This memo was originally written for the Meta Coordination Forum 2025. I’m sharing this here (with some edits) in the hope it will be useful for others as well. (my other MCF memos are here: How High Impact Professionals (HIP) can support you; Learnings from running programs for busy people)
Disclaimer: I wrote this fairly quickly - no further research done compared to the data we have already available.
There’s an underused way to improve hiring outcomes across the high-impact ecosystem: sharing your top candidates with other orgs.
By “top candidates,” I mean people who made it far in your hiring process - often to the final round - but didn’t get the offer. These are people who’ve been through your vetting process and impressed you, but maybe weren’t the perfect fit for your specific role or team (or someone else was simply even better). In practice, many of these people could go on to thrive in other high-impact roles/orgs soon after.
If we all did more to share these top candidates, we’d collectively:
- Increase the chances that strong people land in high-impact roles
- Save other orgs time and resources on sourcing and vetting
- Avoid letting great people fall through the cracks due to org-specific constraints
There are already 200+ top candidates in the HIP Talent Directory from 40+ organisations, and growing. And it’s really easy to share yours:
- HIP gives you a private link for your org’s top candidates
- You share it with your top candidates
- Candidates opt in directly - no data sharing, no extra admin on your end (or ours)
Some orgs have just baked this into their hiring workflow (e.g. added the link to their “soft rejection” email for finalists) and never have to think about it again.
Also - use the directory! These candidates have been vetted and recommended by other high-impact orgs. It’s a great way to find mission-aligned talent with less effort and grow your talent pool.
A note on outcomes: So far, we haven’t heard of a hire that happened specifically through the Top Candidates feature. That said, most Top Candidates were added only in 2025 (previously the majority came from AIM/Charity Entrepreneurship), many organisations currently don’t know about the feature, and we often don’t hear about hires via the Talent Directory until months or even years later. As usage continues to grow and reporting catches up, I expect this picture to change.
I think this is a low-lift, high-upside action we should be more consistent about. If you don’t have your org’s top candidates link, email us and we’ll get you sorted.
