Hiring your first 10 employees can make or break your startup. Hiring your first 100 will define your culture. Few people know this better than Dani Unsworth.

Over the course of her career, Dani has helped more than 300 people shape meaningful careers—from early-stage scale-ups like Checkout.com and Incident.io to her current role as founding talent lead at Slingshot AI. She’s one of those rare people who treats recruitment not just as a funnel, but as a foundation: for growth, for culture, and for people to do work they care about.

On this episode of the DexFactor podcast, Dani joins our founder Paddy to unpack what great hiring really looks like—and why it’s so much more than matching CVs to job specs.

From Agency Hustle to Talent Partner

Dani’s journey into talent started on the agency side, cold-calling .NET engineers in Hertfordshire. Her first big break came not from a pristine CV or perfect pitch, but from a cold outbound email—bad enough, she laughs, that her old boss still teases her about it. But that email got her in the door at Checkout.com, where she joined as their first technical recruiter in London.

In her nearly three years there, Dani helped the company grow from 200 to 1,500 people, hiring across London, Berlin, and Paris. From there, she moved to smaller, faster-moving startups—first Nate, then Incident.io—where she built talent functions from the ground up and learned to scale hiring processes without losing the human touch.

Now at Slingshot AI, a startup building the first foundational model trained on therapeutic conversations, Dani is once again building from the ground up—this time with a team on a mission to tackle mental health through AI.

What Makes a Great Hire? It’s Not Just Skills

When you’ve hired hundreds of people, patterns start to emerge. For Dani, the biggest signal isn’t a bullet point on a CV—it’s mentality.

“Startups are chaos,” she says. “You need people who are adaptable. People who are willing to roll up their sleeves and operate outside their job description.”

A “great” hire isn’t just competent. They ask the right questions. They collaborate across domains. They know the job they signed up for won’t look the same two months in—and they embrace that.

That’s why Dani has a strong gut instinct. She doesn’t ignore structure or scorecards—but experience has taught her that you can spot the spark in someone early, especially if you know what to look for. “Judgment matters,” she says. “Not everything can—or should—be standardised.”

When It Works: Meg and Alicia

Dani lights up when she talks about two of her proudest hires.

The first is Meg Batterbury, who joined Dani’s team at Incident.io as a talent ops hire. Before even receiving the offer, Meg rewrote the team’s candidate emails, outlined a plan for her first weeks, and identified key changes to the hiring process. “If I didn’t get the job,” she told Dani later, “I was just going to turn up on Monday anyway.”

That level of ownership was exactly what Dani needed. “She made me better at my job,” Dani recalls. “Hiring her supercharged our team.”

The second is Alicia Collymore, an engineering manager whose impact on team dynamics, motivation, and growth was—Dani says—“transformational.” Both hires brought more than skills: they brought momentum.

Why Startups Struggle with Hiring (And What to Do About It)

Startups don’t fail because they can’t find people. They fail because they hire the wrong ones.

So what goes wrong? Dani sees two common themes.

1. People don’t ask questions.

In early-stage startups, people often feel pressure to perform instantly. They worry that asking for help will look like weakness. But the opposite is true: people who ask early questions tend to ramp faster and make better decisions. The ones who don’t often get to the end of probation and wonder why it didn’t work out.

2. People stay in their lane.

Startups need stretch, not silos. Dani says candidates who treat their role as a fixed box—“this is my job, that’s someone else’s problem”—tend to fall short. The ones who thrive are the ones who stay curious, get involved, and care about how their work impacts the wider business.

The Hardest Hire of Her Career

Even the best talent leads have roles they can’t fill. For Dani, that was the elusive design engineer—someone who could both code like an engineer and think like a product designer.

“We searched for months,” she says. “And in the end, we didn’t hire anyone.”

Instead, Dani broke the role into its core components and hired across functions, spreading the design and engineering ownership across the team. “Not perfect,” she admits. “But it worked.”

It’s a good reminder: sometimes, the best outcome isn’t one hire—it’s a creative re-think of how the work gets done.

