“Shortlist in 48 hours. Engineers we'd have spent six weeks searching for ourselves.”

Project details

ILYON, founded in 2013 by Ilya Molo and Alon Levy, ran one of Israel's most-installed casual game portfolios. Their core team excelled at game design and live-ops. Their hiring pipeline, however, couldn't keep up with the engineering load coming from monetisation, ad-tech integration, and real-time event streaming. Tel Aviv's game-industry seniors were tight, and the in-house recruiting team was burning weeks on roles that needed both Unity expertise and ad-SDK depth, a rare combination.

COO Lior Naidorf asked us for Recruitment & Placement, not embedded headcount. ILYON had the entity, the payroll, the onboarding flow. They wanted us to hunt, deliver a 5,8 person shortlist of engineers above the bar, then step out of the loop.

The challenge

Find game-industry engineers in adjacent markets at IPO-bar quality, in less than two weeks per role. No long-term retainer. No percentage-of-salary game. Just a flat fee per signed offer, pay only if the candidate joins.

The solution

We ran CVCO against game-industry keywords first (Unity, IronSource SDK, real-time game-server experience), then against the technical bar (specific engine versions, ad-network integration patterns, monetisation pipeline depth). The recorded skill exams covered Unity backend integrations, real-time event streaming, and ad-SDK work, none of which is standard interview material. Lior Naidorf met only the names that cleared both bars. Shortlist landed in 48 hours.

The approach

Every engineer was sourced through CVCO, screened by a recruiter who'd worked inside game studios before, then put through a recorded skill exam scored by a senior on our side. Only candidates above the agreed bar reached the ILYON COO. ILYON signed them directly, onto ILYON paper, ILYON payroll, ILYON equity stack. Our involvement ended at signed offer. Flat fee invoiced once, no retainer, no ongoing percentage.

The shortlist landed in 48 hours. Engineers we would have spent six weeks looking for ourselves. Lior Naidorf · COO, ILYON (acquired by Miniclip)

The outcome

Miniclip, majority-owned by Tencent since 2015, acquired ILYON on January 6, 2020 for an estimated $100M, calling out the strength of ILYON's casual-portfolio talent as a core reason for the deal (PocketGamer.biz). At the time, ILYON had crossed 400 million game downloads. The engineers we placed transitioned with the studio into the Miniclip portfolio and continue shipping live-ops on the same titles today.