I’ve been VP of Engineering at our EdTech startup for 18 months now, and I’m going to be honest with you all: I have three critical engineering positions that have been open for nearly 6 months. Senior Backend Engineer. Platform Architect. Engineering Manager.
Six months.
And here’s what’s keeping me up at night – it’s not that we don’t have candidates. We get applications. We run interviews. But we keep rejecting people who don’t fit our “perfect” profile.
The Pattern I Keep Seeing
Last month, we interviewed someone incredible. They’d built a side project that scaled to 100k users. They taught themselves distributed systems by debugging production incidents at their current company. They asked the smartest questions about our architecture I’ve heard in months.
We rejected them because they didn’t have “Senior Engineer” in their current title.
This week, we passed on a candidate who built an entire CI/CD pipeline from scratch at their startup. Why? Only 4 years of experience, and our req says “5+ years.”
Meanwhile, these positions sit empty. My teams are burning out covering the gaps. We’re missing product deadlines. And I’m starting to wonder: are we screening out our best potential hires while we wait for some mythical “perfect fit” candidate?
The Data That’s Making Me Rethink Everything
I’ve been reading the research on skills-based hiring, and the numbers are striking:
- Skills-based hiring is 5x more predictive of job performance than hiring based on education, and 2x more predictive than work experience alone (Source)
- Skills-based hires stay 9% longer – 4.7 years versus 4.3 years for traditional hires
- This approach can increase Gen Z candidates in your pool by 10x and Millennials by 9x
And here’s the kicker: in 2026, there are 3 engineering jobs for every qualified candidate (Source). Hiring timelines for mid and senior roles are hitting 40-50 days even for companies moving fast.
The Question I Can’t Stop Asking
When talent shortages are doubling our hiring timelines, when our teams are stretched thin, when the “perfect” candidate isn’t showing up – what if the problem isn’t the candidates? What if it’s how we’re evaluating them?
What if instead of optimizing for pedigree – the right title, the right number of years, the right company on the resume – we optimized for problem-solving ability?
Not “Have you done exactly this before?” but “Can you figure it out?”
Not “Do you have this on your resume?” but “Can you demonstrate this competency?”
What This Might Look Like
I’m not saying we hire anyone who applies. I’m saying:
- Evaluate actual competencies, not resume keywords
- Look at what people have built, not just where they’ve worked
- Assess learning ability and adaptability, not just current skill inventory
- Value demonstrated problem-solving over credential accumulation
We’re in a talent war, and we’re losing. Not because there aren’t talented people out there, but because we’ve defined “talent” too narrowly.
So Here’s What I’m Considering
I’m seriously thinking about rewriting our job descriptions. Removing the arbitrary years of experience requirements. Changing our interview process to focus on take-home challenges and pair programming sessions that reveal actual problem-solving ability.
But I’ll be honest – I’m also scared. What if we lower our bar? What if we make bad hires? What if our existing team resents people who don’t have traditional credentials?
For those of you who’ve experimented with skills-based hiring or problem-solver focused recruiting: what happened? What worked? What blew up in your face?
Because I can’t keep watching great candidates walk away while my teams burn out waiting for someone “perfect” who may never apply.