Here's the screening pipeline behind every shortlist we send, in the order it actually runs. Nothing in it is revolutionary. The difference is who does it and what we're willing to reject.
First pass: a working engineer reads the profile. Not a recruiter with a keyword list, but someone who has built the kind of system the role needs. Most applications stop here, usually for a specific tell: projects described in a way that suggests the person was near the work rather than doing it.
Second: a 45-minute technical conversation about something the candidate has actually built. We ask them to walk us through a real decision: why that database, what broke, what they'd change. There's no whiteboard puzzle. Engineers who've done the work love this conversation; engineers who haven't, don't survive it.
Third: code. Depending on the role, that's a review of real open-source work, a short paired session, or our favorite: we hand over AI-generated code with two planted flaws and watch. It is the sharpest signal we have found for the judgment senior work actually requires, and it is the step candidates tell us they enjoy most.
Fourth, and least automatable: how someone communicates when they don't know something. We deliberately push into territory the candidate won't know. The ones who say 'I don't know, but here's how I'd find out' get a note in their file. The ones who bluff get a different note.
Very few people who enter this pipeline reach a shortlist, and that ratio is the product. You should be interviewing most of the people we send you. If you find yourself rejecting our shortlist on paper, we have failed at our job and we would want to hear about it on the same day.