The Rise of the Product Engineer, and Why It Matters

There’s been a shift in the market, Dani and Paddy agree. A few years ago, companies built teams like Swiss watches: specialists with narrow focus. But increasingly, the most in-demand profiles aren’t specialists—they’re full-stack product engineers. People who can ship, think about users, and understand the business impact.

The trend isn’t going away. As tools like Replit, Lovable, and Cursor mature, the “glue” roles—people who connect technical execution with user insight—will only become more valuable.

As Paddy puts it: “Maybe it’s not that engineers don’t need PMs anymore. Maybe it’s that PMs don’t need engineers.”

How to Land a Startup Role Today

It’s a weird market. Everyone’s hiring, but nobody’s hiring. So what’s a jobseeker to do?

Dani’s been on both sides of the table recently, and her advice is clear:

1. Build a real network.

“Founders are hiring through their networks,” she says. “And unless you’re part of those circles, you’ll be forgotten.”

She encourages jobseekers to be intentional: reach out, share what you’re working on, post regularly on LinkedIn—even if it’s just once a week. “It makes you stand out from the other 200 applicants.”

2. Get clear on what you want.

Before Dani went travelling, investor Michelle Coventry gave her an exercise: write down everything you don’t want in your next role, everything you do want, and what you’re willing to flex on.

That clarity saved Dani time when she returned to job hunting. She carried that list into every founder conversation and let it guide her decision-making. “It helped me focus,” she says. “I wasn’t just chasing roles—I was chasing fit.”

Due Diligence Works Both Ways

So you’ve got an offer. Now what?

“Don’t just get excited,” Dani says. “Get curious.”

Her advice for anyone considering a startup role: talk to people outside the hiring panel. Chat with someone in sales. Message someone in product. Ask to speak to the investors.

“Founders are usually happy to make those intros,” she says. “And it gives you real signal on whether there’s product-market fit, whether the mission resonates, and what kind of people you’ll actually be working with.”

It’s also about alignment. At this stage of your career, Dani says, you don’t just want a job—you want to be part of something that lasts.

Why Hiring Managers Need to Show Up

Great hiring isn’t a solo sport. And for Dani, one of the biggest myths in recruitment is that talent leads do all the work.

“We need you as much as you need us,” she says. “You can’t expect great hires if you don’t know who you’re looking for.”

She’s seen it too often: hiring managers say the pipeline’s not right, but can’t name five people they’d want to poach. Without a clear sense of what “great” looks like, you’re fishing blind.

So what’s her approach? Involve hiring managers early. Get them reaching out directly. Create shared Slack channels, run async feedback loops, and make hiring part of the culture—not just a handover.

The Candidate Experience Starts Before the Interview

Here’s something most candidates don’t realise: their behaviour outside of the interview room matters.

When Dani runs debriefs, she doesn’t just talk about technical questions or cultural fit. She starts by asking:

• Were they easy to schedule?

• Did they communicate clearly?

• Were they grateful?

• Did they show interest?

“Those behaviours are high-signal,” she says. “They tell you how someone’s going to work day-to-day, not just how they perform in an interview.”

Some candidates got rejected purely off that signal—even with strong scorecards—because it showed misalignment in how they operate.

One Final Thought: Shape the Culture You Want

Dani doesn’t just hire people. She sets the tone. She builds environments where talent can thrive—and where teams understand why great hiring matters.

That’s the difference between filling roles and building a company.

If you’re a founder, an operator, or a talent lead navigating early-stage growth, Dani’s story is a powerful reminder: great hiring isn’t about luck. It’s about intention. It’s about listening deeply, asking smart questions, and staying curious enough to keep improving.

💡 Big Takeaways:

• 🧠 Adaptability matters more than pedigree in startups.

• 🎯 Be intentional with your job search—clarity cuts through noise.

• 💬 Great hires ask questions and work across domains.

• 🤝 Hiring is a partnership—talent teams need hiring managers engaged early.

• 📣 Candidate experience includes every interaction, not just interviews.

• 🔍 Do your diligence—on teams, missions, and investors.