Tech companies are searching everywhere for recruiters.
Engineers are famously hard to find. That's not news. But here's what I've been noticing lately: the real bottleneck has quietly shifted.
You can have a brilliant product, strong investors, a great mission — and still lose good candidates because the person doing the hiring doesn't know how to run a process that feels good on the other side.
Ghosting after interviews. Processes that drag for two months. Feedback that never arrives. Job descriptions written like legal documents.
The shortage isn't just engineers. It's people who know how to attract engineers.
Recruitment is a craft, and we treat it like admin
There's this belief in the industry that sourcing candidates is the hard part. Find the person, show them the money, done.
But the best recruiters I've seen do something different. They're basically salespeople, marketers, and psychologists rolled into one. They sell the role before the person even applies. They manage the experience so well that candidates who get rejected still feel good about the company.
That's not admin work. That's a skill.
And yet — most companies still treat recruiting as support, not strategy.
What this means for managers
If you're a manager today, you're probably involved in hiring whether you like it or not.
And the companies I've seen win the talent war aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones where the hiring process is fast, respectful, and honest. Where the manager shows up prepared. Where a decision is made within a week.
Speed is a signal of how much you actually want the person. Slowness says something too.
(Worth asking yourself: what does your current process signal to candidates about how you operate?)
The talent shortage is real. But some of it is self-inflicted.