We Told Them Something That Could Have Cost Us The Placement

In October 2024 we were running a developer search for a studio building a Ludo title , a board game format with enormous mobile audiences in India.

One of our candidates was, in his own time, building a Ludo game.

We told them. And having raised it, we followed it through properly , asking whether the candidate had committed to setting his own project aside, because a conflict noted is not a conflict resolved, and we would rather resolve it before an offer than after.

That is the whole case study. There is no clever twist. The role was filled by a different candidate.

THE SECOND MOMENT

Two months later, on a UX role, the client raised a good question about how a candidate's stated compensation squared with her experience. It was a fair challenge and we said so. We went back and verified. The outcome was a lasting improvement to how we present compensation to that client , broken into fixed, variable and equity , which removed the ambiguity for everyone who came after her.

WHY IT MATTERS

Recruiters are paid on placements, which means every incentive pushes toward not mentioning the thing that might stop one. A client cannot verify what an agency chooses not to tell them. What an agency does with that asymmetry is the only real measure of it.

"You find out what an agency is worth on the day telling the truth is expensive."