Digital · Marketing · Creative
KYO
Search Partners
AI-Native · 20 Years of Recruiting Consultancy
Talent is your greatest advantage.
A boutique search partner for the digital, marketing and creative people who move a business forward — placed permanently, chosen carefully, advised honestly.
The Firm
Founded by Kelly Yosten. Senior-level recruiting since 2007 across business development and search, in multiple divisions and industries.
Every great brand is built by the people behind it.
KYO is a boutique house, not an agency floor. Twenty years of recruiting consultancy sit behind every search — which means you get a partner who has already met a thousand versions of the role you're trying to fill, and who will tell you plainly which version you actually need.
Modern tooling makes the work faster; judgment makes it right. AI handles the sourcing breadth, the market mapping and the noise. Kelly handles the conversations, the references, the read on whether a person will thrive in your particular room. Nothing is outsourced to a coordinator you'll never meet.
Specialties
Three disciplines, searched deeply rather than broadly.
Digital
The teams that own acquisition, product surface and the numbers behind them.
- Growth & Performance
- Product & UX
- Digital Strategy
- Web & Development
- Social & Community
Marketing
Operators and leaders who turn a positioning deck into pipeline.
- Brand & Communications
- Demand Generation
- Content & Lifecycle
- Product Marketing
- CMO & VP Search
Creative
Makers and directors with a point of view — and the craft to defend it.
- Art & Creative Direction
- Brand & Product Design
- Copy & Content
- Video & Motion
- Studio & Production
More Than a Placement
A consultant first. A headhunter second.
Most firms are paid to fill the requisition in front of them. KYO is paid to be right. That means advising companies before a job description is ever written — and coaching professionals long before their name lands on a shortlist.
For Companies
Hiring strategy & advisory
Before the search begins, we get to the nitty-gritty: what this hire is truly accountable for, what level actually delivers it, and what the market pays for that — not what a salary tool guessed.
- Scoping the right role — often one hire instead of the two you budgeted for
- Compensation reality-checks: where you're underpaying, and where you're overpaying for a title
- Interview process design that doesn't lose the best candidate in week three
- Market mapping — who exists, who's movable, what it takes to move them
For Candidates
Get seen & get hired
Talented people lose roles they'd have been great at because nobody ever read their resume. Kelly coaches on the mechanics — the unglamorous, decisive part of a search.
- Beating the ATS so a human being actually sees your application
- Resume rewrites that lead with outcomes, not responsibilities
- LinkedIn positioning and using your network the way recruiters do
- Using AI in your search without sounding like everyone else who used AI
For Companies
Retained & direct-hire search.
Permanent placements only — no contract, no temp, no volume. Each engagement is a retained or placement-fee search run personally, with a shortlist you can actually read in one sitting: four or five people, each with a reason they're on the page.
You'll hear the truth about your search early. If the role is mis-scoped, if the comp band won't clear the market, if the perfect candidate you described doesn't exist — you'll know in week one, not month three.
Start a searchFor Talent
Confidential representation, honest counsel.
Your search stays yours. Nothing is submitted anywhere without your explicit yes, and your name never circulates as a resume in a database. When a role fits, you get the unvarnished version: the team, the tension, the money, the ceiling.
And when it doesn't fit, you still get something useful — a sharper resume, a stronger profile, a clearer read on where your experience commands the most. Relationships here outlast any single opening.
Introduce yourselfThe Difference
“Recruiting is a relationship business — twenty years of it. AI just lets me run it at the scale of a firm.”
Kelly Yosten, Founder — KYO Search Partners
“You want all these things — but let's get to the nitty-gritty of what you really need.” It's the sentence that starts most engagements, and the reason clients come back. Expertise and honesty, in that order.
Start a Search