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How a fintech built a warm bench of senior engineers before roles opened.
Skillfi mapped 1,200 engineers at target companies and turned them into a private community they actually wanted to join. When roles opened, the best candidates already knew the team. Every member lived in the company's ATS, set up through our ATS selection and setup service, so recruiters always knew who to call.
The engineers they needed were never looking.
The company was scaling its payments platform and needed senior backend, platform and security engineers, the same people big tech and well-funded startups were chasing. None of them were applying to job ads. Cold InMails got a 4% reply rate, and most of the replies were a polite no.
Every time a role opened, recruiting started from zero. Searches dragged past two months, so the team leaned on agencies charging 25% of first-year salary. That came to $420,000 in fees last year, for candidates who had no real connection to the company or its engineering culture.
Every time a role opened we started from scratch. The engineers we wanted already had great jobs.
CTO, client
Build the bench before the role opens.
Instead of pitching jobs to people who weren't looking, we gave senior engineers something useful to belong to. The newsletter and invite flows ran on simple marketing automation, and every member was tagged in the ATS by stack, seniority and engagement, so recruiters could see who was warming up.
1,200 engineers at 40 target companies
We mapped senior engineers by stack, seniority and company, focusing on teams that had solved the same payments and scaling problems.
A private community worth joining
Members got a monthly technical newsletter, quarterly salary benchmarks and invite-only roundtables. No job ads, no hard sell.
Hiring managers in the room
Engineering leads hosted the roundtables and wrote for the newsletter, so members got to know the people they'd actually work with.
Nine months, step by step
From a list of names to a community that hires itself. Here's how the engagement unfolded.
- Month 11,200 engineers
Talent map built
Senior engineers mapped across 40 target companies by stack, seniority and the problems their teams had solved.
- Month 2310 joined
Community launched
Personal invites from the CTO and engineering leads, with a clear promise: useful content, no recruiting spam.
- Month 358% open rate
First roundtable & newsletter
A roundtable on scaling payment systems and the first technical deep-dive from the engineering team.
- Month 4640 members
Salary benchmark report
Members' most-requested resource: comp by stack and seniority, shared only inside the community.
- Month 5–746% reply rate
Roles open, warm intros
Members saw new roles first and got a 15-minute chat with the hiring manager instead of a cold application.
- Month 935% of hires
Agency-free hiring
Senior roles filled in 38 days on average, with more than a third of hires coming straight from the community.
Four things that kept senior engineers engaged
Passive candidates ignore job ads but show up for things that make them better at their jobs. Every part of the community was built around that.
Technical deep-dives
- Written by the engineering team
- Architecture & scaling lessons
- No job ads in the body
Salary benchmarks
- Comp by stack & seniority
- Equity vs. cash breakdown
- Members-only access
Invite-only sessions
- 12–15 engineers per session
- Hosted by hiring managers
- Payments, platform & security
First look at roles
- Members see roles first
- 15-minute chat with the manager
- No cold application
What changed in nine months
Days to fill a senior engineering role
32 days faster from opening a role to an accepted offer.
Now when a role opens, I already know three people I'd want to hire, and they already know us. That's never happened with an agency.
VP of Engineering, clientHiring senior talent who isn't looking?
We'll map the people you want, build a community they'll actually join and track every member in your ATS. A fractional recruiter runs the pipeline, and a fractional CTO can help set the technical bar if you don't have engineering leaders in place yet.
- A talent map of your target companies
- A private community built for your roles
- A content & roundtable calendar
- Warm intros the moment roles open
30 minutes. No obligation.
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