Sourcing in four markets usually means four briefs, four sets of local assumptions and four differently shaped shortlists that cannot be compared with each other, let alone ranked.

Fenwold builds engineering teams across four countries at once, hiring for the same handful of roles in each: platform engineers, product managers, a smaller number of specialist hires. The teams sit under one product organisation, so a shortlist from one market is meant to be measured against the others.

Each market had written its own brief

Fenwold wrote one role and then let each market interpret it. The titles diverged first, then the seniority, then the must-haves. Within a fortnight the four pipelines were filling for four slightly different jobs.

The shortlists arrived in different shapes, and the hiring group spent its time reconciling them rather than choosing between them. A senior engineer in one market was a mid-level hire in another, and nobody could say with confidence which pipeline was ahead.

Each market also ran its own version of screening, built by whichever recruiter happened to own the requisition, so the tooling diverged along with the brief.

A single brief now covers every market

Fenwold drives sourcing through the Yardstick API from a single brief. Each market is searched against the same definition of the role, and the results come back in the same shape.

Local difference has not been designed out. Market-specific requirements such as language, right to work and notice conventions are parameters on the brief rather than separate documents, so what varies is visible and what is shared stays shared. A platform-engineer brief in one country carries the same seniority bar as the same brief in another, with only the local parameters changed.

Because every market draws on the same brief, a shortlist from one country can be read next to a shortlist from another. Nobody has to translate the criteria first.

Where it is wired in

The API sits behind Fenwold’s own tooling, so recruiters work in the system they already use and the brief is the integration point. Nobody had to adopt a second place to look. A recruiter still reviews every shortlist before a candidate is contacted; the API produces the ranking, not the outreach.

The definition held up in every market

Four markets are now sourced from a single brief, with the same definition of the role behind every shortlist. The shortlists are comparable because the definition behind them is the same one, not four versions that happened to converge.

Reconciling shortlists across markets used to be most of the hiring group’s meeting time. That work has fallen by 45%, since the shortlists already arrive in a shape that can be compared directly. All shortlists, 100%, are still reviewed by a recruiter in the local market before a candidate is contacted.

What has not changed is who runs the interviews and makes the offer: that stays local, on the view that closing a hire is still a local relationship.

Adding a fifth market

Fenwold is adding a fifth market to the same brief, and expects most of the setup to be the local parameters rather than the role definition.