- What reaches them
- A profile that matches a role, and the role's current state: approved, or expected to be approved. Whether the second becomes the first is not in the recruiter's fields.
- What it means from there
- Contact made before approval is time not spent after it; the time-to-fill clock starts at the opening, not at the first message.
- What happens next
- Sends the outreach and attaches the reply to whichever record exists — an open requisition, or a pool with no gate behind it.
Outbound Sourcing & Talent Pool Contact
Recruiter-initiated outreach to passive candidates and talent-pool building, independent of any inbound application.
Barrier B-014 Stage: Sourcing Funnel order: #2 Evidence: established
On the canonical path
Published with its terms on the page — The posting states the compensation band, the location rules, the stages the process has and roughly how long each takes. It comes down when the search ends.
This entry is one of the ways that commitment stops being kept.
What made this ordinary
Zero rates and a same-year deduction · 2008–2019 — For over a decade money cost nothing to borrow and engineering payroll reduced taxable income in the year it was paid. Both facts were policy, both were durable, and together they made an empty seat more expensive than a wrong hire.
The record funding years · 2020–2021 — Two years in which the policy floor returned and venture funding roughly doubled its previous record. Headcount plans were set against committed capital rather than against bookings, and the terms of entry were set on the candidate's side.
What it looks like
Composite excerpts, written to be typical of this signal. They are not copies of any particular message, company or person.
- day 0 Recruiter Your platform work looks like a strong match for a role we are opening. Open to a conversation?
- day 0 Candidate Yes. Is there an approved requisition behind it?
- day 1 Recruiter Not yet approved — we expect sign-off next quarter and want to be ready.
What to notice: This gate passes only when outreach is attached to a real, funded requisition. Attached to a forecast, it is a pipeline entry with no gate behind it.
Preceded by (inbound gates)
Precedes (outbound gates)
Mechanisms operating at this gate (1)
From each side
The same entry from inside each actor that meets it. What reaches them, what it means from there, and what happens next given what they control.
- What reaches them
- An approach that names their work and a role described as opening. The state of the requisition behind it is knowable only by asking.
- What it means from there
- Outreach reads as demand: the search found them, which places them ahead of the queue an application would have joined.
- What happens next
- Answers, and asks whether an approved requisition sits behind it — the question that separates a live process from an entry in a pool.
- What reaches them
- Headcount requests in the approval queue and forecasts for the next cycle. Outreach already sent against an unapproved forecast is a line in neither.
- What it means from there
- A warm pipeline before approval shortens the fill after it, at no cost on any budget line the approval cycle tracks.
- What happens next
- Sets the approval cycle that decides when a forecast becomes a requisition, and does not gate the contact that happens before it.
ATS vendorNot visible from here
This entry has no view from this position. That is not an oversight in the atlas — it is the finding: a decision made where nobody in this seat can see it.
Hiring managerNot visible from here
This entry has no view from this position. That is not an oversight in the atlas — it is the finding: a decision made where nobody in this seat can see it.
Public policy and industry standardsNot visible from here
This entry has no view from this position. That is not an oversight in the atlas — it is the finding: a decision made where nobody in this seat can see it.
