Systems first. People always. Spine required.

We're hiring a People Lead who builds the machine that grows people. 80% process and systems, 20% conversations. And enough backbone to tell the founder he's wrong.

About ++addmore

++addmore is a product launch studio in Antwerp. We help startups get clear on what they're selling and why anyone should care. Positioning, storytelling, all the way to launches with killer sites.

100+ SaaS startups and scale-ups across Europe. We know the pattern by now: great product, unclear story, slow growth. We shorten the distance between "what is this" and "I need this". We make startups impossible to ignore.

Why we're hiring this

The team grew faster than the systems did.

The foundations exist: a competency model, job levels, a performance flow with growth conversations built in. But right now they run on founder energy, and founder energy is the least scalable resource in the building. When the studio gets busy, the people systems are the first thing that slips. That's exactly backwards: they should be the thing that holds when everything else is on fire.

There's a second reason, and it's the harder one. A studio this size has no HR department to hide behind and no committee to absorb bad decisions. If I'm about to make a people call that's wrong, exactly one person needs to say so, out loud, to my face. I'm hiring that person.

The role

"The best people systems don't need a reminder. The best People Lead doesn't need permission."

This is a systems job first. 80% of your time goes to designing, running and sharpening the systems that cover the whole talent lifecycle: sourcing and hiring, the candidate experience up to signature, the weeks between signature and day one, and personal development from day one onwards. 20% goes to the conversations only a human can have: the 1:1 that needed to happen yesterday, and the general HR reality of running a team.

You don't report into leadership as a service function. You stand next to it as a counterweight. When the founder wants to skip a growth conversation because a client is on fire, you say no. When leadership is about to promote the wrong person or lose the right one, you say it early, with receipts.

What you'll do

The 80: systems across the whole talent lifecycle

1. Sourcing and hiring

• Run hiring like an executive search, not a funnel: A wide net fills your pool with whoever happened to be available, and then a rigorous process picks the best of a mediocre pool. You do the opposite: scope each role tightly, map the top 1% as a named list, pursue them personally. The interview validates a thesis; it doesn't discover one
• Ask sourcing questions that return fit, not fame: Not "who's the best designer you know". Instead: who's most collaborative with developers, who turns a positioning doc into a killer page without hand-holding. Specific questions produce names that match the scope
• Keep hiring everyone's job: You're the confidence engine, not the decision-maker. You gather the signal; the hiring manager decides and owns the outcome. The moment hiring becomes your private problem, the bar drops

2. To signature: the candidate experience

• Make the process the pitch: Fast turnarounds, real answers, a candidate who feels remembered at every step. Caring is free, and it's the cheapest edge a small studio has over big-brand employers
• Close in days, not months: Speed is a small company's weapon. Surface what a candidate actually wants in the first conversation and thread it through every step, so the offer lands as the obvious conclusion instead of a hard sell. Pay removes money as an objection, never as the pull: anyone bought with money gets bought back

3. Signature to start date

• Own the quiet weeks: Between signing and day one is where excitement leaks and counteroffers land. You build the bridge: contact rhythm, gear and access sorted early, a first project waiting, the team already expecting them

4. From day one: personal development

• Systemise onboarding: New people shipping in week one, not finding their login in week two. Repeatable, documented, measured
• Run the performance flow as a system: Growth conversations, follow-ups, the whole rhythm, on schedule regardless of how busy the quarter is. If it depends on someone remembering, you haven't finished building it
• Own the job architecture: Competency model, function matrix, job levels. Keep them sharp, keep them honest, and make sure everyone knows exactly what growing here looks like
• Turn culture into process, not posters: Feedback that's normal instead of scary, rituals that survive a deadline, decisions that don't need a meeting

Across all of it

• Build it AI-native: Prep, documentation, follow-up, analysis, tracking. AI runs the admin layer of every people process you design. Your hours go to designing the system and having the conversations, never to the paperwork in between
• Measure effort, not just outcomes: Talent density is consistency, rigor and effort. Most teams manage the first two and quietly skip the third, and it's the only one fully under your control. Response times, loops closed, time-to-productive: if the system works, you can show it

