What is Talent Mining?
The 80/20 philosophy that drives most results in recruiting
What is Talent Mining and how does it help us find incredible humans?
Why "Talent Mining"?
I never liked the term headhunting because it sounds aggressive. It sounds like a loss for the candidate. Talent Mining is when you find the gems within the piles of data on the internet. We become miners of talent as we learn to sift through data.
The 9 Steps to Mine Hidden Talent
1. Define the person
What does success look like in 2 sentences?
| Sentence | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Sentence 1 | What they'll build or own |
| Sentence 2 | The outcome or metric that proves success |
Example (ML Engineer at Wispr Flow): "You'll own the on-device speech recognition pipeline from research to production. Success = sub-200ms latency with 95%+ accuracy across accents."
Go deeper: How to Define the Role
2. Find the ponds
A pond is any place on the internet where your ideal candidates naturally gather. The best ponds have high talent density and low recruiter noise.
Ask yourself:
- Where do they learn? (courses, newsletters, YouTube channels)
- Where do they hang out? (Discord servers, Twitter communities, subreddits)
- Where do they share work? (GitHub, personal blogs, podcasts)
- Who do they follow? (influencers, thought leaders, companies)
Example (ML Engineer at Wispr Flow):
- Learn: Fast.ai, Karpathy's YouTube, Hugging Face courses
- Hang out: MLOps Community Discord, r/MachineLearning, ML Twitter
- Share work: GitHub repos, Arxiv papers, Hugging Face model cards
- Follow: Karpathy, Chris Lattner, George Hotz, Whisper/OpenAI team
Go deeper: How to Find the Ponds
3. Identify 10-15 great candidates from each pond
Look for people who:
- Build > theorize. Shipped projects, open source contributions, real work in the wild
- Help others. Answers questions, shares knowledge, mentors juniors
- Show depth. Can explain the "why" behind their decisions, not just the "what"
How to evaluate them:
- Review their public work (GitHub, blog posts, talks, papers)
- Share their work with your team. Does it impress the people who'd work with them?
- Have a real conversation. Do they light up when talking about the problem space?
Go deeper: Advanced Sourcing: Beyond LinkedIn
4. Send highly personalized outreach
The best people get 100+ messages per day. Most are garbage. Stand out by being human.
The "Familiar but Surprising" Framework
| Concept | Explanation |
|---|---|
| What it is | Find something buried in their content (random tweets, GitHub comments, old blog posts) and bring it up |
| The test | If you walked up to them in person and mentioned it, they'd say "Whoa, how did you know that?" |
| The goal | Pass the WTF test |
You can't just mention it and expect a response. You have to add value back AND mention something you're working on that relates.
| Do This | Not This |
|---|---|
| Reference something specific from their PUBLIC content that only a real friend would know | "I came across your profile and was impressed..." |
| Connect their world to your world. What are YOU working on that relates? | Generic templates with [FIRST NAME] placeholders |
| Put the ask in the PS. The postscript is the second most read part of any message. | Mentioning their most popular content (everyone does that) |
Example message: "Hey Sarah,
Your GitHub issue #247 on the Whisper repo about quantization drift during long-form audio made me mass-delete my own approach. The fix you shipped was embarrassingly simple.
I've been stuck on the same latency vs. accuracy tradeoff for months on a side project. Your streaming chunking solution (the 30ms overlap window) finally clicked for me last week.
We're building voice first computing at Wispr Flow. The on-device ASR problem you solved is exactly what we're wrestling with at scale.
PS: Would love to hear how you'd approach our edge case (accents + background noise)."
