Sophie O'Brien

Pollen Careers

Sophie O'Brien is the founder of Pollen Careers, a recruitment platform helping employers access diverse, motivated early-career talent by moving beyond traditional CVs and focusing on potential instead.

Sophie founded Pollen after struggling to find a new role despite her years of experience, and soon realised it was the process that needed to change, not the people going through it. So she set out to build something better.

Now, with a community of 14,000 diverse job seekers, Sophie has hired her own team through the CV-free process she created, and works with companies like Octopus EV and Pip & Nut to do the same, replacing the CV slog with a practical, values-led process that gets people hired on potential, not paper.