Reason 01
Nobody agreed what good looks like.
The brief gets written, but the people doing the hiring never aligned behind it. So the search looks for someone the market won’t give you at that budget.
Fractional Talent Acquisition · Egypt, the GCC & Europe
Fractional TA, run as an operating system.
A role stays open for months. The instinct is to add more sourcing. It usually isn’t a sourcing problem.
So I run hiring as a system. Clear criteria, the right people in the room, then the search.
15 minutes. Not a pitch.
- 1yr → 4wks
- A VMware role open for a year. Filled in four weeks, once the criteria changed.
- 3:5 → 1:10
- Qoyod technical interview disqualifications, from 3 in 5 candidates to 1 in 10.
- 7 yrs
- Running tech hiring across Egypt, the GCC, and Europe.
01 / The pattern
Most stuck searches are stuck for the same two reasons.
A stuck role looks like a sourcing problem. So the answer becomes more of it. More agencies, more outreach.
Six weeks on, the role is still open. It stalled long before sourcing, and almost always for one of two reasons.
Reason 02
The hiring team isn’t in the room.
Recruiting gets handed off, then runs without the manager whose judgment the search depends on. No amount of sourcing covers for who isn’t there.
So the practice starts where the problem does.
Criteria clear before any sourcing. The hiring team in the room, and staying there. The search doesn’t begin until both hold.
02 / The operating system
Every search runs the same five steps.
None of this started as a framework. It’s seven years of searches, and the parts that kept working.
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Hiring strategy meeting
We get specific before sourcing anyone. The real role, the honest tradeoffs, what the budget will actually buy. No decision-makers in the room, no search.
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Market reality check
A real read on the talent pool before any outreach. If the numbers don’t hold up, the criteria change now. Not six weeks in.
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Calibrated search
A short, deliberate list, not a mass sequence. Reached across a few channels and several touches deep. The people worth hiring rarely reply the first time.
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Structured assessment
An honest intro call first, blunt about the role and the pay. Then an interview built on real situations from the job. Evidence, not a gut feeling.
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Offer and close
I deliver the offer myself, anchored to the range we agreed in step one. A conversation, not a document dropped in an inbox.
03 / Proof
Two searches. Neither one was short on candidates.
Case 01 / VMware
1 year 4 weeks
A role open for a year, filled in four weeks.
A Network Staff Practice Architect role at VMware. Open more than a year, no offers.
Before sourcing anyone, I ran the market against the four criteria the team had set. Almost nobody cleared all four at that budget.
So we made one criterion optional and re-scoped the role together. Filled four weeks later.
Case 02 / Qoyod
3 in 5 1 in 10
It looked like sourcing. It was the definition of “senior”.
A Senior Software Engineer role at Qoyod. Three of every five candidates were disqualified late in the process.
The word “senior” meant one thing on the résumés coming in, and something else against Qoyod’s bar. The screen wasn’t catching the gap.
So I rebuilt the screen, mapping company size, stage, and scope to Qoyod’s real levels. Disqualifications dropped to one in ten. Same market, a clearer definition.
Tech hiring across Egypt, the GCC, and five European markets, through VOIS, VMware (Southern EMEA & MENA), and Qoyod.
Who’s behind this
Mostafa Wahdan.
I studied engineering. Thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer. Now I recruit software engineers. It looks like a detour. It wasn’t.
Engineering didn’t teach me to source candidates. It taught me to look at a system that isn’t working and find out why. Measure before guessing. Change one variable, watch the result, adjust. So I can’t inherit a hiring process with friction and just run it.
The HireOS is what that instinct built. Hiring treated as a system to improve, not a routine to repeat. Seven years and three companies in, I take a few engagements at a time, so the work gets done properly.
- Background
- VOIS · VMware · Qoyod
- Reach
- Egypt · the GCC · 5 European markets
- Focus
- Software Engineering · Product · Executive (CPTO)
Currently taking one new engagement
One call. Fifteen minutes. You’ll know if this fits.
Three fields, then you pick a time. No deck, no pitch.
Just a straight talk about the role you’re filling, and whether the way I work fits the way you want to hire.