Discuss a discovery engagement

Our starting offer is a focused discovery engagement around a role you need to hire better. It is consulting work, scoped to one role, with clear deliverables at the end.

Who it is for

Employers with a role that stays open too long, or where hires look right on paper but struggle in practice. Typically the person commissioning it is a head of talent, head of people or the hiring leader for the role.

What we do

1. Understand the hiring challenge. We interview the hiring manager and, where possible, strong performers in the role, and review how the role is currently advertised, screened and interviewed.
2. Define what strong performance requires. Starting from a baseline skills framework, we produce a role success profile that separates what must be demonstrated on day one from what can be learned after joining.
3. Map where the talent is. We identify adjacent roles, industries and early-career pathways where people develop the essential capabilities, and explain why each pool is worth exploring.
4. Recommend how to assess. We propose structured questions and, where appropriate, a short work scenario built around the role's most important skills, with scoring guidance agreed before candidates are seen.

What you receive

• A role success profile with essential and trainable capabilities.
• A talent pool map with the reasoning behind each pool.
• Sourcing and selection recommendations you can apply with your existing team, ATS or agency.
• A recommended next step: skills-based sourcing and shortlisting by Pontiq for the role, a targeted pilot, a custom solution, or existing tools that already cover the need.

How this fits with recruitment

Pontiq is a specialised, skills-based recruitment partner. The discovery engagement is where every role starts: it sets the role success profile and the assessment approach that our sourcing and shortlisting are built on.

Once the profile is agreed, Pontiq can source and present candidates for the role, each assessed against the same criteria and presented with the evidence behind the assessment rather than a CV alone. Whether you take that step, run the recommendations with your own team, or combine the two is agreed at the end of discovery.

The engagement does not require any new software. The Evidence Passport, work simulations and candidate comparison tools shown on the How it works page are prototypes we are refining with employers; what we use on a given role is agreed with you.

Not ready for an engagement but interested in the topic? Take part in our research conversations instead.