The Brief Sharpened. The Answer Was Already on the Table.

On a Wednesday in October 2025 we sent this studio our first batch of game designers.

The next day the brief sharpened. Having seen real profiles in front of them, the client refined what they were looking for: product-company experience, or someone who had taken a title from scratch through to launch.

This is one of the most useful things a client can do, and more should do it. A brief written before anyone has seen a candidate is a hypothesis. A brief revised after seeing eight is a specification. We would always rather a client tell us what they have learned than quietly reject profiles and leave us guessing.

What we did with it was go back and check our own pipeline against the sharper criteria , and four of the candidates already in front of them met it precisely, each from a product company. We laid that out, named which ones and why, and asked what else was missing so we could act on it rather than guess.

Six weeks of assessment followed. The client's bar was high and their feedback was specific, which made every subsequent submission better. Several strong designers were interviewed and not taken forward; one went through two rounds including the lead game designer.

Forty-four days after that first batch, the client made an offer to a candidate from it , one of the four we had put forward again on day two.

THE SECOND STORY

That same month, a growth manager we had placed with them weeks earlier moved on for personal reasons. We had already spoken to him and voided the invoice before the client raised it with us. We then filled the role from a candidate already in their pipeline from an earlier search.

A guarantee you have to be reminded about is not a guarantee. It is a negotiation.

"A brief that changes after the first shortlist is a client thinking properly. Our job is to keep up."