For years, Książulo has been telling Poles what is “muala” and what isn’t. Last week, he put a pizza bearing his name on the shelves of more than 13,000 stores, and the internet did exactly what he had been doing to restaurants: it judged him.

I won’t tell you whether the pizza is any good, because this isn’t an article about pizza. It’s about the fact that he put his name on it. And those of us who provide specialists for IT projects do that far less often than we like to admit.

What actually happened

On Sunday, October 4, Książulo published a video announcing his first food product: Muala pizza, priced at PLN 24.99. From the outset, he stressed that this wasn’t a typical advertising partnership, but his own product, which he owns the rights to, with Żabka serving as the distribution channel. Before it hit the shelves, he also showed how he had tested it: more than a year of trials and a closed test involving around 70 viewers. Żabka hasn’t disclosed the commercial arrangements behind the venture, so I won’t pretend to know how the responsibilities and risks are divided.

The reaction was loud. Comments accused him of selling out, abandoning his previous reluctance to enter into this kind of partnership, charging too much, and putting the “Muala” mark on a pizza box when it had previously signalled his approval after tasting something. One viewer wrote that “Muala has just lost its meaning.” The day before the launch, Książulo admitted that he could have given the pizza a different name. Media reviews have been mixed: some praise the crust, while others rate the pizza 2 out of 10.

I don’t know who’s right. What interests me more is a point made by one of the experts quoted by Wirtualnemedia: if criticism comes, it will hit his name directly.

Putting Your Name on the Box

And this brings me back to our industry. IT staff augmentation often works like this: a client asks for profiles, the supplier sends five, ten, sometimes fifteen CVs, and leaves the decision to the client. “Take your pick.” If the consultant turns out to be a poor fit, it was the client’s choice. The supplier made money from the match, but its name never appeared on the CV.

I’ve been selling these services for nearly 18 years, so I’m writing about my own industry from the inside. Over the past few weeks, several conversations with clients have started with a request for profiles only. I understand why: the client wants to compare candidates. But a comparison isn’t a recommendation.

Imagine two responses to the same request for a DevOps engineer. The first is an email with four attachments and the words “Please let us know your feedback.” The second contains two profiles, each accompanied by three sentences explaining what we’ve assessed, how the candidates differ, and which one we would choose ourselves. It also explains why we’re not sending a third candidate because they don’t meet two of the five requirements. The first response is faster and more convenient for the supplier. The second is harder because we might get it wrong, and the client will remember that we were the ones who made the recommendation. But the second builds trust, while the first just fills an inbox.

With pizza, a mistake costs PLN 24.99 and one ruined evening. In an IT project, the wrong hire can cost months of work for an entire team. The stakes are therefore much higher, yet we still tend to leave the risk with the client.

A Quality Mark Only Works If You Don’t Hand It Out to Everyone

The most important lesson from this story has nothing to do with pizza. It’s about the “Muala” mark. It was worth something because Książulo didn’t give it to everyone. Once it appeared on a product he was selling himself, some viewers stopped seeing it as a verdict and started seeing it as a label. Marketing consultant Marek Gonsior points out that when a reviewer sells their own product, they are no longer delivering an independent assessment but making a marketing promise. Another viewer put it even more succinctly: “You can’t be both the judge and the player in the same case.” An IT supplier that recommends a candidate and earns money when that candidate is hired faces the same dilemma. That’s why a recommendation alone isn’t enough. It needs evidence.

Let’s apply this to IT. If every profile you send describes the candidate as “experienced, committed and ready to start,” that description is worth about as much as putting “Muala” on every pizza box: nothing.

A supplier that never says, “We don’t have anyone suitable, and I won’t send you a CV just for the sake of sending something,” doesn’t have a quality mark. It has an email template.

What Does This Mean in Practice?

Putting your name on a CV isn’t just a slogan. It means, for example:

The Last Point Hurts the Most Because It Costs Money. And That’s Exactly Why It’s Credible

I hear the objection that you can’t guarantee a person in the same way you can guarantee a pizza. That’s true. The client still interviews the candidate and makes the final decision, and the specialist works within the client’s processes, not ours. But there’s a difference between leaving the decision to the client and giving up on making your own assessment. No one can promise that a consultant will never turn out to be the wrong fit, either. What you can guarantee is the process: how you select candidates, what you verify, and what you do when things go wrong. The difference between a supplier that has such a process and one that doesn’t becomes apparent very quickly.

If you’re on the other side of the table, as the client, ask your supplier three questions:

If the supplier can’t answer any of these questions, you already know how much its quality mark is worth.

The Market Is Already Expecting This

According to a Hays report, 82 per cent of IT companies plan to recruit this year, but they are approaching recruitment more selectively than before. A selective client doesn’t need fifteen CVs. They need someone who will do the initial screening and take responsibility for it.

To Be Fair to Książulo

In fairness, he has done something more difficult than most of us. Instead of lending his face to someone else’s product, he put his own name up for scrutiny by millions of people, including those who had been listening to him just a week earlier. You could call it courage or a mistake. Experts point out that commercial success and reputational success are two different things, and that he, rather than Żabka, carries the greatest risk. A personal brand works like a guarantee only until the first disappointment. After that, it becomes part of the review. But no one can say he hid from the judgment.

Where I Fit Into All This

At Sorigo, we provide both IT staff augmentation and project-based services. It’s a good school because, in a project, you put your name on the outcome; when augmenting a team, you put it on the person you recommend. The same standard should apply to both.

If you send a client a specialist and tell them that person is good, be prepared to put your own name on that CV.