Resignal

RE:Signal

Founded by Kevin Gibbons. 

RE:signal is London’s leading SEO agency, partnering with enterprise brands to drive sustainable organic growth.

They’re known for their award-winning culture and deep specialisation in SEO strategy.

RE:signal continues to set the benchmark for how agencies can scale without sacrificing quality or team cohesion.

The brief

RE:signal is London’s leading SEO agency, partnering with enterprise brands to drive sustainable organic growth.

Founded by Kevin Gibbons, they are known for their award-winning culture and deep specialisation in SEO strategy.

RE:signal partnered with Search For Hire to find a Senior Growth Manager who could bridge sales and SEO, a fast, strategic hire who could bring structure to their growth function and help turn a strong inbound engine into a scalable sales operation.

“Great to work with and very strong process from start to finish.

Josh and the team have a very strong approach to talent attraction, which helped us to find opportunities who weren’t necessarily actively looking at job ads.

The candidates stood out and we quickly interviewed people who felt a level above, which led to a successful offer for an important role.“

— Kevin Gibbons, Founder of RE:Signal

The challenge

As RE:signal were expanding, Kevin and his leadership team identified a major gap: their growth function needed structure. While their inbound engine was strong, they required a strong system set-up to follow through, the missing ingredient needed to scale effectively. Outbound sales hadn’t been established.

They needed someone who could:

• Develop new outbound strategies
• Organise and optimise inbound conversion processes

The goal was to find a Senior Growth Manager who could bring both commercial acumen and a deep understanding of SEO, not just a salesperson. The team needed a strategic operator who could align sales with delivery.

RE:signal were also experiencing declining conversion rates, with no clear ownership of inbound or outbound activity. The mission was clear: find someone who could establish, stabilise, and expand their internal growth function.

“We talked about their plans for the next 5 years which really impressed me & helped align candidates who were equally ambitious.”

— Daris Benallal, Head of Recruitment for Search For Hire

The Process

To rebuild structure, RE:signal created a Senior Growth Manager position, a hands-on commercial role with a £45–60K base (up to £65K for the right candidate).

The role was designed to cover 50% inbound lead management, 30–35% outbound strategy, and 15% marketing collaboration.

Search For Hire partnered closely with RE:signal’s leadership team, Shannon (Head of Growth), Kevin (CEO), and their senior operations lead, to build a fast-tracked, collaborative hiring process. Vetted candidates were delivered for interview within one week of the initial call.

When their top candidate received competing offers, the team acted decisively. Daris and Shannon restructured the interview process to move faster, extending calls and consolidating multiple rounds into a two-stage process:

Stage 1: Initial Call with the Head of Growth

Focused on skills, sales systems, and SEO understanding.

Stage 2: Final Interview with the COO

The COO had been with the company for over 14 years, ensuring cultural alignment and long-term fit.

Recognising the candidate’s impact potential, RE:signal moved quickly, raising the offer +£10K, with a custom commission structure and a clear performance roadmap.

Ten days after acceptance, the candidate met with Kevin for onboarding, aligning on commercial goals and RE:signal’s long-term growth vision.

“It wasn’t just about finding someone with a proven sales track record.

It was about finding someone who understands SEO deeply, someone who could sit with account managers, understand the product, and sell authentically.

Kevin builds his team with one principle: hire as if you’d put that person in front of your best client.“

— Josh Peacock, CEO of Search For Hire

The outcome

RE:signal hired a top-tier Senior Growth Manager within 25 days.

The placement streamlined their sales operations, aligning inbound and outbound functions under a single owner for the first time. With the new hire onboard, RE:signal could confidently aim to hit their conversion rate goals and continue climbing.

Cultural fit and retention were reinforced through the values-driven interview process built in collaboration with Search For Hire.

Beyond metrics, this hire became a cornerstone of RE:signal’s next growth phase, setting the foundation for scalable business development rooted in SEO expertise.

“Rather than me giving the answers of what we should be doing, it’s much more interesting to understand where the team sees us going.

When they build the plan, they believe in executing it.”

— Kevin Gibbons, Founder of RE:Signal

Why this matters

When you’re building a sales function for a specialist agency, hiring a generalist salesperson won’t cut it.

You need someone who can translate technical SEO and marketing insights into client value, build repeatable systems that scale growth sustainably, and reflect your agency’s culture and reputation in every interaction.

RE:signal’s hiring challenge was as much about commercial acumen as it was about SEO literacy. The brief demanded a rare profile: a senior operator who could sit with account managers, understand the product, and sell authentically, without diluting the agency’s reputation in one of the UK’s most respected SEO markets.

The speed of hire, 25 days, and the decisiveness of the offer process demonstrate what a close, collaborative search looks like in practice.

The right candidate almost went elsewhere. The outcome was only secured because the process was built to move faster than the market.