Hey Little Pineapple, Last week I had a call with a candidate. He send me his CV before our chat and what I saw immediately raised my eyebrow: 6 roles in the past 2.5 years, 4-6 months each. Six short gigs. No context. No explanation. Just a list of 4-6 month roles that screamed "red flag" to anyone who glanced at it. So, we hopped on the call and here's what actually happened: Five of those were contract roles. One ended because the company lost funding and had to let everyone go. But I...
14 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Little Pineapple, Kelvin Kiptum Cheruiyot holds the current marathon world record: 2 hours, 0 minutes, and 35 seconds. He is also dead. Kelvin was 25 years old. According to people who know something about running (not me), he had a great future ahead of himself. Heck, he was ranked #1 among the world's men's marathon runners. So you don't need a specialized knowledge to understand he was going places.When you're number one in the world at anything, that usually means there's a future for...
21 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Little Pineapple, My friend is a prison guard and within a year, the job nearly destroyed him. From the outside, it doesn't look like work that takes a heavy psychological toll. But the stories he shared painted a different picture entirely. "I feel like I teleport to a different reality when I start my shift," he told me. No phone. No contact with the outside world unless absolutely necessary. Just him and the inmates for hours on end. The isolation ate him. The constant stress. The...
28 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Little Pineapple,My first recruitment job was at a big recruitment corporation. I liked it. It taught me a lot about recruitment and working with businesses. And a lot of people are bashing on corporate world, but truth is I was pretty good at corporate.The vibe, the chase, celebrating wins, the energy. I genuinely enjoyed it. But it wasn't my place. Not my world. So I started looking for something new in gamedev. Sent out CVs, went to interviews, and landed on one gig I actually liked....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Little Pineapple, I had this conversation with a friend recently. At some point we started talking about work because of course we were. We were talking about me living in Bali, doing the whole digital nomad thing and him sitting in Poland, running a customer service team. He told me he really likes the job. Feels good at it. Like he's making a difference. All the things you want to feel about work, right? Here's the kicker: he used to be a business owner. He had his own thing. Spent...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hey Little Pineapple, Raise your hand if you've ever received a reply similar to this after interview: “Thank you for your time, but we’re moving forward with another candidate.” Or its cousin: “We went with someone more aligned.” Polite.Safe.Completely useless. I had a client who brought this exact frustration to one of our conversations. He told me about an interview he still remembers to this day. He walked out convinced he nailed it.Answered every question.No awkward moments.No gaps. The...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Little Pineapple, A few months ago I was working with a client. Smart guy. Solid performer. Good job on paper. But something was off. He felt anxious at work.Told me he snapped more easily at people.Did the bare minimum just to get through the day. He didn’t want to go there anymore. He told me he thought about quitting more times than he could count.But he couldn’t. Too many obligations. Too much risk. We worked through it and it was clear he needed a break. So he took almost a month...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, I was working with a client recently who felt stuck. Great at his job.Reliable.Respected. But every time we talked about his next step, he was like... eee, I would like to, but it feels so comfy here... Not because he didn’t know what he wanted. He actually did! He just didn’t know how to let go of the role he’d been in for years. So during one of our sessions, we mapped out what staying would really cost him.Not in money.Not in the status he had in the company. But in time,...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Little Pineapple,You probably think companies avoid giving feedback because they’re lazy (and that's the most gentle description I can think of). And I'm telling you it's not exactly true.Here's my story from the times when I used to believe I could fix recruitment and tried to change the system. Chapter 1 - The Experiment I was working on a role with 2 mandatory, non-negotiable requirements: You must be based in Europe You must have Unity experience with F2P mobile games Clear. Simple....
3 months ago • 3 min read