WELCOME IN THE RECRUITING BOUTIQUE FOR STARTUPS!

I'm Sarah de Winter, the Founder and Managing Director of KICKSTART Human Resources GmbH.
​Here are a few words about myself, the KICKSTART-HR story and our vision.
OUR KICKSTART
It all started during my time as an HR Manager at Zalando, after a discussion with one of the renowned headhunters we had engaged, who complained that our use of the informal 'Du' in the first conversation was putting off his candidates. At the time, I wondered if candidates who drop out just because of the informal address were really the right fit.

The discussion stayed with me, and I concluded that a headhunter for startups must use different or additional criteria when selecting candidates. The daily operations and processes of startups (often with no defined processes at all) are very different from those in the offline world. So, it was no surprise that our headhunter had difficulty convincing us with his profile selection. His focus, like that of most headhunters back then, was not on startups.

I immediately felt a strong desire to start my own business and, as a headhunter, leverage my deep startup knowledge: the experience of helping to build a freshly founded company as a recruiter and HR manager. The two years at Zalando were an intense, challenging experience and the best time of my career. At the same time, it provided the ideal foundation and preparation for founding the KICKSTART-HR headhunting boutique and positioning it in the "Berlin Valley."
OUR PASSION FOR START-UPS
The chaos, the lack of structure, the hectic daily routine, and overtime can be extremely frustrating, and you never get to what you urgently need to do. Constantly shifting priorities, a fast pace, everything is urgent and happening at once – it feels like everything is on fire.

However, I have never experienced the energy and passion of employees in any corporation or established company the way I have in a startup: Entrepreneurs working tirelessly to improve their performance and processes for collective success, fighting against the chaos, being fully present even late into the evening, rarely resting, dragging themselves to the office when sick, hardly taking any vacation, giving 120% performance, always going the extra mile – from interns to founders – all for a product or brand that is still defining itself, building from the ground up, without the privileges of recognition or image, and with no certainty whether it will even exist in the next year.

This experience and observation has been confirmed by many former startup colleagues who also transitioned to companies in the offline world and clearly felt this difference, realizing the gap.
Looking at Zalando as an example, we can see how this rapid pace and growth, combined with this unique energy, set new benchmarks for the German economy and for the future. And how a crawling infant successfully competes with the big players.
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We are proud to equip startups in the online disciplines and eCommerce sector with top leadership and expertise, and to contribute to helping them grow.
MY CAREER PATH
CONNECT ME @
Int. Head Hunter & Founder & Managing Director / KICKSTART-HR
Int. Head Hunter & Partner / Staffing Division TTA Personalvermittlungs GmbH
HR Generalist / Gucci (GG Luxury Goods GmbH)
HR Manager / Zalando GmbH (Zalando own labels: zLabels GmbH )
HR Manager / Scholz & Friends GmbH