Jocelyn Goldfein's framework for engineering sourcing: stop optimizing for "qualified" or "available" separately and laser-focus on the tiny overlap where both exist.
Here's why most engineering recruiting fails: you're searching the wrong circles. Draw two bubbles—one for talented engineers, one for people open to jobs. The overlap is tiny. Most great engineers aren't looking most of the time, and most people looking aren't great. Big companies waste resources doing brute-force searches of the "qualified" bubble, hoping to convince someone to talk. Small companies waste time on job boards, drowning in the "available" bubble of people who want any job.
Goldfein's thesis: stay laser-focused on that overlap. Referrals are your highest-yield tool because the matchmaker vouches for both sides—this person is qualified AND willing to talk. Even weak referrals (someone's kid goes to school with an engineer who built a mobile app) land in the overlap zone more often than random strangers. Campus recruiting works because graduation is the one guaranteed moment engineers are open to offers. Your own website matters because sourced candidates will check you out there.
Passive sourcing—paying recruiters to email strangers—is a volume game that only works at scale. It's predicated on the math that maybe 10% of engineers are job hunting at any moment, and you need months to develop a pipeline. Big companies can afford this. You probably can't, and you shouldn't try. The article warns against blindly applying big company techniques when you're small.
The money insight is the framework itself: most recruiting advice ignores the inverse correlation problem. The stronger an engineer is, the less likely they're looking. Optimize for the overlap, not the individual circles.
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