When a client asks us to fill a senior backend role, they don't want thirty candidates. They want three — the right three.
That sounds obvious. In practice, it's rare. Most recruiting processes are optimized for throughput, not signal. The result is hiring managers who spend more time reviewing pipelines than doing their actual jobs.
The volume trap
High-volume recruiting creates a specific problem: it shifts qualification work onto the hiring team. If a recruiter sends you fifteen candidates, it's now your job to figure out which five are worth an hour of your time. The recruiter has moved their bottleneck to you.
We think this is backwards. Our job is to do the hard qualification work upfront so you don't have to.
A shortlist of three well-qualified candidates takes more work to produce than a list of fifteen randomly assembled ones. It requires actually reading the code, conducting the screening calls, and making a judgment call about fit — not just pattern-matching on keywords.
What we evaluate
Technical depth is the obvious one. We look for engineers who can explain why they made architectural decisions, not just what they built. We look at real code — production systems, open source contributions, the specifics of how they talk through a problem.
Communication gets equal weight for remote roles. We assess written clarity through async exercises and review how they communicate in actual work artifacts: PR descriptions, documentation, design docs. A technically excellent engineer who writes opaque updates is a net negative on a distributed team.
Reliability signals are harder to formalize but important. How long do they stay at companies? What do references say about their delivery record? Have they worked in environments with meaningful accountability?
Fit with your specific context — this is where we need input from you. A startup moving fast needs something different than an enterprise team with strong process. The more you tell us about how your team actually works, the better we can calibrate.
What a good shortlist looks like
Three candidates. Each one:
- Has passed our technical screen at the level the role requires
- Communicates clearly in writing and verbally
- Has a verifiable work history
- Has been told about your role and expressed genuine interest
Sometimes it's two. Occasionally it's four. But if we're sending you more than five, something has gone wrong in our process.
The tradeoff
The honest tradeoff is speed. A tight, high-confidence shortlist takes longer to produce than a large, low-confidence one. We typically deliver an initial shortlist within 48–72 hours for straightforward roles, but complex or specialized roles may take a bit longer.
We'd rather take the extra day than send you candidates we're not confident in.
Questions about how we'd approach your specific role?