Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

"Remainder hiring is the output of the funnel of doom."

10 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this short conversation, Lenny Rachitsky and a co‑speaker critique the conventional recruiting "funnel" model, which starts with a large outreach pool (e.g., 100 candidates) and progressively weeds out applicants, ultimately hiring the remaining candidates—termed "remainder hiring." They argue that this process begins with a sub‑optimal candidate set because the initial responders are not necessarily the top talent. The speakers propose an alternative mindset: identify and have confidence in the top 20% of candidates up front, then use assessments to validate that hypothesis. This reframes the funnel into a "pillar of excellence" that serves as the starting point rather than a wide, indiscriminate funnel.

Chapters

Let's start with something you call the funnel of doom hiring. Talk about the funnel of doom.
Almost forever, as you think about the recruiting history, companies think about recruiting like a funnel. I am going to reach out to 100 people, 20% of those will reply. By definition, that is not the top 20%. And so you're starting with a suboptimal set. And then the way we all recruit is we kind of weed people out at each stage. And we hire the remainder. So this remainder hiring is the output of the funnel of doom. If I think about building a talent-dense company over time, is that really the best approach? What if you had confidence up front of who the top 20% was, and then you use your assessment process to validate that thesis of who those are? There's this funnel of doom, but there's like within a funnel of doom, there's this like pillar of excellence. What if you started with the pillar of excellence and went from there versus having this wide funnel?