May 1, 2026
I know something you don't.
That sounds arrogant. Let me explain.
I spend every day speaking to candidates. Qualifying them. Understanding what they've built, how they think, what they want next and why. I know what motivates them. I know what puts them off. I know when someone is genuinely exploring and when they're just keeping their options open.
But here's the thing most founders don't realise - I'm not qualifying candidates against your job spec.
I'm qualifying them against you.
Against your culture. Your pace. Your leadership style. The stage you're at. The problems you're actually going to face in the next 12 months. The kind of person who will thrive in your environment versus the kind of person who will look great on paper and be gone in six.
That distinction is the reason most founders struggle to hire. Not the market. Not the comp. Not the talent shortage. The reason is that you're filtering for the wrong things.
The wishlist problem
Every founder has a wishlist. Five years of experience. Specific stack. Degree from a strong university. Previously worked at a recognisable company. Maybe some leadership experience. Maybe some startup experience.
On paper, this sounds reasonable. In practice, it's the reason your search has been running for three months.
Here's what I've learned from hundreds of placements: the best hire for your company right now is almost never the person who ticks every box on your wishlist. They're the person who matches the reality of your business - the pace, the ambiguity, the ownership required, the problems that haven't been defined yet.
A wishlist is a static document. Your startup is not static. It's moving, breaking, rebuilding every week. The person you need is the one who can move with it - not the one who looks perfect in a vacuum.
What I actually do (that most founders don't)
When I take on a search, I spend as much time understanding the founder as I do understanding the role.
How do you make decisions? How do you give feedback? How do you handle conflict? What does your day-to-day actually look like? What's the real reporting line - not the org chart version, the actual one? What does success look like in six months, and how will you measure it?
These questions matter because the candidate isn't joining a job description. They're joining you. Your energy. Your expectations. Your blind spots. If I send you someone who's technically brilliant but needs structure you'll never provide, that hire fails. If I send you someone who's slightly less experienced on paper but thrives in ambiguity and can build from nothing - that hire changes your trajectory.
Most founders have never had someone do this for them. They've had recruiters who take a brief, search a database and send CVs. That's not what this is.
The hire you almost didn't make
I want to tell you about a real placement. Details changed to protect the client.
An early-stage founder came to me needing a Python engineer with AI and ML capability. The product was data-heavy - forecasting, time series, the kind of work that needs someone who genuinely understands the stack, not just someone who's done a few tutorials. The brief pointed towards a mid-to-senior hire. Someone with industry experience. Someone who could hit the ground running.
I ran the search. Found several candidates who matched the spec. Solid people. Right stack. Right experience level.
But I also found someone else. A recent MSc graduate. No years of industry experience to speak of. On paper, most founders would call him an intern.
Here's what the CV didn't tell you.
He'd been writing Python for over six years - not scripts, genuinely Pythonic code across ML, data engineering, APIs and open source. He'd maintained a widely used library for a major enterprise software company. He'd built and shipped an AI-powered developer tool as a side project - fine-tuned transformer models, published it as a plugin, achieved a 10x improvement over baseline. He'd co-founded a SaaS business. He'd built a full-stack digital twin platform for a university research lab. His thesis scored 9.5 out of 10, Cum Laude.
He was also end-to-end capable. Python, FastAPI, cloud infrastructure, Docker, CI/CD, frontend frameworks, even design tools. Wherever the problem went, he could follow it.
But what really stood out was the call.
When I spoke to him, he didn't talk about wanting a comfortable role. He talked about wanting to own things and drive them. He's a competitive rower - and he described rowing as the ultimate team sport because there's no hiding. It's all about the collective. That mindset maps perfectly onto a small founding team.
He'd specifically researched the company. He loved the product. He wanted to buy in early and grow with it. His salary expectation was modest - his words were "it's about the ownership and growth, not the money." He offered to work whatever hours were needed to maximise the company's growth.
I sent him to the founder with a note that essentially said: I know what you're thinking. Why have I sent you someone who looks junior? But read the full profile. What you're getting for a "not senior" title is exceptional. For a startup, the fit is what drives you forward and brings energy.
The founder nearly passed. I had to push.
They interviewed. The first conversation ran well past the scheduled time. He came back for a second round, then a technical test. Passed everything. The founder called me afterwards and the message was clear: this is exactly who we need.
They made the offer. He accepted.
That founder would never have interviewed this candidate without me in the middle. The CV would have been filtered out in the first pass. Not enough years. No industry track record. Looks like a graduate.
The wishlist would have killed the best hire they could have made.
What this means for you
I'm not telling you to lower your standards. I'm telling you to change what you're measuring.
Stop filtering on years of experience. Start filtering on what someone has built and how they built it.
Stop looking for people who've done the exact job before. Start looking for people who've solved problems in environments that match yours.
Stop treating the job spec as a checklist. Start treating it as a direction.
And if you're working with a recruiter who just sends you CVs that match the brief - ask yourself whether they actually understand your business, your culture and your stage. Because if they don't, they're not qualifying candidates. They're just searching a database.
The May playbook: 3 things to do this month
1. Rewrite your current open role around the problem, not the person.
Instead of "Senior Backend Engineer, 5+ years, Python, AWS" try "We need someone who can own our backend infrastructure and ship independently in a fast-moving, early-stage environment." Then work backwards from there. You'll be surprised how different your shortlist looks.
2. Look at your last three rejections and ask: why did I actually say no?
Was it because they couldn't do the job? Or was it because their CV didn't look the way you expected? If you rejected someone because of years of experience, job title or educational background rather than ability - that's a signal your filter is off.
3. Have a 15-minute conversation with your recruiter (or yourself) about who you are as a founder.
Not what you need in the role. Who you are. How you work. What kind of person thrives around you and what kind doesn't. If your recruiter has never asked you this question, they're not doing the job properly.
What I'm seeing from my desk
The founders who hire well aren't the ones with the best job specs. They're the ones who know themselves well enough to recognise a good fit when it's in front of them - even when it doesn't look the way they expected.
The candidates I'm most excited about right now are builders, not title-chasers. People who've done real work at smaller companies, often with less experience than the brief demands. They're undervalued by the market and underestimated by founders who are still filtering on logos and years.
The biggest unlock I can offer a founder isn't access to candidates. It's perspective. I've seen what works and what doesn't across hundreds of hiring processes. I know what kind of person thrives at your stage and I know how to find them. That pattern recognition is the thing most founders are missing - because they're only ever hiring from their own vantage point.
Tools
DM me on LinkedIn with any of these and I'll send them straight over:
SCORECARD - A 5-line role scorecard template. Forces clarity on what the hire actually needs to deliver.
LOOP - A structured interview loop framework. Who interviews, what each stage tests, how to avoid asking the same thing four times.
OFFER - A checklist for making offers that stick. Comp, work model, timeline, and the soft stuff most founders forget.
Built Different - Because great teams are built different
Hiring question? Building a key team? DM me - always happy to think it through with you.