Every founder we talk to has a hiring frustration. Almost none of them have correctly diagnosed it.
The story usually goes: "We're hiring a senior engineer, we've done 40 interviews, no one's good enough, the team is stretched, we're losing months."
So they tinker with the loop. They add a take-home. They drop the take-home. They split the system design into two stages, then merge them again. They invest in their ATS. They hire a recruiter. Then another one.
None of it moves the needle, because the loop isn't the problem.
Where the leverage actually is
Look at the funnel for a typical senior engineering role:
- 200 applications in.
- 40 phone screens.
- 15 take-homes.
- 8 onsites.
- 2 offers.
- 1 hire.
The interview-loop optimisation industry is dedicated to making the bottom three lines slightly more efficient. Worthy work, but the leverage is upstream.
If you can move from 200 applications, 8 of which are real to 30 applications, 20 of which are real, every downstream step shrinks. Phone screens become real conversations instead of triage. Take-homes go to people who'll actually finish them. Onsites become hiring decisions instead of audition rounds.
You hire faster because you're starting from better.
Why "better" is hard
The standard advice — "post on more job boards, run a referral programme" — moves applications up, not signal up. You get more shots on goal but the same hit rate. The funnel grinds harder.
The thing that changes the hit rate is verifying inputs before they enter the funnel. Confirmed employment. Real GitHub history. Skills that survive a 30-second poke from someone who knows the domain. References from actual colleagues, not friends.
That's not faster screening. It's different screening — done at the source, by people who can verify, not by you in a 25-minute call where you can only ask.
What this changes for you
When the inputs are verified:
- The phone screen becomes a culture conversation, not a fact-check.
- The take-home goes to people who genuinely cleared the bar, so you can give it more weight.
- The onsite is for judgement and fit, not for catching obvious mismatches.
- Time-to-hire drops because the funnel is shorter, not because each step is rushed.
Most importantly: the people you reject feel they were taken seriously, because they got through to humans who'd already engaged with their actual work. Your employer brand quietly improves while you're not looking at it.
The frame to hold
If you're stuck on hiring, run this check before you change anything in the loop:
"Of every ten people we currently phone-screen, how many had even one verified, externally-checkable claim on their application?"
If the honest answer is maybe one, you don't have a hiring problem. You have a top-of-funnel problem. Different fix.
— The Dealt team