The symptom
A search for candidates does not produce what you expected. It gets tempting to draw a conclusion about everyone in that craft, or in the place you are looking.
The signal
Examine what your channels let you see, what your criteria actually assess, and which capable people can stay outside the process.
What’s going on
A referral, an event, a direct application or public work each gives you access to certain people. None of those channels on its own describes the capability available. Visibility neither proves nor contradicts competence. A channel can give you a useful lead without providing the whole assessment.
For two years I ran a filter based on visibility and took its output for a fact about the people available. This book exists because I was wrong. Replacing reputation with an obligation to publish would reproduce part of the problem: a great deal of useful work stays internal, confidential, or simply unseen.
Look for evidence tied to the work at hand, in whatever form it can take. Something shareable that was built, a precise explanation of a contribution, an anonymised example someone is allowed to share, or a short exercise prepared together can all illuminate the reasoning. Do not ask for confidential documents. For someone starting out, a personal or community project, or a guided case, can show a capability and a learning need.
Different opportunities produce different paths. Someone may never have met exactly your problem without being unable to learn how to handle it. Separate the skills needed on arrival from the ones the team can teach. The expectations, the time asked, and the criteria for any exercise have to be clear and comparable; hiring must not become free real work.
Check this
For one search, write the activities to be done and the capabilities to examine. Offer several ways to talk about them or show them, including one that requires no public portfolio.
Compare the channels used and the stages where people leave the process. Ask for feedback where you can, without assuming you know why someone withdrew. Limit what you collect to what the search needs.
After one cycle, look at which capabilities were actually assessed and which obstacle could be removed. An unsuccessful search describes a remit, some conditions, and a duration; it is not enough to conclude that nobody capable exists.
From where you sit
- Recruiting: accept evidence that fits, including with nothing published.
- Management: separate what someone must already have from what the team can teach.
- Engineering: prepare a bounded case that lets someone explain their reasoning.
- Operations: describe the real work and the conditions it will be done under.
To discuss
Which capability are we trying to see, and how can someone with no public portfolio demonstrate it?