Built from inside a recruitment agency

Jesse scaled his agency, UpNestTalent, the way most agencies scale: a new client role comes in, fresh candidates get sourced, the desk executes and closes. It worked — and after a couple of years the by-product was a large candidate database almost nobody touched twice. Years of sourced, interviewed, rated people, going quiet the moment their role closed.

Then we assessed it. Cross-checking the database against LinkedIn, roughly 30–40% of those candidates were still open to work. So we ran an experiment: match that subset to live job posts, and re-approach people the agency had already contacted and connected with. The replies came at roughly ten times the rate cold outreach gets — these candidates already knew the agency. The recruiters ran the interviews and closed the way they always had. Within ten weeks, two placements had come from candidates who’d been sitting dormant in the database.

The realisation was simple: the database isn’t an archive, it’s an asset — and, as it happened, two best friends since childhood had the right mix to do something about it. Jesse knew the problem from the inside; Adrià, an AI–ML engineer and ERP consultant, builds data systems for a living. SpecSend is the product they built to help other small recruitment agencies leverage theirs.

It’s the two of us, both hands on every account.

Questions before requesting a map? Write to hello@specsend.uk — it reaches a founder directly.