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What we do

Three services. One standard: vertical-fluent talent.

Contingent search, retained leadership search, and Sourcing-as-a-Service. Every candidate is vetted on the criteria that matter in their discipline: commodities, lanes, modes and systems in logistics; shipped systems and ownership in AI engineering; owned budgets and verified results in AI marketing.

Start a search Or call (424) 501-6078
A recruiter reviewing a résumé with a candidate

01

Contingent candidate sourcing

Fast-moving searches for operations, sales, brokerage, distribution, and supply-chain roles, plus ML engineers, data scientists, and AI marketing specialists. We deliver a vetted shortlist within days. You pay only on a successful placement.

  • Ranked shortlist with full candidate briefs
  • 4-point vetting: commodities, lanes, modes, and TMS
  • No placement, no fee

Typical roles: Forwarding ops · Logistics manager · Customs entry · ML engineer · Data scientist · AI growth marketer

Two executives shaking hands in a boardroom

02

Retained search: leadership & revenue

Confidential, priority searches for branch managers, gateway leads, trade-lane directors, and senior sales producers with movable books of business, plus heads of AI, directors of data science, and VP-level growth leaders building AI-first teams.

  • Full market map of your competitive landscape
  • Discreet approach to passive, employed talent
  • Structured scorecards and reference deep-dives

Typical roles: Branch manager · Director of logistics · VP sales · Head of AI · VP growth

A sourcing specialist and teammate reviewing a candidate pipeline on two monitors

03

Sourcing-as-a-Service

A dedicated TRYSTUM sourcing specialist embedded with your talent team. Pipelines built, candidates screened to your criteria, and interview-ready handoffs on a monthly subscription.

  • Predictable monthly cost, cancel anytime
  • Weekly pipeline reporting and calibration calls
  • Your brand, our engine: white-label ready

Best for: High-volume ops · Multi-branch growth · Agency support

How we vet, by vertical

Same search discipline. Different evidence in each vertical.

A customs brokerage manager and an AI product engineer are not screened on the same facts. Below is exactly what we verify in each discipline, and what you receive on every candidate.

01 · Supply chain & logistics

We screen for the desk, not the title.

A freight ops title tells you nothing. The commodity, the lane, the mode and the system tell you everything. Every logistics candidate TRYSTUM presents is scored on four operational facts before you see a résumé.

For leadership roles we add P&L scope, team size managed, carrier-contract authority and customer-book ownership.

What you receive

A one-page operational profile per candidate: commodities, lanes, modal split, systems, book size, comp expectation. No decoding required.

Discuss a logistics search
1

Commodities

What they have actually moved: perishables, hazmat, project cargo, high-value retail, automotive, pharma. Matched to your freight, not "general cargo."

2

Trade lanes

The corridors they have worked end-to-end: transpacific, transatlantic, USMCA cross-border, intra-Asia, domestic LTL and FTL. Verified against the lanes your desk runs.

3

Modal breakdown

Ocean (FCL/LCL), air, drayage, rail, truckload, final mile, and the real percentage split of their book, not a list of everything they have ever touched.

4

Systems

CargoWise, Magaya, Descartes, MercuryGate, Blue Yonder, SAP TM, Oracle OTM, Manhattan. Hands-on depth, not "familiar with."

02 · AI technology

Shipped systems over paper credentials.

Model names on a résumé are not evidence. TRYSTUM screens AI and ML candidates on what they have put into production, what they owned, and what broke when they were not there.

For leadership roles we add team scale, hiring history, budget and compute ownership, and shipped-roadmap outcomes.

What you receive

A technical profile per candidate: production systems, ownership level, stack, code-versus-research weighting, comp expectation.

Discuss an AI engineering search
1

Shipped systems

Models, pipelines or agents in production, with users, uptime and a business metric attached. We ask for the deployment, not the notebook.

2

Technical ownership

Did they own the architecture, the data, the evaluation or the serving layer? Individual contributor, tech lead or staff scope, confirmed by reference.

3

Stack depth

Model families (LLM, vision, recommender, forecasting), training and fine-tuning versus inference-only, and the tooling: PyTorch or JAX, LangChain or LlamaIndex, vector stores, MLOps (MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker, Vertex), cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure).

4

Engineering fundamentals

Can they write production code, review pull requests and ship inside a release cycle. Research-only profiles are flagged as such.

03 · AI marketing

Results they can prove, not results they were near.

