Abel & Cole: Software Engineers

Abel & Cole is a UK-based organic food delivery service, offering a variety of organic fruit and vegetable boxes, as well as other groceries, with a focus on sustainability and ethical sourcing.

The Challenge

Following a period of downsizing, Abel & Cole’s internal talent team was operating with limited capacity. While they were generating a high volume of inbound candidates, they were struggling to reach the level of quality required for specialist technology roles.

Having previously partnered with Abel & Cole in an embedded capacity, we already had a strong understanding of their culture, technical environment and hiring expectations. They needed a partner who could move quickly, represent the business accurately to the market and deliver experienced engineers rather than volume.

The Solution

Building on our existing relationship, we worked closely with the hiring team to refine the brief and align on the specific experience and behaviours required at both mid and senior level. With an efficient and well-structured interview process already in place, the priority was speed and precision — identifying the right candidates and getting them engaged before competing opportunities came into play.

We led a focused search strategy, using direct sourcing and targeted outreach to engage engineers with the relevant technical background and sector experience. By acting as an extension of the Abel & Cole team, we were able to position the opportunity credibly and move candidates through the process without delay.

The Results

Using our preferred sourcing tool, Cord, we successfully secured one mid-level and one senior software engineer. Both offers were accepted within 18 days of the initial briefing, strengthening Abel & Cole’s technology team at a critical point in their growth.