Hey everyone! Welcome to the first edition of High Signal Hiring: a sub-5-minute briefing featuring high-signal hiring systems and tools that will help you hire better and faster. No noise. Just clarity.
This week, I break down why top engineers ignore your outreach. You will learn the three clarity gaps that kill response rates, how to fix each one and how to send messages that cut through instantly.
| The Tumbleweed problem
When early-stage founders reach out to software engineers, they expect at least some replies.
Instead, many get tumbleweed.
No engagement.
No clicks.
No interest.
Not even a “why are you wasting my time?”
Nothing.
When your product is your life, this silence can feel personal.
Is the product boring?
Is the comp wrong?
Do they think I don’t have the chops to succeed?
Maybe.
But the far more common truth is this:
Your opening message just isn’t very good (to put it politely!)
Engineers are not ignoring you.
They are ignoring unclear messages.
Top candidates decide within seconds whether you’re worth their time.
If the message is vague, heavy, or confusing, they move on to the other 20+ messages they received that day.
| Outbound Does Not Fail Because Engineers Are Unreachable
Elite engineers do respond to outbound.
It just has to be good.
Most opening messages fall into one of three traps:
too much vision
too many words
too little clarity
Strong candidates can smell unclear thinking instantly.
If your outreach reads like a pitch for everything and nothing, they assume the role is equally undefined.
Unclear roles = high-risk roles.
| Your Outreach Isn’t Clear Enough
Founders think they should explain the role.
This is the wrong approach.
What you should communicate is the essence of the opportunity.
Most opening messages are overcrowded with:
product description
mission
backstory
task lists
tech stack analysis
“selling the dream”
This is noise.
What candidates need is signal; one crisp message that answers:
what the role actually is
why it matters now
why you’re reaching out to them
If you can’t articulate this cleanly, they assume you haven’t thought the role through.
And if you haven’t thought the role through, why should they respond?
| The Fastest Way to Fix This: Shrink Your Message to 300 Characters
Force yourself to write your first outreach message inside the 300-character limit of a LinkedIn connection request.
This is not a LinkedIn hack.
This is a clarity constraint which can be deployed across any outreach mechanism (Email, LI, WhatsApp, Text etc).
Inside 300 characters, you cannot hide unclear thinking. You must include:
If you can express the role in 300 characters, your entire hiring narrative tightens.
If you can’t, the constraint exposes the gaps straight away.
This is the fastest possible test of whether your role is actually ready to hire.
| What Happens When You Use the 300-Character Constraint?
You will see immediate changes:
outreach becomes crisp and high-signal
acceptance rates increase
replies increase
conversations feel more focused
the JD becomes clearer
the interview loop sharpens
offers land faster
The constraint doesn’t just fix the message.
It can fix the whole hiring process.
Clarity at the start forces clarity everywhere else.
If you cannot articulate the role in 300 characters, the market will reveal it anyway.
Better to learn in five minutes than five weeks.
| How to Use It Today
Take the seven elements from the framework above and compress them into a single 300-character message.
If you can do that cleanly, you’re ready to start outreach. If you cannot, the constraint is telling you the req needs work.
Here’s an example inside the limit:
The ultimate acid test is to ask yourself:
Would this message get my attention?
If the answer is “Yes”, you’re on the right track.
Attention will be converted into responses, leading to a high-quality pipeline.
This entire exercise takes five minutes.
And it might be the most leveraged five minutes in your hiring process.
This is part 1 of the 4-part “Clarity-First Hiring Series”
Next week: “Your role is not a job description. It’s a 90-day mission”
Cheers
Neil