How I Actually Find Candidates (Hint: It Is Not Always Through Job Postings)

I have hired over 500 people across four companies, three industries, and two countries. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: the way most job seekers think hiring works is almost completely backwards.

Most people assume that when a role opens up, the first thing we do is write a job posting, put it on a few boards, and wait for applications to roll in. That does happen — sometimes. But in my experience, posting a job publicly is often step four or five in the process, not step one. And for a surprising number of roles, we never post at all.

Here is how I actually find the people I hire, in roughly the order I reach for each source.

1. The Internal Ask: Who Do We Already Know?

The very first thing I do when a role opens is send a Slack message or an email to my leadership team and a few trusted senior people. Something like: "We are opening a Senior Product Manager role. Anyone come to mind?"

This is not a formal referral program. This is me asking the twelve people I trust most whether they have worked with someone great who might be available. About 30 percent of the time, someone has a name within 24 hours.

Why do I start here? Because a recommendation from someone I trust is worth more than 200 cold applications. I already have a data point on this person — someone whose judgment I respect is willing to put their name on the line for them. That is a signal that no resume can replicate.

I have filled roles in under a week this way. No posting, no screening, no recruiter. Just a conversation that led to an introduction that led to an interview that led to an offer.

2. The Referral Pipeline: Your Existing Employees Are Your Best Recruiters

If the internal ask does not produce a candidate, I activate the formal referral program. At my current company, referred candidates get flagged in the ATS and jump to the front of the screening queue. The referring employee gets a bonus if we hire the person — usually between two and five thousand dollars depending on the seniority of the role.

Here is a number that should change how you think about job searching: at my last company, referred candidates were hired at 4.7 times the rate of candidates who applied through job postings. Not because they were always more qualified — sometimes they were not. But because they came with context. The referring employee had already done a first-pass filter, and they had given the candidate insider knowledge about the role, the team, and the culture.

If you are a job seeker and you are not actively trying to get referred, you are playing the game on hard mode.

3. LinkedIn Recruiter: The Hunting Ground

LinkedIn Recruiter is the single most important sourcing tool in modern hiring. I spend roughly fifteen to twenty thousand dollars per year per recruiter seat, and it is worth every dollar.

Here is what a typical sourcing session looks like. I open LinkedIn Recruiter, plug in my search criteria — title, location, years of experience, specific skills, current or past companies — and start scrolling through profiles. On a good search, I will review 80 to 120 profiles in a session and reach out to 15 to 20 of them.

What makes me stop and send an InMail?

First, a headline that matches what I am looking for. If I am hiring a Senior Data Engineer and your headline says "Senior Data Engineer at [Company]," you are already ahead of someone whose headline says "Passionate problem solver and lifelong learner." I do not care about your passion. I care about whether you have the skills I need.

Second, a recent and relevant role at a company I recognize or respect. This is not snobbery — it is pattern matching. If you are at a company that I know uses similar technology, solves similar problems, or operates at a similar scale, I can infer a lot about your capabilities without reading every bullet point.

Third, any signal that you are open to opportunities. LinkedIn has an "Open to Work" feature that is visible to recruiters but hidden from your current employer. I check for this. I also look at activity signals — if you have been liking or commenting on job-related posts, or if your profile was recently updated, I take that as a soft signal of availability.

The profiles I skip? Those with no photo (it signals a dormant account), no summary, or experience descriptions that read like job listing copy rather than actual accomplishments.

4. Past Applicant Pools: The Silver Medalists

This is one that most job seekers never think about. Every time I run a hiring process, I end up with a shortlist of strong candidates who did not get the offer — the silver medalists. Maybe we liked them but went with someone who had slightly more experience. Maybe we had two great finalists and could only hire one. Maybe the timing was not right.

I keep notes on these people. Good recruiters keep notes on these people. And when a new role opens that could be a fit, the silver medalists from past searches are often the first people we contact.

