Different briefs. Different markets. Same standard.

Steve knew exactly what he was looking for — and just as importantly, knew how to articulate the opportunity, the team and why someone should join Phocas.

That gave CherryPeople a clear market to map and a compelling story to take to candidates.

Matt wasn’t advertising himself as open to work. He wasn’t applying for jobs. He wasn’t even thinking about making a move.

CherryPeople proactively headhunted him from the relevant market.

His background matched the technical brief, but it was the first proper conversation that made the fit obvious. Technically, he ticked the boxes. Culturally, it clicked too.

Matt was introduced as the second or third candidate in a shortlist of five and quickly became the front-runner.

At this level, each requirement materially reduced the available talent pool. Combined, they left a very small number of people worth approaching.

The founding mandate narrowed it further. Anteriad needed a leader who could establish a region from the ground up, not step into an existing Japanese sales organisation.

CherryPeople didn’t try to manufacture a ten-person shortlist. The objective was to identify the small number of people who genuinely matched the brief and engage them properly.

The first candidate was strong. Then Joe met Lavin.

Lavin’s background immediately stood out in the market. His experience with StackAdapt and Teads brought direct relevance to Anteriad, and his profile reflected many of the characteristics the search had been built around.

But the profile only got him into the conversation.

Meeting him was what changed the search.

Joe came away from their first in-person meeting convinced he’d found someone different: an intelligent, humble and highly credible sales leader with the presence expected at this level.

There was one complication.

Lavin wasn’t looking.

He was passive — lukewarm at best — and needed to be convinced that the opportunity was worth properly exploring.

Anteriad quickly saw what CherryPeople had seen. But Lavin wasn’t going to make an executive move without doing his own diligence.

Additional conversations were arranged so he could meet stakeholders across the APAC team, understand the business properly and assess the opportunity from his side.

CherryPeople and Anteriad welcomed that approach. At this level, the candidate should be assessing the company just as carefully as the company is assessing the candidate.

The relationship was designed around a broader hiring programme from the beginning.

Since March 2026, Open Point has formally engaged CherryPeople on eight searches spanning Account Management, Onboarding and Customer Success across Australia, Canada and the United States.

The partnership started with an Account Manager search for ANZ.

CherryPeople submitted two candidates.

Both matched the brief strongly enough that Open Point wanted to hire both. Ultimately there was only one position available, but Open Point asked CherryPeople to keep the second candidate close for when the team was ready to hire again.

As the relationship expanded, the work moved beyond individual searches.

CherryPeople supports Open Point with talent and compensation insight, competitive landscape analysis and interview-process advice alongside ongoing search delivery.

In North America, that also means helping position Open Point in a market where candidates have plenty of competing SaaS employers to choose from — and where the company story sometimes needs to be introduced before the role can be sold.

Joe works directly with Open Point’s Global Chief Customer Experience Officer, alongside Customer Success leadership across ANZ and North America and the People & Talent team.

That proximity means briefs don’t operate in isolation. CherryPeople can understand what the wider team is building, how one hire affects the next and how the talent market is responding across regions.