You open the file. Fifteen resumes. Then eighteen. Then a message: any of these look good?

Now you’re the one reading all eighteen. Not because you asked for options. Because sending more was the easiest way for someone else to look responsive.

You’ve just been handed the wrong definition of a good search.

A stack of resumes is not the same thing as a good search

If you’ve ever been sent a pile like that and told to take a look, you already know the actual work involved: reading through names, weighing partial fits against each other, picking the one that seems least wrong. Nobody asked what you actually needed before those resumes were sent. Nobody checked first.

That’s not a problem you fix by asking for fewer resumes. It’s what happens when volume quietly becomes the product, instead of judgment.

To be clear, the problem isn’t the number of candidates. A search that’s actually working sometimes turns up three or four people worth a real look, and you should see all of them. The problem is when volume replaces judgment, when the filtering that’s supposed to happen before a resume reaches you gets pushed back onto you instead.

What a selective search looks like instead

The alternative isn’t sending nothing and hoping. It’s doing the filtering before anything reaches you, not after.

“If you’re looking for a lot of resumes, that’s not me.” That’s what I tell founders and hiring leaders before we ever start working together. I check every candidate against what the role actually needs, not against how fast a name can land in your inbox.

Danny Fishman, Co-Founder of Gaia Real Estate, put it better than I could: “She didn’t send us many candidates just hoping one will fit, rather she sent the one really fit after learning both our needs and the candidate’s goals.”

Not “did you send someone.” Did you send the right one, and did the work happen before I ever saw a resume.

The question worth asking before you hire a recruiter

Ask directly: what happens between a recruiter finding a candidate and you seeing their resume? If the honest answer is “not much,” you’re about to do that work yourself, one stack at a time.

By the time candidates reach you, the initial judgment should already have happened. Not a pile to sort through on your own.