Hiring Fast and Smart

Search. Filter. Sort.

(For a technical audience. Also available on Substack, paywall free.)

Are you a small startup with limited time, money, and people? Need to hire fast, but can’t afford to waste weeks on process or gamble on bad hires?

I use a simple recruiting model, borrowed from computer science. I call it what it is: Search. Filter. Sort.

1. Search

Where are the people?

Not on LinkedIn — at least not if you’re hiring engineers. They’re building, not posting.

Job boards? Maybe. But you’re competing with the noise. So how do you surface talent?

Start with warm intros. Ask friends, colleagues, ex-co-workers. Who’s the best junior dev they know? Who’s sharp but underappreciated? Who just left a toxic job and might be open to a risk?

Then go cold. But never with shotgun blasts.

Target people who signal initiative: small open-source commits, Hacker News comments, indie hacker blogs, sharp posts on X or Reddit. Don’t mass-message. Send five to ten high-signal DMs a day. That beats drowning in a pile of unread resumes.

2. Filter

Now you have a few names. What next?

Resumes lie. LinkedIn lies.

What doesn’t? Code. Writing. Thinking.