We want to fix hiring. Looking for feedback from recruitment teams!
Hi everyone,
I'm a software engineer working on a product to help recruiters and am currently in the customer discovery phase. I've worked at companies at various stages, including a 5 person startup, series C startup, and big tech, and each company struggled when it came to hiring.
From their perspective, it seemed like it was difficult to find high quality candidates amongst all the applications. But from my perspective as a candidate, this seemed bizarre to me. I assumed companies had all the leverage and recruitment was just a matter of making a job posting and choosing from one of many qualified candidates.
This was when I realized there must be something inherently broken about the current ways companies hire. Speaking with friends seeking jobs, and friends already in industry and on the other side of the hiring process, I discovered that exaggerated resumes, mass applications, cheating during online assessments, and many more issues made the recruitment process a pain for both candidates and companies.
This inspired me and some friends to make this process better for both companies and candidates. We want to hear from hiring teams on the biggest issues they face - some questions we have:
What's your biggest bottleneck when screening candidates?
- How many applications do you typically receive for a role?
- What percentage of applicants receive a phone screen?
- What signals do you trust most when deciding who moves forward?
- If you could automate one part of candidate screening, what would it be?
Would also love to hear from candidates on their experiences, and we're excited to share findings and progress here!
Customer discovery is the right phase. Two things worth flagging.
IH is wrong audience for recruiter feedback. Recruiters live in RecOps Slack, Lever Talent Innovation Network, RecruitingDaily, SourceCon. IH skews founder/builder. Friends-of-friends sourcing recruiters > broad IH posts.
Category is incredibly crowded. Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, Gem, hireEZ, Findem, SeekOut, Metaview. AI-screening specifically: Paradox, Eightfold, HireVue, Sapia. Need sharp wedge.
Bottleneck varies by company stage:
Startups (under 50): Sourcing quality candidates, not screening volume. They need better sourcing.
Mid-market (50-500): Volume + signal noise. Recruiter time is bottleneck. They need triage automation.
Enterprise (500+): Process compliance, multi-stakeholder coordination, EEOC tracking. They need workflow + audit trails, not AI screening.
"Fix hiring" is too broad for solo team. Which segment is your ICP?
Better discovery questions than your current ones:
Those surface real workflows. Yours get generic answers found in industry reports.
What's your background — engineer or recruiter? Determines where credibility wedge lives.
Thank you for the feedback! Those are all valuable insights. Our ICP would be the small - mid size companies in the 50 - 100 range. Background is in engineering so looking to learn a lot about the recruiters' pain points. I like the questions you suggested - will keep those in mind!
50-100 employee range is good narrowing. Specific characteristics worth knowing:
Usually 1-3 recruiters (often shared with HR), hiring 20-50 per year, mix of technical + non-technical roles, Greenhouse/Lever/Workable users, $5-50K/year budget on recruiting tools.
Different bottlenecks than enterprise: less compliance worry, more volume vs quality tension, time-to-hire pressure, often no full-time sourcer.
Engineering background opens specific wedge worth considering. Two paths:
Build for technical recruiters at 50-100 cos specifically. Engineering hiring has highest pain (coding tests, GitHub signal, system design), highest mishire cost, most broken screening signals. Engineer-built tools for engineering hiring is authentic positioning. Smaller segment but deeper wedge.
Find recruiter co-founder. Outsider building for outsiders is hard — recruiters trust recruiters. Credibility gap is real. Worth exploring before going far without one.
Engineering perspective surfaces what recruiters miss: why technical screening is broken (recruiters can't evaluate code, rely on keywords), why technical assessments fail (cheating, AI usage), what candidates actually do during application. Unique angle most "AI hiring tool" startups don't have.
For discovery, talk to 30-50 recruiters before building. Channels: LinkedIn outreach to "Recruiter at [50-100 employee company]" cohort, RecOps Slack (apply, contribute, then ask), warm intros through friends-of-friends, recruiting podcast comments (RecruitingDaily, Hiring Success).
If you want to pressure-test technical-hiring vs general-hiring wedge specifically, we're HiveMind — AI strategy copilot for this kind of positioning work. https://hivemind.myosin.xyz/auth/signup, code HivemindIH123.