About us

We understand what drives and motivates “startup people”

Scale & Swing is a recruitment firm purpose-built to serve the startup sector.

It’s in our DNA and we’re not trying to be anything else.

We appreciate the time pressure and cost constraints that Founders face and our service offering and approach is designed to deliver outstanding culture-suitable candidates at a startup-friendly price point.

We are specialists in emerging and disruptive technology – we understand Founders, CTO’s and Digital Talent generally and we are experts in recruiting culture-suitable CEO’s, COO’s, CTO’s, CPO’s, CMO’s as well as CFO’s and Growth/Sales leaders to innovative, fast-growth businesses

We immerse ourselves in the startup/innovation ecosystem: spending time-based at collaborative workspaces (it also helps keep our costs down!), attending meetups, providing mentorship to accelerator participants, providing early stage businesses with advice on talent considerations and introductions to build out advisory boards and then to scale post funding events

We connect with deep talent pools and sometimes assist corporates and large enterprise clients to engage with that talent when innovation and digital transformation is required

We provide prospective Advisory Board Directors with opportunities to engage with exciting new startups.

Luke Henningsen

Founder and Managing Director

I recruit great people for startups and help startups to build their own network of relationships for themselves. I love connecting people and have managed to make a living out of it.

The more formal, “in third person” version of my background:

Luke helps to build successful businesses through Executive Search, Advice and Investment with a focus on startup recruitment and emerging/disruptive technology. As a bridge between startup and enterprise he has been privileged to work with some of the most exciting businesses in the world – those disrupting established industries and those navigating digital change.

Before founding Scale & Swing, Luke’s career in executive search spanned more than two decades during which he co-founded, built and successfully exited/sold his interest in a high profile Executive Search firm (SHK Asia Pacific); ran a $90m recruitment business for A/NZ as EGM of an ASX listed human capital organization (Chandler Macleod Ltd) and led internal recruitment for KPMG. His startup sector experience is extensive – having led the Executive Search Practice for the MitchelLake Group in Melbourne as well as being founding Managing Director for Derwent Digital prior to establishing the startup specialist recruitment firm Scale & Swing.

Luke is an enthusiastic participant in the Australian startup community –taking an active personal interest as an Angel Investor and Advisor to startups and early stage businesses particularly around Talent, building a Board, scale up and market entry as well as acting as a Mentor within the MAP (Melbourne Accelerator Program) run by the University of Melbourne; Advisor to Hatcher+ and Skalata Ventures. You can find Luke on Linkedin.

Virginia Henningsen

Organisational Psychologist & Contract HR Consultant

Virginia is an Australian registered Psychologist (AHPRA, MAPS) with a Bachelor of Behavioural Science Psychology) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology both gained from La Trobe University, Melbourne.

All of her work abides by a strict code of ethics set by the Australian Psychological Society and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. Virginia founded her own organisational psychology practice undertaking psychological assessments across many disciplines and levels; from individual contributor, emerging manager, management level, to comprehensive leader profiling. Virginia is an avid reader in the psychology field, with a special interest in neuropsychology and neuroscience and its applications at work.

Virginia is a Psychologist for Founders in the startup ecosystem focusing on founder wellbeing and cognitive optimisation using cognitive nutrition, and behavioural and psychological cognitive

techniques to maximise performance.

Startup success relies heavily on the wellbeing of the Founder. In recent years there has been an explosion of entrepreneurial activity and startups creating the dual phenomena of the early-stage and scaleup founder. Startup Founders are leading and running rapidly-growing businesses, often quite early in their own careers, managing and leading teams locally and off-shore, and learning on the job, and under constant funding pressure, all of which is required to lead a successful startup.

In the past, learning how to drive results and outcomes in this type of business context was learned over long periods of time and with the support of experienced mentors or managers. However, for

startup founders, it’s learning on the job usually through practice and repetition and making mistakes. This creates immense pressure and lower ratings on wellbeing measures. Helping startup founders improve their wellbeing and operate at peak effectiveness levels in their startup is her core work.

Virginia’s experience as an HRD also enables her to provide tangible HR support to startups and scaleups. You can find Virginia on LinkedIn.