marketing. Until those approvals land, anonymised cases like the ones above are the highest-fidelity proof we can share publicly. More cases will be published here as approvals come in.
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