Every growth marketer claims a number. TRYSTUM separates the campaigns a candidate owned from the ones they sat next to, and verifies the tools they actually ran.

For leadership roles we add team size, agency management, budget authority and board-level reporting.

What you receive

A growth profile per candidate: owned budget, channels, verified metrics, stack, AI use cases, comp expectation.

Discuss an AI marketing search
1

Campaign responsibility

Budget owned (monthly spend range), channels run directly (paid social, paid search, lifecycle, CRO, ABM), and whether they set strategy or executed someone else's.

2

Tool fluency

Hands-on in the stack: Meta, Google and LinkedIn Ads; HubSpot, Marketo, Braze or Klaviyo; GA4; Segment or mParticle; Looker or Tableau; and the AI layer (Jasper, Mutiny, 6sense, Clay, Apollo). Admin-level versus viewer-level, confirmed.

3

Demonstrated work

Portfolio, dashboards or case write-ups showing CAC, ROAS, LTV, pipeline contribution or retention lift. We distinguish verified individual contribution from team results claimed.

4

AI application

Where they have used AI tooling to change a workflow or a result: creative testing at scale, predictive segmentation, automated lifecycle, with a before and after.

What each stage delivers

Four stages. You know what you get, and what you decide, at each one.

Stage What gets clarified What you receive Your decision
1. Brief Vertical, role, operating environment, systems, location, comp band, hiring priority. A written search brief within 48 hours of the first call. Approve the brief.
2. Sourcing Target companies, passive versus active pool, exclusions. Weekly pipeline update: contacted, responded, in screen. Adjust targets.
3. Vetting The vertical-specific criteria above, references, comp alignment. A shortlist of three to five, each with a one-page operational, technical or growth profile. Select interviews.
4. Offer & placement Comp negotiation, counter-offer risk, start date. Offer support, resignation coaching, 30/60/90-day check-ins. Make the offer.

Timing and fees depend on the engagement: contingent, retained or Sourcing-as-a-Service. See the questions below for typical shortlist timelines.

Recent engagements

What the vetting looks like on a real search.

Client and candidate identities are withheld. Each example describes one engagement, not a guarantee for every search.

Supply chain & logistics

Branch leadership, US market entry

Requirement. An international carrier entering the US needed a branch leader who could stand up operations from zero.

Assessment. Verified transpacific and USMCA lane experience, ocean, air and drayage split, CargoWise depth, and prior P&L ownership.

Outcome. Brief to accepted offer in under four weeks. The placed candidate now runs the US entity.

Common questions

Logistics recruiting, answered plainly.

What employers and candidates ask us most before starting a search.

What is the difference between contingent and retained search?

Contingent search is success-based: you pay a fee only when a candidate you hire actually starts. Retained search involves an upfront commitment and is used for confidential, senior, or hard-to-fill leadership roles where dedicated capacity and a guaranteed timeline matter more than paying only on results.

How does TRYSTUM vet logistics candidates?

Every candidate is screened on four points: the commodities they have handled, the trade lanes they know in depth, their modal breakdown across ocean, air, ground and rail, and the TMS and forwarding systems they have actually operated, including CargoWise, Descartes, Magaya and SAP TM.

What roles does TRYSTUM recruit for?

Supply chain, logistics and operations roles across freight forwarders, 3PLs, manufacturers, retailers, e-commerce brands and distributors, from ocean and air operations and customs brokerage to directors and VPs of supply chain. TRYSTUM also recruits AI technology and AI marketing talent.

Where does TRYSTUM place candidates?

Across the United States. We are headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

What does it cost an employer to start a search?

Nothing upfront on a contingent search. You receive a qualified shortlist and pay a placement fee only if you hire. Retained and Sourcing-as-a-Service engagements are scoped and quoted per assignment.

Do candidates pay a fee?

No. Placement services are always free to candidates. TRYSTUM offers an optional professional résumé-writing service for a small fee, which is entirely separate from placement and never a condition of being submitted.

How fast can I expect a shortlist?

Most contingent searches produce a first shortlist within five to seven business days. Retained leadership searches run longer by design, typically three to five weeks to a calibrated slate.

Hiring intelligence

How to hire the right logistics people.

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Not sure which engagement fits?

Send us the role. We'll recommend the fastest, most cost-effective route to a hire, in one short call.

Talk to a specialist Or call (424) 501-6078