About Optim
We built the firm we wished we could hire.
Optim was started by people who had sat on the other side of the desk — reading the shortlist, running the interviews, and wondering why the agency invoice kept climbing.
Why we exist
Two things about agency recruiting never made sense to us.
The fee rewarded the wrong outcome
A percentage fee pays the recruiter more when the employer pays the hire more. That conflict sits quietly in every contingency agreement, and it is at its worst in the moment that matters most — when a client is deciding how hard to compete for someone. We priced our work on the difficulty of the search instead, and published the numbers so nobody has to wonder.
The screening wasn't screening
Most agency recruiters are generalists working whatever req came in that week. They're skilled at finding strong resumes and they ask reasonable, generic questions — but they've never done the job, so the resume ends up being the only evidence they know how to read. Clients interview the people a resume oversold, and never meet the ones it undersold.
The standard we hire to
You can't test for a job you've never done.
So we don't ask our recruiters to. Every person who runs a search at Optim meets the same bar, and it isn't a bar most agencies set.
They've been hiring managers
Our recruiters have sat where you sit — writing the req, running the loop, living with the hire. That's the difference between asking about a job and testing for one.
They're trained by practitioners
Not by a sales curriculum. By people who have done the functional work, in the disciplines we recruit for, and who know what a rehearsed answer sounds like.
They screen functionally, in writing
Specific questions about the actual work, and a written brief on every candidate we submit — how they answered, where they were strong, where they weren't.
They'll argue for a weak résumé
The hardest thing a recruiter can do is tell a client the document undersells the person, and explain exactly why. It takes knowing the job. We expect it.
What we're building
Every client is a reference.
That's the standard we measure ourselves against, and it's a harder one than satisfaction. A client can be satisfied and still not put their name behind you. A reference costs them something — their credibility, with someone who trusts them — and they only spend it when the work genuinely earned it.
The same goes in the other direction. We're building a firm where recruiters are good enough to work anywhere and choose to stay, because the work is serious, the pay is competitive, and they share in what they build. The practical result for a client is that our bar doesn't slip as we grow — the tenth recruiter has to clear the same standard as the first.
Outsized service, real relationships, and value a client can point to. Loyalty in both directions, earned slowly and kept.
Core values
What we hold to.
Grit
A relentless pursuit, passion, and persistence. Outstanding achievement is not the result of raw talent, but of passionate persistence and endurance — internal motivation, focused effort, and dogged determination.
Team
Continuity in purpose and action. Motivation beyond the self, extending past one's own welfare to a group of individuals pursuing a shared vision, goals, and purpose.
Steadfast
Consistent and reliable in word, action, and behavior. Authentic and uncompromising values that result in lasting relationships built on trust earned over time.
Craftsmanship
Deliberate practice over time allows one to master the craft. As expertise forms, the work achieves uncommon quality — precision, insight, simplicity, durability, and value. Through immersive, energized focus, the craftsman finds pleasure in the trade.
Freedom
The earned opportunity to do or not to do. To forge one's own path, to innovate, to take ownership and stand by the results. To act on opportunity and learn quickly from success or failure.
Start here
Book the intake. It costs you nothing.
Half an hour on the role, the market, and what it will really take to fill it. You keep what we work out together, whether or not you hire us to run the search.