By hiring the right Fullstack Engineer, a seed stage startup shipped a feature in 3 weeks

Company: Seed-stage, US-based. The founder runs a workflow automation platform that helps ops teams replace manual approval processes with configurable, rule-based workflows, without writing code.

This one’s a great example of how a fast hire does not necessarily mean you need to compromise on the quality of the talent.

A little bit of background

Shannon wanted to hire a senior fullstack engineer for her startup. She already had 3 engineers on her team but she needed someone quickly to ship a feature for a client that had been stuck for 6 weeks.

She had hired candidates from an agency before but that did not work out, and they parted ways within almost 2 months.

When Shannon came to us, she was almost tired of agencies and platforms promising quick profiles because although they were quick, they lacked the depth required. She had made this mistake before. She had hired from a job board and the candidate looked great on paper but could never settle into her startup environment.

“You guys promise the first set of profiles in 48 hours. If you can do it that quickly, how do I trust the quality of your candidates?”

We couldn’t say much then except send her a shortlist and give her the assurance that she would only pay us if the candidate actually ended up joining. And should she want another set of profiles, we would provide them at no extra cost.

We also told her we only screen the top 1% Indian engineering talent so the pool is already small to begin with. And during sourcing, we screen for all the clients’ filters so we only end up sending 3-5 profiles.

3 profiles, 1 hire: the Fullstack Engineer was onboarded

We sent her only 3 profiles for a senior fullstack engineer, someone who had shipped features for clients across different industries and could adapt.

She ended up liking all 3 profiles and conducted a 3-round interview with each of them. One candidate from Pune stood out. Although he had no prior startup experience, he had built features for enterprise clients, and during the interview she got a real sense of his thinking: what to ship, what not to ship, his failed attempts, and so on.

By the end of the week, she was sure she wanted the Pune-based fullstack engineer on her team. Within 2 weeks of first contact, all formalities were done and on 2nd March 2026, he officially joined the startup.

“2 weeks in and I already had full context on the product and the client. By week three we had the feature live. Thank you for getting me placed at a company like this.”

Talent feedback, Pune

What’s the outcome of his joining?

• The 6-week stuck feature shipped in 3 weeks after he joined
• 3 additional features from the backlog shipped in the 6 weeks after that
• Continuous communication with clients to make sure the product works in dynamic situations

Our 2 cents

Hiring fast does not always mean you are going to get bad candidates. Especially in a fast-paced startup environment, you need to understand what you need to speed up. You can either speed up logistics or judgment.

• Logistics: sourcing, outreach, scheduling, screens, getting an offer out the door. This should be fast.
• Judgment: deciding if someone can actually do the work, calibrating your team on what “good” looks like, confirming their stated strengths survive contact with reality. This cannot be compressed.

Speeding up judgment is not a good idea. But speeding up logistics is not only possible, it can actually be done effectively and efficiently.

If a hiring platform claims to help you hire fast, before dismissing it, ask how they are able to do it so quickly:

• Do they already have an existing pool of active candidates?
• If yes, how do they decide this pool? What kind of a candidate makes the cut for this curated pool?
• What is the minimum notice period you screen on?
• How do they use AI + human in the loop to ensure quick delivery with quality?
• Do they screen for your startup stage? Understand your environment and then share profiles?

If yes to all of this, then cheers you have just sped up your hiring process with access to top talent that will build your startups with you.