Short pieces from the search room. How we read briefs, calibrate markets, assess candidates, and what we tell clients when the data does not match what they expected. Updated as the market changes.
How to find and choose the right recruiter for product manager and UX designer hires at startups. What to look for and when to go retained vs
Read →How to hire a design team from scratch: the right sequence, profiles, and mistakes that produce individuals, not a team.
Read →How to find and choose the right recruiter for product manager and UX designer hires at startups. What to look
Read →How to hire a design team from scratch: the right sequence, profiles, and mistakes that produce individuals,
Read →How to run a structured design portfolio review day that evaluates five to eight candidates efficiently while
Read →Product analyst vs data analyst: what each role does, how the outputs differ, and which one your product team
Read →How to hire mobile engineers in India in 2026: the iOS vs Android vs cross-platform decision, where the talent
Read →What predicts engineering performance: system design vs leetcode, take-homes vs live coding, and how to build a
Read →How to build an employer brand that helps you hire engineers in India: what candidates actually evaluate, and
Read →How to build a 12-month engineering hiring plan after Series B: role sequencing, recruiter capacity, budget,
Read →How APAC companies from Singapore, Australia, and Japan build India engineering teams: operating models,
Read →Background verification for India hires: what to check, how the process works, what Indian law allows, and the
Read →How to build a succession plan for your VP Engineering or CTO before the departure forces a reactive, expensive
Read →How to structure and negotiate offers for senior engineers and tech leaders in India: comp components, timing,
Read →Why product designers leave in India and the five retention levers that work in 2026: growth paths,
Read →Engineering manager vs tech lead: what each role does, when your team needs which one, and how to av
Read →When a design system needs a dedicated owner, when it doesn't, and the profile of the hire who
Read →When your product team needs a product ops hire, what the role should own, and how it differs from a
Read →Why B2B and B2C product managers are not interchangeable: the skill differences that matter, when ea
Read →How to hire platform engineers in India in 2026: what the role means, where the talent is, and why i
Read →When to hire a UX researcher in India, what the role should own, and how to evaluate candidates when
Read →How to build an engineering referral program that produces quality hires, not noise: incentives, pro
Read →What full-stack engineer means in India in 2026, what the title hides, and how to screen for real fu
Read →The seven hiring metrics that tell a VP Engineering whether the pipeline is healthy or broken: from
Read →The most common reason an India engineering search stalls has nothing to do with sourcing. It is the
Read →Both models hire a person. They get there through opposite incentives, and choosing wrong is expensi
Read →A three-person design team is enough to cover a Series A product well or to produce three expensive
Read →The Group PM hire is almost always made six months after the pain it solves becomes obvious.
Read →The best DevOps and SRE engineers have seen every recruiter template. They do not respond to them.
Read →How to run a confidential executive search when replacing an incumbent who is still in the role. Pro
Read →If your cybersecurity engineering roles stay open twice as long as your backend roles, the problem i
Read →How to hire a CTO in India: when you need one, what to screen for at each stage, and how the search
Read →How to manage India's 60 to 90 day notice periods without losing your best candidates. Strategi
Read →India vs Eastern Europe for engineering talent: talent pool depth, compensation, time zones, and ret
Read →How to manage a remote India engineering team: overlap hours, ownership models, and the mistakes tha
Read →Most failed India teams did not fail on talent. They failed on decisions the US parent made in the f
Read →Product designer compensation in India has risen steadily and the gap between advertised salaries an
Read →PM hiring produces more polished interviewers per hundred candidates than almost any other function.
Read →The founding engineer hire is the one that sets the bar every subsequent engineer is measured agains
Read →RPO pricing confuses buyers because the same service can be quoted three different ways, and each on
Read →Underpay for a senior engineer in India and you will hire, then lose them inside a year. Overpay and
Read →The cost of a senior engineering leader who fails is not just the search fee. It is the year of mome
Read →The designer with the best portfolio is not always the best designer. They are often just the one wh
Read →For any company hiring a PM across borders, the compensation decision is also a talent-pool decision
Read →India produces more AI engineers by volume than almost any country. The buyers' mistake is thinking
Read →Fifty engineers in twelve months sounds like a headcount target. It is actually a process engineerin
Read →Bangalore has been the default answer to building engineering in India for two decades. In 2026 that
Read →The hardest part of hiring your first AI product manager is that you often cannot tell a strong one
Read →The design hiring mistake that costs the most is hiring a design leader when you need craft depth, o
Read →AI PM hiring has a pattern: companies write the JD for the candidate they imagine and interview for
Read →Most backend engineers who fail in production looked strong in the interview. The interview loop let
Read →Most companies switch to RPO about six months after they should have.
Read →The companies that build a strong India office on the first try treat it as a sequence, not a sprint
Read →Search fees are quoted as a single percentage, which hides almost everything that determines whether
Read →Most founders hire a specialist as their first designer because a specialist's portfolio is easier t
Read →Technical founders make great builders and often poor product managers of other people. Recognising
Read →Most hiring managers post for an AI engineer when they need a data scientist, or a data scientist wh
Read →Most hiring-cost debates compare the wrong number. The agency fee is visible; the cost of an empty s
Read →Most founders pick an India operating model based on what a vendor sells them, then discover the mod
Read →At Series B, the VP Engineering hire is the highest-leverage decision a technical founder makes, and
Read →More across the cluster