I have hired people 8 months after they first applied — not because they applied again, but because I remembered them and reached out. One of my best hires ever was someone who was a runner-up for a different role 14 months earlier. When the right position finally opened, I sent her a direct message before we even wrote the job description.

This is why you should always be professional and gracious even when you do not get the offer. You are not being rejected permanently. You are being filed away as a potential future hire.

5. Recruiting Agencies: The Expensive Last Resort

When I cannot fill a role through referrals, LinkedIn sourcing, or past applicant pools, I call an agency. This is usually for hard-to-fill roles — niche technical positions, senior leadership hires, or roles in locations where we do not have a strong employer brand.

Agencies are expensive. They typically charge 20 to 25 percent of the candidate's first-year salary. For a role paying 150 thousand dollars, that is 30 to 37 thousand dollars in fees. This is why they are not my first call.

But good agencies earn their fees. They have their own candidate networks, they do active sourcing that my internal team does not have bandwidth for, and they can move fast. For executive roles, I sometimes use retained search firms that charge even more but dedicate a team to the search.

When I engage an agency, the candidates they submit go into the same ATS as everyone else. But I will be honest — they get reviewed faster. When I am paying 30 thousand dollars for a placement, I am not going to let those resumes sit in a queue.

6. Job Postings: Where Most Job Seekers Start (And Where I Often End)

And finally, we get to job postings. The thing most people think of as the beginning of the hiring process is frequently the end of it — or at least the middle.

I post jobs publicly for three main reasons:

Volume roles. If I need to hire five customer success managers or eight software engineers, referrals and sourcing alone will not generate enough pipeline. I need the funnel that comes from a public posting.

Compliance and documentation. Some companies, especially publicly traded ones or those with government contracts, are required to post roles publicly even if they have an internal candidate in mind. I have posted roles where we already knew who we were going to hire. It feels performative, and it is, but it is also legally required in some contexts.

Casting a wider net. Sometimes I genuinely do not know exactly what I am looking for, and I want to see what the market looks like. A public posting can surface candidates with backgrounds I would not have thought to search for.

But here is the hard truth: when I post a mid-level role on LinkedIn and Indeed, I get between 200 and 800 applications in the first week. My recruiter can review about 50 resumes per hour during an initial screen. That means the first pass through 400 applications takes a full working day of doing nothing else. And that first pass is brutal — each resume gets about 30 seconds.

This is why I prefer to find people through the other channels first. It is not that posted applicants are worse. It is that the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible, and the review process is exhausting.

What This Means For Job Seekers

If you are only applying to posted jobs, you are competing in the most crowded, least efficient channel. You are one of 400 resumes getting a 30-second review.

Here is what I would do instead:

Get referred. This is the single highest-ROI activity in job searching. If you do not know anyone at the company, find a connection. Comment on their employees' LinkedIn posts. Attend industry events. Reach out to alumni from your school. A warm introduction changes everything.

Make your LinkedIn profile recruiter-friendly. Use a clear headline with your actual job title and key skills. Turn on the "Open to Work" recruiter signal. Keep your profile updated. This is how we find you.

Apply selectively, not broadly. Thirty tailored applications will outperform 300 generic ones every single time. I can tell in three seconds whether a resume was tailored for my specific role or mass-submitted.

Follow up strategically. After applying, find the hiring manager on LinkedIn and send a short, professional note. Not a novel — three sentences explaining why you are specifically interested in this role. This has actually moved candidates from my "maybe" pile to my "interview" pile. It does not happen often, but it does happen.

Stay in the game even after rejection. If you made it to final rounds and did not get the offer, respond gracefully and ask to be kept in mind. You are now in the silver medalist file, and that file is more valuable than any job board.

The hidden job market is not really hidden. It is just happening in channels that most job seekers do not think about — internal referrals, LinkedIn sourcing, recruiter networks, and past applicant pools. Now that you know how we actually find candidates, you can position yourself to be found.