🖤 Open Works #033 Tech Hiring SOS. Where To Find Relevant Candidates?!

Welcome to Open Works. Every edition we solve a ‘people and culture’ problem crowd-sourced from the Open Org Community of 480+ Startup and Scale-up People Leaders.

This edition is sponsored by peoplemetrics.fyi–the benchmarking platform for scale-up people leaders.

Get instant access to verified data from 600+ startups and scale-ups across 18 x people and talent metrics. Gain the insights to make smarter decisions and give stakeholders the context they crave.

📚️ Recent Editions

If you’re new round here, not yet a subscriber or you straight up missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🤖 Edition 32: Make My Company AI Fluent, Bye – practical ways you can increase your team and organisation’s AI chops.

🤦 Edition 31: When Performance Feels Like A Process Not A Practice – a framework to iterate on your performance product.

🎯 Edition 30: Culture Means Different Things To My CEO and I, How Do I Get Us On The Same Page – a guide to making culture tangible af.

💭 This Week’s People Problem

You’re hiring engineers. Applications are rolling in

But most candidates aren’t even close to what you’re looking for.

High volume ≠ high quality. So what actually works?

🖤 Our Take on How You Solve

🏃 TL;DR

• Rethink where and how you show up—less broadcast, more signal

• Introduce a few low-effort, high-leverage sourcing channels

• Set up hiring to attract candidates who already care about what you’re building

⚡️ Why This Happens

When you post to big, generic job boards, you reach a wide pool—but not always a relevant one. Especially in engineering, where the best candidates aren’t actively applying, or are looking for more context than “fast-growing startup seeks full-stack dev to build the next rocket ship.” 🤦 

You need higher intent, higher-context talent. That often means:

• More niche

• More cracked

• More personal

💡 Tactics That Actually Work

Here’s a mix of what we’ve seen work across the Open Org community.

✅ 1. Use GitHub stars and contributors as a signal

If your product is open-source or you have any public repos, check who’s starred or contributed to them. These folks already know your product and might be open to a conversation. 👑 PostHog are kings at this.

✅ 2. Post to Hacker News’ "Who is hiring?" thread

Old-school, but still effective. High-quality devs browse it monthly. It’s free. Be clear, short, and link directly to a role or problem you’re hiring for. Here’s where it lives.

✅ 3. Tap into niche tech communities

Great developers hang out in smaller, focused communities—not on generic job boards.
Examples:

• Discords (e.g. Reactiflux for React)

• Slack groups (e.g. LeadDev)

• Reddit subs like r/forhire

• Test what 1–2 hours per week engaging here, sharing updates, or posting roles does.

👌 Pro tip: Search the hive index for relevant communities to you: https://thehiveindex.com/ 

✅ 4. Introduce a small paid async challenge

Inspired by what Cal.com does – Offer a paid scoped challenge. Frame it as a way for them to learn about your work before committing time to interviews. Helps reduce false positives early.

✅ 5. Make referrals worth it (and easy)

Referrals are still one of the most effective ways to hire skilled engineers—especially at early-stage.

But they only work if your team knows exactly who you’re looking for and feels motivated to refer.

Try this:

• Be specific about the role (“Backend engineer with Python/Postgres experience, ideally someone who’s worked in a startup before”)

• Set a clear incentive (e.g. $1500 per successful hire to the referrer)

• Make it easy to share (pre-written message + job link)

🧠 How to Keep Improving Hiring Without Reinventing It

You don’t need to build a fully bespoke hiring engine to get results.
Start with:

1. Pick one experiment (e.g. GitHub outreach, Community #jobs posts)

2. Run it for a sprint (e.g. 2 weeks)

3. Measure quality (interview-to-offer rate, time to screen)

4. Keep or kill

Make small experiments part of your normal hiring rhythm—not something you do after process breaks.

🛠️ Next Steps

1. Identify one niche or high-signal sourcing channel you’re not using yet (GitHub, Discord, HN, etc.)

2. Tighten your JD to increase relevance and clarity. Check out our template on this for inspo ✨ 

3. Reach out to your current team for 1–2 warm referrals, with a clear brief

Need help with messaging or candidate prompts? Happy to send examples.

📚 Good Reads

👀 The Open Job Ad [Open Org Template]

🦔 PostHog – 43 things we’ve learned about hiring

⭐️ Cal.com’s Feature Bounty Wall

🤓 Hacker News “Who is hiring?” thread

🤓 Want to Get Your Current “People Problem” Featured?

We’re here for the trickiest challenges you’ve got. Hit reply to this email, and let us know what’s keeping you up at night, and we’ll feature next week anonymously!

🖤 John & Adam

🖤 Psst! Are You Part Of The Open Org Community Yet?

Well goodness my friend, you should be! 😉 

Join 480+ startup and scale-up People & Talent leaders in Slack, and get exclusive access to twice-monthly live events (roundtables and guest firesides), quarterly hackathons, and direct support from Adam and me.

With 🧊 & 🔥 

John & Adam

👉️ Know someone who’d love this newsletter? Forward it their way so they don’t miss out, and make my day whilst you’re at it! 🙂