Why this works
| Element | Why |
|---|---|
| GitHub issue #247 | Passes the WTF test. That's not her popular work. That's a random contribution. |
| "Made me mass-delete my own approach" | Adds value. She actually changed how you think. |
| "I've been stuck on the same problem" | Ties to YOUR work. You're not just a fan. You're a peer. |
How to reach them
| Channel | Notes |
|---|---|
| Email + Twitter/X DMs | The easiest channels |
| Instagram, Discord communities | The internet is wide. Go where they're active. |
| Warm intros | Sometimes you need to reach out to someone they've worked with |
Stacking your outreach
| Step | Details |
|---|---|
| Send two messages within 15 minutes | One email, one DM |
| Both messages should be different | Both Familiar but Surprising, but unique |
| The DM references the email | "I also sent you an email" |
| Pick one channel to follow up on | Don't follow up on both. The second message just increases the odds they see the first one. |
Go deeper: Full Outreach Template: The Familiar But Surprising Framework
5. Get them on calls
| Situation | Approach |
|---|---|
| Very senior person | Skip the recruiter call entirely. Connect them with leadership right away. |
| Entry level candidate | Standard process with recruiter screen first. |
| Incredible candidates with proof of work | Say "I thought about it, and you should just talk to Tanay directly." |
The recruiter becomes a coordinator: hype them up throughout the process, have additional calls, text them if you have their number, keep the energy high, make sure nothing falls through the cracks. You don't need to be a gatekeeper.
On the call itself: Go in with a goal, but don't script it out. Have a great conversation, human to human, without too much pressure. If they're incredible and interested in what you're building, the conversation will flow.
Go deeper: How to Pitch on Calls
6. Discovery project
| Purpose | Details |
|---|---|
| Interviews | For selling the mission and the team |
| Discovery project | For assessing skill set |
Everyone should do a discovery project. Senior, junior, doesn't matter. It's a proof of work project that shows the candidate what it would be like to work on the team, in that role, on a specific problem. And it sells them on working at the company.
| The project should be | Details |
|---|---|
| Scoped | 10-20 hours of work |
| Real | A real problem, not a test or puzzle |
| Paid | Compensated fairly |
Go deeper: Discovery Project Template
7. Review the discovery project
Go over the project with them, not just internally. This is a two way evaluation.
| What to discuss |
|---|
| Walk through their approach and decisions |
| Ask what they'd do differently with more time |
| Share honest feedback on what you liked and what could improve |
| Let them ask questions about the team and role |
This conversation often reveals more than the project itself.
Go deeper: How to Review a Discovery Project
8. Negotiation and scope of work
The negotiation is a partnership between recruiting and leadership. It's a team collaboration: the hiring manager, the founder, the recruiter, and the candidate.
The negotiation:
- You already know what you want to pay people, but you don't box them in
- There are many ways to compensate someone beyond just salary
- The goal: both sides feel like they've won and walk away excited
The scope of work:
- This is where onboarding actually begins
- Show them what they'll be working on in the first week, the first 30 days
- Bring clarity here and they'll be more confident about joining
- Most companies don't do this
Go deeper: Scope of Work Template
Be real about this moment. Someone leaving their job to work with you is a huge life commitment. They're taking massive risk. So is the company. Be candidate first. Be genuine about how big of a move this is and how excited everybody is to have them.
9. Follow up and onboard
They said yes. Now the real work begins. The first 90 days determine if they stay.
The goal: Every person we hire will improve by 100x during their time here. Onboarding is about getting them to become their best version through this company.
Before Day 1:
- Run reference checks (not to catch them, but to find their best seat)
- Send a welcome message from the team
- Share the scope of work so they know exactly what to expect
- Get systems access ready
First 7 days:
- Day 1: Review scope of work together, meet the team, get systems access
- Day 2-3: Shadow team members, understand workflows
- Day 4-5: First small contribution, even if minor
- Day 6-7: Check in with manager, adjust expectations if needed
First 30/60/90 days:
- Weekly check ins for the first month
- Success criteria defined in the scope of work
- Fast feedback loops. Don't wait for quarterly reviews.
- No surprises. Expectations were set from Day 1.
Go deeper: Onboarding: The Last Company They'll Ever Work For
Visual Summary
1. Define the person
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2. Find the ponds
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3. Identify 10-15 great candidates
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4. Send highly personalized outreach
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5. Get them on calls
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6. Discovery project
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7. Review the discovery project
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8. Negotiation and scope of work
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9. Follow up and onboard
This is the foundation. Everything else in the playbook expands on these 9 steps.