Senior professionals, headhunted from the ones already employed.

The senior professionals worth hiring are already in seats they care about. We reach them by warm intro, prior-network referral, and researched personal email — never a job post, never a recruiter blast. Then we vet each one the way we hire for our own team. Three vetted candidates land in your inbox in twenty-one days.

$1,000 depositrefundablecredits to fee on hire
Shortlist21dthree vetted candidates · first profile day 7
Placement fee20%$36K base → $7,200 fee
Replacement60dno re-fee

US hours, senior ownership.

If the role needs client communication, delivery pressure, and same-day rhythm, start with the nearshore pages built around the seat you are trying to fill.

The seats we fill, and what they own.

Professionals who have owned the seat inside a real company — running the weekly call, defending the numbers, holding the timeline, being the name on the contact card when something needs fixing. The two below are the most common; we also place operations leads, account directors, and senior support — any seat someone needs to own.

Client & Account.
  • Owns 10 to 20 accounts end-to-end — strategy, reporting, retention.
  • Runs the weekly client call and the quarterly business review without supervision.
  • Defends the numbers, surfaces risk early, has the churn conversation before it's urgent.
  • Has done real account work in the tools your seat depends on, not learned it in a bootcamp.
  • Vetted on a live working call against the scorecard we use for our own team.
Ops & Delivery.
  • Owns project timelines across 15 to 25 active engagements.
  • Runs the internal weekly status and the client-facing status update.
  • Coordinates handoffs between teams without a chase.
  • Has run senior operations or project management — not just learned a tool like Asana or ClickUp.
  • Vetted on a live working call against the scorecard we use for our own team.

Headhunt. Vet. Place.

Three steps from your brief to a senior professional in the seat — built so they stay past year one.

Headhunt.

Currently-employed senior professionals in your field. Reached by warm intro, prior-network referral, or a researched personal email — never a job post, never a recruiter blast. The motion is slow on purpose. The pool is smaller and the professionals are stronger.

Vet.

Every professional runs through a working call before they reach your inbox — the same scorecard we use to hire for our own team. Track record, judgment under pressure, and how they communicate live. We put forward only the people we would hire ourselves.

Place.

You interview a shortlist of three, choose, and we stand behind it with a sixty-day replacement window. Want them trained on AI on top? That runs as an optional bootcamp — additive, never bundled into the fee.

What happens in the first twenty-one days.

01
A fifteen-minute intake.
You answer a short brief. We translate it into the candidate profile, the salary benchmark, and the vetting criteria, then confirm before sourcing begins.
02
We headhunt from network.
Warm intro, prior-network referral, researched personal email. We reach currently-employed senior professionals — not the active bench. First profile within seven days.
03
You interview and choose.
Three vetted candidates within twenty-one days. Every one has run a working call with us before reaching your inbox. If none are a fit, we keep recruiting at no additional cost until you hire.
04
We stand behind it.
Every placement is backed by a sixty-day replacement window. Want the professional trained to run AI in the seat? We offer that as a separate, optional bootcamp.

Everything the fee covers. Nothing extra.

20% of the professional's year-one base salary

$1,000 refundable deposit to start · credits to placement fee on hire. The full fee is billed only when you and the professional confirm terms. Worked example: a $36,000 base at 20% lands at a $7,200 fee.

Three vetted candidates in twenty-one days, recruited the way we hire for our own team, with a sixty-day replacement window on every placement.

Hiring junior instead? See the junior bench.

Junior professionals — assistants, coordinators, support, and ops — drawn from a vetted LATAM bench. Same live-interview standard, fourteen-day shortlist.

Vela · Junior

+
Sixty-day replacement guarantee
If the hire does not work out within the first sixty days, we run the replacement search at no additional cost.
+
Seven-day first profile, $1,000 refundable deposit
The first vetted professional lands in your inbox within seven days. Three professionals within twenty-one. The deposit is refundable in full if we do not introduce candidates you want to meet by day twenty-one. Once we introduce candidates you want to meet, the deposit is earned — it pays for the sourcing, working-call vetting, and shortlist work already delivered. If none of the initial candidates is the right fit, we keep recruiting at no additional cost until you hire.
+
Working-call vetting
Every professional is interviewed in a live working call — a real conversation about the work, not a screening form. Track record, judgment under pressure, live communication.
+
Reference and scorecard check
Every professional is checked against the same scorecard and reference process we use to hire for our own team. We grade whether they can actually run the seat, not how they read on paper.
+
Optional AI bootcamp
Want your professional trained to run AI inside the seat? We offer a separate, optional bootcamp — live one-on-one sessions on the workflows that matter for their role. Priced on its own, never bundled into the placement fee.
+
Custom role brief
Drafted from your intake call. You approve rather than author it.
+
Salary benchmarking report
What this seat earns in Medellín, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Bogotá. So the offer lands correctly the first time.
+
Hire is yours after confirm
Vela is a placement firm — not a staffing layer. Once you and the professional confirm terms, you sign the contractor agreement directly. No Vela markup on their pay, no managed-services hold. They go on your payroll, your tools, your team.

Your part takes under an hour.

Running the search costs you an intake, a kickoff call, and two approvals. Then you interview three people instead of thirty — that part is the point, not overhead.

ComponentModeYour time
Intake callWith you15 min
Kickoff and search strategyWith you30 min
Brief draftingWe handle it0 hrs (we write, you approve in Slack)
Headhunting from networkWe handle it0 hrs
Working-call vettingWe handle it0 hrs
Reference and scorecard checkWe handle it0 hrs
ShortlistOn youYou interview the three — your calendar
Placement approvalWith you15 min

We say no more often than we say yes.

  • Companies past the founder-does-everything phase.
  • Owners hiring senior professional #1, #2, or #3. A real seat someone owns, not a disposable task.
  • Teams that already know what good looks like in the seat.
  • Owners who want a proven professional, not the cheapest résumé on a marketplace.
  • Anyone tired of job-board hires who can't actually run the work.
  • Teams optimizing for the absolute cheapest hire over the right one.
  • Roles that require physical on-site presence.
  • Owners who want a junior assistant rather than a senior seat. Use the junior page instead.
  • Anyone who wants a body to fill a seat rather than a professional to own it.

Headhunting is a different motion.

The senior page exists because reaching currently-employed senior professionals is a different motion from sourcing off a bench. The strongest professionals are already in seats they care about — they aren't reading job posts and they aren't replying to recruiter messages. Reaching them takes warm intro, prior-network referral, and a researched personal email. It takes time, and it doesn't scale the way a bench does.

That is why the senior search is the one Vela was built to run: twenty-one days to three vetted candidates, headhunted from currently-employed professionals and recruited the way we hire for our own team. Eight active searches per month, capped on purpose. A private practice, not a marketplace.

The junior page is the bench-based companion — same live-interview standard, applied to professionals already in our pipeline. Faster, lower fee in dollars, same vetting bar. Different seat, different motion.

Read the junior page

What they said after we placed them.

Curated from companies who hired through Vela and professionals we placed. Their words, not ours.

HireTalent gave us exactly what we needed. They found someone with all the qualifications we were looking for, and Andres has been a really strong addition to our team.

ph · lat · vela
E
Elijah P.
Real Estate Company

Your next senior hire is already working somewhere else.
We find them, vet them like our own, and place them with you.

$1,000 refundable deposit to start. First profile in seven days. Three vetted professionals in twenty-one. The full placement fee is billed only when you and the professional confirm terms — twenty percent of year-one base. Sixty-day replacement on every placement.

Book Intake CallHow it works →
Eight searches per month · private practiceMedellín · Miami · New York