This page reflects where we operate with confidence, not theoretical reach.
We don’t claim to “cover everything.” We work across specific markets and functions where we’ve placed before, we understand compensation realities and we know what good actually looks like at different levels.
This is our primary market — and where our deepest experience sits. Before founding Substance, our lead recruiter - Deema built and led talent acquisition across APAC at Booking.com — delivering over €3 million in recruitment cost savings across the region through smarter sourcing, agency reduction, and hiring infrastructure built for scale. That work included localising employer branding for Japan, South Korea, and China — markets where language, cultural expectations, and candidate behaviour are fundamentally different from the rest of APAC, and where most international hiring approaches fail. We have not just placed in these markets. We have built the hiring systems inside companies operating at scale across them. Clients engage us in APAC when local knowledge, stakeholder alignment, and market credibility matter more than speed.
Our lead recruiter - Deema was based in Dublin and reported directly into regional HQ in Germany and the Netherlands — covering talent operations, talent insights, employer branding, and leadership recruitment across EMEA for a global business group. That included hiring for roles requiring relocation to Singapore, managing compensation and benefits alignment between Global HQ and Regional HQ, and ensuring hiring decisions held up across multiple markets simultaneously. This is why EMEA is not theoretical reach for us. We have sat inside the reporting lines, navigated the politics between global and regional stakeholders, and understood why a hire that works in London does not automatically work in Amsterdam or Frankfurt. We are typically engaged in EMEA when clients need someone who understands the nuance — not just the geography.
We focus on roles where a weak hire directly impacts delivery, revenue, or transformation.
FP&A, commercial finance, strategy finance, transformation finance, and CFO-1 mandates. Roles where the wrong hire slows business decisions and costs more than the search fee.
Sales leadership, marketing, GTM, partnerships, and revenue-critical roles across consumer, retail, and fintech. Functions where hiring mistakes are felt in the next quarter.
TA leaders, HRBPs, and people roles. We understand this brief from the inside — having built and led regional TA teams. We know what good looks like because we have been the hiring manager.
Engineering leadership, product management, data, and technical specialist roles. Hired across APAC and EMEA inside high-growth tech environments where speed and precision both matter.
We recruit predominantly across four functions where our market knowledge runs deep — built across 15 years of agency and in-house experience inside companies like Booking.com, LinkedIn, and BASF Chemicals.
We work across different seniority levels when the hire requires judgment, not volume.
Junior to Mid-Level Roles:
When the market is tight, the skillset is specific, or the role fails with average profiles.
Senior Individual Contributors:
Roles where depth of experience matters more than title or years.
Leadership & Executive Roles:
Directors, Heads, and functional leaders with delivery accountability.
We don’t take roles based on seniority.
We take them based on how costly it would be to get the hire wrong.
We tend to work in sectors where roles are tied directly to execution, revenue, or change — and where hiring mistakes are felt quickly.
We are not positioned for high-volume hourly hiring, generic resume forwarding and roles without clear ownership or approval. If a role falls outside our operating sweet spot, we’ll say so early. That protects both sides.
Most searches fail before they start. The brief was never clear. We fix that first — before a single name is approached.
Every candidate is assessed by a senior recruiter. Not scored by software. Not passed through a junior. If they don’t clear the bar, you won’t see them
No handoffs. No mid-search account managers. One recruiter. Brief to offer. Direct accountability throughout.
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