The best people in the industry are not looking for a job.
They are already doing the exact job you are hiring for, somewhere else. They are well paid, they are busy, and they have not looked at a job board in years. 72% of the people 100Networks places were not applying when we found them. Reaching them is the whole problem — and it is the part a job post structurally cannot solve.
of the people we place were not applying to jobs when we found them
of placements sourced through referral circles and communities, not portals
median from a signed brief to a vetted shortlist
candidates sent per hire made
Internal figures across roles closed to date.
Everyone else is hiring from the 28%.
Every standard way of filling a role depends on the candidate raising their hand first. That works, for the minority of the market that is actively looking. For a role that has been open four months, the person you need is almost never in that group.
And about 42 hours of senior-engineer time to work out which three.
Good judgment, no bandwidth — passive outreach is the first thing that gets dropped.
Judgment without reach. CVs forwarded unvetted, weeks later.
Reach, but nobody who can convince a senior engineer to leave a job they like.
An open role costs more than the salary you haven’t paid yet.
A specialist technical role takes roughly four months to fill. Before a single hire is made it consumes about 42 hours of senior-engineer time — six on résumé triage, eighteen on first-round screens, fourteen on technical interviews and four on debriefs and scheduling. That is a full week of one of your best engineers, per role, spent working out which three of three hundred applicants were worth talking to.
Portals, and then everywhere else.
LinkedIn and Naukri matter and we work them hard. But the people who are not on them are found somewhere else — usually by a recruiter who is already inside that circle. 61% of our placements come from the bottom four rows of this list.
Worked properly and at agent speed — every relevant profile, not the first page of results.
The closed WhatsApp and Slack groups our recruiters are already part of. Not a database anyone can buy.
Robotics, ML, infrastructure and security groups where specialists actually talk to each other.
Found by what they have built, not by the title on their profile or whether they marked themselves open to work.
The companies from your brief, worked person by person, by someone who already knows that room.
Agents do the reach. People do the convincing.
Reaching a thousand people who are not looking is a scale problem, and machines are good at scale. Persuading one of them to leave a job they like is a judgment problem, and machines are not good at that at all. Six agents run the first half. A specialist recruiter who has placed that exact role before runs the second.
Turns a thirty-minute call with your hiring manager into a working sheet: must-haves, deal-breakers, target companies, comp band, the pitch.
→ A brief, not a JDReads LinkedIn, Naukri, GitHub, publications and our own talent graph at once, then ranks everyone it finds — most of whom are not applying anywhere.
→ Replaces a sourcing tool and a sourcerEmail, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and AI voice calls until they reply. Nobody in the network gets contacted twice for the same role.
→ Replaces sequences you set up and never finishScores everyone against your rubric, with the evidence attached — not a keyword filter.
→ Replaces spreadsheet scorecards and gut callsInterviews everyone: coding, design, voice, take-home. Same questions, same weighting, every candidate.
→ Replaces first-round phone screensJoins your calls and leaves a filled scorecard your panel can argue with.
→ Replaces writing up interview notesNineteen days, one signature.
A senior perception engineering role had been open four months. Two internal recruiters and one agency had already worked it. We took the brief on day zero; the agents scanned 1,916 profiles and recruiters worked their own circles on day one; 38 people were approached between days three and six, 31 of them employed and not looking, and 14 replied; four were sent on day seven, each with a recording, a rubric score and a written case; the offer was signed on day nineteen. The person who signed had not applied anywhere.
A head-of-engineering search that had been stuck nine months closed in five weeks. Seven people were approached off-market. None of them had applied for a job anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
A passive candidate is someone who is not applying for jobs and is not looking to move — usually because they are employed, paid well and busy doing the work you want them to do for you. They do not see job posts, they rarely answer generic recruiter messages, and they are not in any applicant pool. Across 100Networks placements, 72% of the people hired were passive when they were found.
A job post is an invitation to apply, and someone who is not looking has no reason to accept it. Job boards, career pages and most sourcing tools all work by ranking people who have already raised their hand. That is a real pool, but it is the minority of the market — and for a genuinely hard role the person you want is almost never in it.
Five channels, worked together: the portals (LinkedIn, Naukri and job boards, read exhaustively rather than to the first page); private referral circles, which are the closed WhatsApp and Slack groups our recruiters already belong to; domain communities where specialists actually talk; their published work — GitHub, papers, talks and portfolios, so people are found by what they have built rather than by their job title; and direct approach into named target companies from the brief. 61% of our placements come through referral circles and communities rather than portals.
That part is not automated, and it is the reason the model works. A specialist recruiter who has placed that exact role before makes the case — what the team is building, why this is a step up, what the trade-offs honestly are. The AI agents do reach and administration at machine scale; every judgment call is a person’s. Agents do the reach; people do the convincing.
It is, if you let it be. Ours opens on the person’s actual work rather than a vacancy, runs inside working hours in the candidate’s own timezone, has daily and weekly caps with a warm-up ramp, honours suppression lists, pauses automatically on a bounce or complaint spike, and enforces a platform-wide limit of one company per candidate every fourteen days. Every candidate is claimed before contact so nobody hears from two recruiters about the same role, and the agent stops the moment someone replies so a recruiter picks up the conversation. It always discloses that it is AI when asked.
Median six days from a signed brief to a vetted shortlist, across roles closed to date. Closing takes longer, because passive candidates are not in a hurry and usually have a notice period — one recent perception-engineering search ran nineteen days from brief to signed offer, and a head-of-engineering search that had been open nine months signed in five weeks.
8.33% of the hired person’s first-year salary — one month’s pay — invoiced on the day they join. No retainer, no setup fee, no posting fee and no seat licence. If an accepted candidate does not join, there is no fee at all. If they join and it does not work out within ninety days, the search runs again free of charge. Engagements are non-exclusive and run alongside your in-house team and any existing vendors.
Roles where the pool is small and already employed: niche technical work such as robotics, perception, ML, embedded, security and infrastructure; leadership and confidential searches including founding engineers, heads of function and VPs; and team build-outs of ten to thirty engineers held to one bar. For high-volume hiring into a single site where applicants genuinely do apply, a large staffing firm is usually cheaper per hire, and we will say so.
Yes. The primary markets are India, the United States and Europe, with live delivery across APAC and the Gulf. A company is not limited to hiring in the country it is registered in — hiring at home, hiring into India, or standing up a new site somewhere else are the same engagement on one contract.
Make hiring the thing you’re good at.
Seed, Series A to D, or enterprise — send us one hard role. We'll match it the same day, and you'll meet a shortlist in days. Pay only when they join.