Our specialist product recruiters partnered with Seatfrog, a train travel marketplace app, as they sought interim talent. We were introduced at a critical point – brought in after a previous agency had been unable to deliver on a key product hire.
Leveraging her extensive product network, Francesca Jackson-Burnham delivered an interim hire in just three days.
Seatfrog is a consumer-facing mobile platform that allows rail passengers to upgrade their seats through a marketplace-style experience, bringing dynamic pricing and digital innovation to the travel sector.
At this stage in its growth, the business was focused on improving user acquisition, increasing conversion through its mobile app, and scaling monthly active users. As they continued to search for a permanent Senior Product Manager, the business needed to engage an interim solution. That's where our specialist consultant, Francesca Jackson-Burnham, came in.
Seatfrog needed to urgently strengthen its product function after a six-month search for a senior hire had failed to deliver. With such an extended search period, this hire was urgently required.
The role itself required a rare combination of skills:
These profiles are highly constrained in the market, particularly under urgent timelines.
Seatfrog needed immediate access to a high-quality, pre-qualified network. Having operated solely in the product talent market since 2017, Francesca is well-connected to Product Managers across a variety of backgrounds.
She acted quickly to bring structure, pace, and clarity to the process:
While a weekly cadence supported the permanent search, the interim requirement was executed at pace to meet immediate business needs.
We successfully placed an interim Lead Product Manager within 3 days of presenting candidates.
This gave Seatfrog immediate product leadership, stabilising delivery and allowing the business to continue scaling while progressing the permanent hire.
Francesca operates extremely efficiently and fills me with confidence throughout the process. After just one call with Chess I felt like I had a new team member that I could lean on. She strikes a really great balance between being empathetic to our needs while being really transparent about what we could do better and managing our expectations which makes the process really easy to navigate. I don't think I'd bother using any other agency in the future!
Candidate Thought Count: 0
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