The job posting is an artefact of a market where candidates were looking and employers were scarce. Early-career hiring in India is not that market.
Adverse selection is structural
The strongest early-career candidates are usually in process somewhere before a requisition is published. A funnel that waits for applications therefore samples disproportionately from candidates who are still available — which correlates, imperfectly but reliably, with having been passed over.
Volume is not the problem it appears to be
Postings for early-career roles in India generate enormous application volume, which feels like success and is usually the opposite. The screening cost of a large, low-precision funnel routinely exceeds the cost of sourcing precisely in the first place.
What sourcing changes
Sourcing inverts the selection: you specify the requirement and search against a known population, rather than accepting whoever self-selects. The candidate pool is the same; the sampling is not.
It also gives you something a posting never does — the ability to size the opportunity before committing headcount.
Key takeaways
- Pull-based funnels sample from candidates still available, which is not a random sample.
- High application volume raises screening cost without raising quality.
- Sourcing changes the sampling, and lets you size a pool before committing headcount.
Questions
Should we stop posting entirely?+
No — postings still serve brand and compliance purposes, and some candidates genuinely find you that way. Treat them as one channel among several rather than as the funnel.
Does sourcing scale to large cohorts?+
It scales better than posting does, because the constraint moves from screening throughput to interviewer capacity — which is a problem you can plan.