Hiring the right people at Orus

At Orus, we pay a lot of attention to recruiting the right people, and it's been my main priority since the beginning.

To give a bit of transparency to anyone interested in how we work, here are the fundamental guidelines that I follow as a CTO when hiring people.

Hiring a trajectory, not a perfect CV

Years ago, at Kapten (back when it was still called Chauffeur Privé), I was hired in a way that didn't make a lot of sense on paper. My background wasn't the obvious fit. There were shinier CVs. More traditional paths. Safer bets.

And yet, someone looked at me and thought: this guy can grow into the role. He's curious, fast, hungry. He'll figure it out.

They took the bet. I ran with it. And it shaped how I see hiring forever: the best people are often the ones you can't perfectly describe in a job ad.

So when I'm on the hiring side now, I remind myself: don't just scan for the checklist. Scan for the energy, the capacity to stretch. Because that's where the real leverage is.

The structure is your friend (but not your boss)

Fast forward to today. At Orus, we use a structured interviews. Sounds boring, right? Like HR theatre. But it's not.

Without structured interviews, hiring turns into a circus. Everyone judges based on "feel." The loudest person in the debrief wins. And surprise, they often just hired someone who looks, thinks, or acts like them.

Structured interviews are how you avoid that trap.

At Orus, we focus on five axes:

• Fundamentals. Complexity, data structures, paradigms, networking. Can they explain things simply, or do they hide behind jargon?
• Craft. Do they care about readability, testing, observability? Is their code the kind you'd want to debug after three espressos and zero sleep?
• Architecture. Can they think at the system level using abstractions? Or do they drown into the details and lose the big picture?
• Autonomy. Can they slice problems, prioritize, ship? Or do they need a babysitter at every fork in the road?
• Impact. Do they lift the team, or just themselves? Can they teach, unblock, and leave things better than they found them?

Structured interviews don't tell you who to hire. It tells you how to compare, without the noise. It forces you to anchor your intuition in something concrete.

So how do you know if your interview is good enough? You iterate. Agree on what you're looking for, then focus on the questions where you and your partners disagree. That's usually where bias hides. Refine those questions until they reveal, clearly and unambiguously, the presence or absence of the qualities you're after in a candidate.

Test judgment, not trivia

I don't care if you know the time complexity of some obscure algorithm by heart. Unless you're secretly competing in a computer science Olympics, it doesn't matter.

What matters is judgment.

So our interviews focus on small, real exercises. We don't throw you into a four-hour code dungeon. We don't ask you to implement a heap sort with on a whiteboard while juggling flaming torches.

Instead, we give you a practical problem that's close enough to what we do at Orus. Short. Manageable. With enough room to make choices.

And then we watch the judgment play out:

• Do you spot the trade-offs?
• Do you communicate them clearly?
• Do you test your own reasoning before shipping it?

So all the exercises we design with are born from real life. Real code. Real projects. Not from our imagination and a blank page.

They will be imperfect. Some aspects will be messy.

But that's ok.

Because in real life, you'll miss details. You'll face incomplete specs, shifting requirements, broken APIs. Judgment is what saves you. Not trivia.

All the exercises are work samples, handpicked to highlight the fundamental qualities we're looking to add to our team.

Respect the candidate's time (and your own)

If you want someone to leave their job, trust your company with their career, maybe even move their life around—you'd better show them you can move, too.

Dragging a process for weeks signals one thing: you're not motivated enough to keep the needle moving. And if you're not motivated about your own hire, why should they believe you'll be motivated about them once they're inside?

That's why we keep things tight: short screens, practical tests, debriefs in days not weeks. Feedback that's clear and honest. Even a fast "no" earns more trust than a slow maybe.

Hiring isn't just about filling a role. It's about starting a relationship. And like any relationship, it needs spark, momentum, and even a bit of passion.

Mission as a filter

Let's be real: insurance isn't the sexiest word in tech. You don't drop "B2B insurance platform" at a party and get everyone's eyes to light up (unless it's a party organized by @Amin Toussi).

And yet.

Insurance is one of those boring problems that quietly rules the world. Small businesses depend on it. Entrepreneurs can't take risks without it. The impact is massive, even if the branding isn't flashy.

That's the point. We don't want people who join because they think startups are cool. We want people who join because the mission - in our case helping small businesses protect themselves and grow - appeals to them.

The mission is the filter. If you're here for the ping-pong table, you'll quit when the first wave hits. If you're here for the mission, you'll surf it.

That's why we test this motivation explicitly during interviews.

Keep it simple, always

There's a dangerous temptation in tech: worshipping complexity.

"Oh, but look at this elegant over-engineered architecture I designed, spanning twelve services, with three different databases and a sprinkle of blockchain."

Stop.

The thing about tech is: anything can be over-engineered. Which means you can (and should) test for it during interviews.

Final thoughts

Hiring isn't a checklist you comply to to please the HR. It's how you shape the company you want to build. It's a messy, human process.

What we try to do at Orus is keep it grounded: focus on potential, test for judgment, respect people's time, and stay true to the mission.

We won't get every decision right. No one does. But if we keep iterating with care and a bit of passion, we'll keep moving in the right direction, and keep building a team we're proud to work with.