The best person for thismay not have done it yet.
ro · the filter
What a résumé filter cannot see.
Every conventional filter is a bet that the past predicts the work. It is a reasonable bet, and it throws away most of the people who would have been best at it.
Years are a proxy for nothing
Six years of the wrong problem is not experience of yours. The filter that asks for them screens out the person who has been circling your problem for two.
Missing skills are not equal
A web developer moving into CRO is a fortnight. A social manager moving into engineering is a career. Counting both as “one missing skill” is how good candidates get cut.
Titles describe the past
What you actually need to know is whether somebody will keep choosing this problem after the novelty wears off, and a résumé cannot carry that.
shiki · the equation
You describe the opening the way a person describes themselves.
Both sides of the network speak one language, which is what makes matching arithmetic rather than guesswork. Requirements split in two, because what must already exist and what can be taught here are different questions.
Loomly: creator SaaS, Series A
Growth Systems Lead
Too many new users sign up and never reach the moment the product becomes useful. Acquisition is not the problem; the first session is.
- Market
- Creator SaaSProduct-led SaaS
- Problem
- Low trial activationBad customer onboardingCustomer churn
- Must already have
- Product Design
- Can be learned here
- Email & LifecycleData & Analytics
han · judgement
Two readings, never collapsed into one.
Capability answers whether somebody can do the work on Monday. Trajectory answers whether this is the direction they are already moving in. They are separately true, so they are never averaged, and which one you rank by is yours to choose.
- 80Maya OrtizReady nowTurns signups into habits for creator software.
- 60Ife AdeyemiHigh potentialMakes B2B SaaS activation measurable.
- 54Marco BianchiHigh potentialunder the 6-year barEcommerce lifecycle operator moving toward software retention.
- 54Sam WhitfieldHigh potentialWrites the words that move ecommerce revenue.
- 53Priya RamanTransferableAutomates the manual work inside industrial operations.
- 49Sofia ReyesHigh potentialunder the 6-year barFull-stack engineer who cannot stop taking onboarding apart.
This is the order a conventional filter produces: years first, and the people who have done the exact job before at the top.
sen · what lies beneath
Latent talent.
People whose current résumé understates what they would be worth to you specifically: aligned with the problem, close enough in capability, and already moving this way on their own time.
On the opening above, 2 people do not meet the 6-year requirement but read above 68 on trajectory.
Sofia Reyes
High potentialFull-stack engineer who cannot stop taking onboarding apart.
- Owns 2 of the same problems
- Knows this market from the inside
- Already learning Data & Analytics and Conversion Optimization
- Publishes activation teardowns of creator tools
- Only real gap is Data & Analytics: moderate ramp
How far is far, exactly?
Learning distance is not a count of missing tags. It asks how much of what somebody already does carries into the gap, and how teachable what is left actually is.
- Web developer → conversion optimisation
- Short
- Social manager → engineering and analytics
- Long
Same number of missing skills. Completely different hire. The graph is derived from what each skill actually does, so it cannot drift away from the work it describes.
mon · the door
Not every opening has to be a job.
Finding somebody early is only useful if there is a way in for them. An opening can be a role, or a trial project, an apprenticeship, a fellowship, a collaboration.
Roles
Full-time, when the work is permanent.
Projects
A defined outcome, a defined end.
Apprenticeships
Teach the craft to somebody already obsessed with the problem.
Collaborations
Partners, cofounders, advisors, the people you build alongside.
Stop treating experience as the only evidence.
Describe the problem precisely enough and the right people become visible, including the ones who have been circling it for years without the title to prove it.