TECH Signal 133
Engineering hiring should target named individuals from a ranked spec, not filter a thousand applicants
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An engineering leader argues that volume-funnel hiring converges on average candidates and that teams should instead run engineering searches like executive searches, starting with a written, ranked spec and a targeted shortlist built from specific network questions.
If you hire through high-volume funnels, the candidates who surface are the ones most available to cold outreach, not necessarily the strongest fit. The alternative, scoping what excellent looks like, ranking those criteria, and asking your network narrow questions, takes longer but produces a shortlist of named people you can actually evaluate against the job rather than against each other.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Funnel hiring tells you who survived the filter, not whether they were excellent for the role, because nobody defined what excellent looked like before filtering.
VP-style search starts with a written, ranked spec of what the role needs and a mapped list of specific people who fit, which can take months of dedicated attention.
Asking your network narrow, behavior-specific questions yields names, while asking 'do you know any good engineers' yields whoever they had lunch with.
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