The 20: humans

• Have the conversations that need a human: The 1:1 after a rough project, the friction between two people, someone quietly outgrowing their role. You see it early and you act on it
• Handle the HR reality: Contracts, policies, the practical stuff. Efficiently, without turning it into a department

The mandate

• Go against the founder and leadership: When the system says one thing and the founder wants another, you defend the system. You bring data, you say it plainly, and you don't need to win every fight, but you do need to have them

What we look for

We don't care about a perfect, check-box CV. We care about systems thinking, candour, and proof.

• Systems brain first: You design processes that hold up when things get hectic, not frameworks that live in a slide. You can show us one you built and what it changed
• Spine you've used: You've told a founder, a CEO or a leadership team they were wrong about a people decision. Tell us how it went, especially if you lost
• You've hired, end to end: Walk us through a role you scoped, the shortlist you built instead of the job ad you posted, and how fast you got to a signed offer
• 80/20 discipline: You default to fixing the system, not scheduling another meeting. If the same conversation happens three times, you build something so it doesn't happen a fourth
• People instinct you can explain: You read a room fast, and you can say what you saw and why it matters
• Candour with warmth: You say the hard thing in a way people can actually hear. Rarer than you'd think
• AI-native by reflex: You'd rather automate a workflow tonight than run it manually all quarter

You don't need to tick every box. Show us a system you built and a fight you picked, and we want to talk.

What this isn't

• Not an admin seat. Payroll and paperwork are the smallest part of this job, and most of it gets automated
• Not corporate HR. No 40-page handbooks, no process theatre. If a process doesn't make someone better or faster, it goes
• Not a coaching-only role. If you want to spend your days in 1:1s, this will frustrate you. The system does the heavy lifting here
• Not a yes-person seat. If disagreeing with the person who signs your contract makes you uncomfortable, don't apply

What's in it for you

• The foundations are built; you get to make them run themselves and make them yours
• A founder who is explicitly hiring someone to push back on him. That mandate is in writing. This is the writing
• 80% of your job is building, not firefighting. That ratio is rare in people roles and we'll protect it
• Short lines, fast decisions, no committee between you and change
• You'll watch people grow because of systems you built. That never gets old

++addmore DNA

Allergic to fluff

No buzzwords, no process theatre. If it doesn't make someone better or faster, it goes.

Craft before commerce

The work has to be good before it gets sold. Your craft is the system that keeps everyone else's craft growing.

Taste is the scarce asset

AI made volume free. Judgment, clarity and taste are what's left to charge for. That's true for the work we make and the people systems you build.

Extreme ownership

"I can't do this" doesn't exist in a startup. If something needs fixing, you own it and make it better. No excuses, no blame-shifting.

Honest, even when it costs us

We tell clients when they're wrong and we tell each other faster. In this role, that includes telling the founder. Especially the founder.

Fast, either way

Decisions don't queue here. The person who decides is in the room, usually within the hour. Reviews, promotions, hard calls: fast, either way.

One last thing

Everyone's automating everything right now, which means the team that stays sharp, honest and growing becomes the whole competitive advantage.

The tools are getting cheaper. The people are getting scarcer. The studios that win the next few years are the ones where growing people is a system, not a favour.

If that reads as exciting rather than terrifying, we should talk.

How this goes

Everyone we hire does a test case. No exceptions, including the people we already like.

• A call. Thirty minutes with the founder. No deck, no prep, just your experience and how you think
• The test case. A realistic people situation from a studio like ours, including a founder who disagrees with you. You take it into a system and a conversation plan. Max 8 hours
• We go through it together. Your reasoning, your design, where you'd hold the line and where you'd bend. This conversation tells us more than the CV ever could
• Decision. Fast, either way

A CV shows us where you've been. The test case shows us whether you build systems and hold your ground.

How to apply

Apply below. Skip the cover letter template.

If you've read this far and already know the first process you'd fix here, tell us that instead.