If only it were this simple.

We recently had two of our engineers “stolen” by Autodesk and Microsoft, so I decided to retaliate. I figured I would finally exploit my LinkedIn connections to find engineers with a solid experience in C++ and 3D graphics or computer vision. Finding the first twenty candidates was pretty easy. I sent them inMails and invited them for an informal interview. Five of them answered and three of them came to visit. But there is a problem: these folks have a high visibility so dozens of other recruiters are fighting for them.

So LinkedIn executives, here is the first killer feature I recommend: make it easy for me to find people with very few connections. Really smart and focused engineers don’t care about LinkedIn, so their profiles are almost empty and they have only a handful of connections. Allow me to sort so these folks come up first.

The second killer feature is a bit more complicated, so first I’ll tell you another long-winded story. Feeling Software is working on a breakthrough computer vision technology. Computer vision is still bleeding edge so good people are hard to find, and for every hundred PhDs trying to impress us with excessive math and atrophied coding skills, there are at most a handful of engineers that fit our practical requirements.

In Montreal, there was a company called Solvision that had dozens of computer vision engineers with the kind of experience I’m looking for. Apparently Solvision ran into serious money problems earlier this year, so all these fine folks had to find a new job overnight.

This is like a dream come true. For a competitor, there is something unique about hiring from a company that experiences sudden bankruptcy. Other than acquisitions, this is the only time we can hire truly loyal employees, the kind of folks who will stick ’till the end.

If I had known at that time, I would have immediately contacted these poor souls to invite them for group therapy in our interview room. Instead, I only found out 5 months down the road, once these folks moved away to new companies, often in other cities.

LinkedIn, you should have told me. You are in a unique position where you can track distress in companies. All you have to do is notice trends like “Hey, these folks all work for the same company and they all updated their profiles at the same time!”. Tell me about this and I’ll gladly pay more.

LinkedIn executives, once you implement these two features you’ll make a lot more subscription money. How about re-investing it in Feeling or sending a few pre-IPO stocks my way?

Wait… are you still reading? If you absolutely want to know more about me:

LinkedIn profile

Our daughter Emily