E&F Consulting About Us

A consultancy
built for the question
no one answers honestly.

About Us

"How much does it actually cost — in money, time, and risk — to hire the person you say you need?"

Mission Why we exist
We believe hiring deserves the same rigor as any other strategic decision. Most companies wouldn't expand into a new market without research — but they'll spend millions on talent based on a recruiter's gut feel and a salary survey from two years ago. E&F exists to fix that gap, one role and one candidate at a time.
01 / Our Story

Founded by people
tired of bad advice
given confidently.

E&F Consulting workspace PRAGUE · 2024
E&F Consulting started as an internal disagreement. Two of our founders had spent years on opposite sides of the hiring table — one running talent acquisition for fast-growing tech companies, the other consulting candidates through career transitions — and noticed the same pattern in both directions.
Companies were paying enormous sums to hire people they didn't really understand the market for. Candidates were chasing roles they didn't really understand the demand for. And both groups were being advised, with great confidence, by people whose data was anecdotal at best.
So we built it. Role-by-role, geography-by-geography, we started compiling the kind of intelligence that lets a hiring manager say "yes, the market for this position in Berlin looks like this, and here's how we'll compete in it" instead of "we'll figure it out as we go."
Today E&F operates from Prague with a remote-first team across the EU. We work with companies who want hiring decisions to be defensible, and with individuals who want career decisions to be informed. Same data, different perspective.
We kept asking the same question: where is the actual data? It usually didn't exist — or existed in fragments no one had connected.
02 / Principles

How we work,
and what we won't do.

i.

Data before opinion.

Every recommendation we make traces back to a dataset. We're happy to share methodology, sources, and confidence intervals. If we don't have the data, we say so — and we go get it before we advise.

ii.

One client per conflict.

We don't simultaneously advise a company on hiring and a candidate on negotiating against them. Conflicts are obvious if you look — we look. Our roster is curated, not maximized.

iii.

Specific beats general.

"Senior engineers in Europe" is not a market. "Senior backend engineers, 5–8 years, Berlin-Mitte commute or fully remote, equity-tolerant" is. We work at the level where decisions actually get made.

iv.

Honest over optimistic.

If your hiring plan is unrealistic, we'll tell you before we take the engagement. If a candidate's target role isn't achievable in their timeframe, we'll say so. Comfortable advice is rarely useful advice.

v.

Local knowledge, global lens.

Czech tax structures matter for Czech hires. German works councils matter for German ones. We don't paper over jurisdictional reality with generic frameworks — we work with the law that actually applies.

vi.

Outcomes over hours.

We charge for engagements with defined deliverables and defined success criteria, not for time on a meter. If we finish faster than expected, you don't pay more. If we miss a milestone, that's our problem.

03 / The Team

Small by design.
Senior throughout.

E. Co-founder 01 · CO-FOUNDER

Eliška Nováková

Co-founder · Head of Analytics

Eight years building talent intelligence functions for European scale-ups before founding E&F. Believes most "war for talent" stories are bad measurement dressed up as drama.

BI & DataEMEA
F. Co-founder 02 · CO-FOUNDER

Filip Hrubý

Co-founder · Head of Career Practice

Background in software engineering and career transitions. Has personally consulted on 200+ candidate journeys, mostly into senior IC and engineering leadership roles.

Career StrategyTech
Senior Analyst 03 · ANALYST

Marta Kowalska

Senior Market Analyst

Joined from a London compensation consultancy. Specialises in Central European tech markets and cross-border salary benchmarking. Reads tax codes for fun, apparently.

CompensationCEE Markets
04 / By the Numbers

Two years in,
and counting.

2,400+
Roles Analyzed
38
Markets Covered
96%
Client Retention
6 wk
Avg. Time-to-Insight
€11M
Compensation Benchmarked
3
Founding Team
7
Languages Spoken
Coffee Consumed

Have a hiring problem,
or a career one?
Start there — we'll find the data.

Get in touch