The paid trial is the interview. Everything before it is a filter.

Hire and Scale is the in-house hiring company behind a portfolio of ecommerce brands and a B2B SaaS. Four fast filters, about six hours total, and we pay you for the last one. Then two weeks of real work on real money — which is where the decision actually gets made.

Filters exist to be fast, not clever. First click to a paid test: eight days.

Why it's built this way

Most companies evaluate for six weeks, then find out in month five.

Every hiring stage before real work is a guess. So we make the guessing part short and cheap, get you paid quickly, and put the actual judgement where it belongs — on two weeks of the job.

  • A filter, not a verdict

    The early stages only exist to get the wrong people out fast. Nobody is hired or rejected on a resume or a quiz answer alone.

  • Six weeks of silence

    The single most common complaint about hiring is not rejection. It's not knowing. Three working days, every stage, including the no.

  • Unpaid take-home tests

    Four hours of real work for free, and the best candidates drop out first because they have options. We pay on submission, whether or not you advance.

  • "Please don't use AI"

    Testing a skill nobody uses at work. We tell you to use Claude and Cursor, then score whether you read what they give you.

  • Seven rounds with seven people

    There is one interview here and it is with the person you'd work for. Ninety minutes, once.

  • Vague success criteria

    Every role here has exactly two numbers attached to it before you apply: one to move up, one not to break.

Four filters, then the real thing

Six hours to get through the filters. Then two weeks of the actual job.

Identical for every role we hire. Nothing is hidden and nothing is added later. Stages one to four only remove people — the decision gets made in stage five.

  1. 01

    Apply

    A short form, links, and a 90-second video. Filters out anyone who won't spend ten minutes on us.

    Filter · 10 minutes

  2. 02

    Screening quiz

    Twelve questions about how the work actually behaves. Filters out people who've never done it.

    Filter · 20–25 minutes

  3. 03

    Paid test project

    Real work on real data. Filters on output, not on how you talk about output. Paid on submission either way.

    Filter · €300–400 paid
  4. 04

    Ninety minutes

    We go through your test and push on it, then one live problem. Filters out anyone who didn't do their own work.

    Filter · 90 minutes, once

  5. 05

    Paid trial

    This is the evaluation. Two weeks, real access, real money, real deadlines. Every other format can be gamed. Two weeks of the job cannot.

    Decision · €3,000–4,000 paid

Why it's ordered this way. Interviews measure how well someone interviews. Two weeks of real work measures the thing we're actually buying. So we spend as little of your time as possible on the first, get you paid, and make the call on the second. A yes or a no within three working days at every stage, and a specific reason with every no — one thing you did well, one thing that would have moved you up.

Nobody here has ever been hired on an interview. The two-week trial decides it.

€3,000–4,000 of real money for two weeks of real work, before either side commits to anything. Against the cost of a wrong senior hire, it's a rounding error — and it's the only stage that has ever changed our mind about someone.

See the roles

Open now

Two roles. Both hired directly by the founder.

Each one has a push metric to move up and a pull metric not to break. You'll be measured on those two numbers from day one, and on nothing else.

Role A · Push metric

13% → 18% net

Blended net margin across the portfolio, up five points in two quarters — without revenue falling.

Head of Operations

We run at roughly 13% net margin with 53% of revenue going to ads. Revenue isn't the problem. The other side of the P&L is, and nobody owns it. You'd own COGS, fulfilment, the CS and VA team, agencies, and subscription retention. Not creative, not media buying.

Remote European hours Base + margin bonus 7-figure DTC experience
Start the quiz for this role

Paid test: a real anonymised P&L from one of our brands. €400.

Role B · Push metric

1 page / working day

A new landing page live every working day, plus 40 creatives a week — and the account's blended ROAS goes up.

AI Growth Engineer

Most teams need a designer, a copywriter, a developer and a media buyer to ship one page a week. We want to delete that chain and give it to one engineer with AI. You own a single ad account and the machine that feeds it. Twenty pages a month, not four.

Lisbon €60–72k + bonus Anthropic API · Nano Banana · Meta API Production access week one
Start the quiz for this role

Paid test: one landing page and ten creatives from a real brief, in four hours. €300.

What you're signing up for

We'd rather lose you now than in month five.

What you get

  • Direct access to the person you'd work for — no recruiter, no HR layer, no panel.
  • Two numbers that define the job, told to you before you apply.
  • Real authority from week one, including the budget and the ability to fire an agency.
  • Paid for the work you do during the process, at market rates, on time.

What you don't

  • A team to inherit. Both roles are building the function, not running one that exists.
  • A weekly plan handed to you. The first quarter is roughly 60% ambiguity.
  • Standups, sprints or Jira. Written updates and real deadlines instead.
  • A say in creative or media buying. Those stay with the founder, and we'd rather say so now.

Filter one

Ten minutes now, and you'll know where you stand by Friday.

Applying to both roles is fine — say so and we'll read them separately. If you'd rather forward this to someone than apply yourself, that's genuinely useful too.

Start the filter →

Or write directly: hiring@hireandscale.co