This is a recruitment funnel:<p>Potential candidates -> contact and hope for a response -> phone interview -> on-site interview -> offer -> hopefully acceptance!<p>Each step has a conversion rate. There are basically two strategies:<p>Casting a wide net: Mining LinkedIn, github, your networks, using external recruiters and so on. The point is to increase the number of potential recruits at the top of the recruitment funnel. The problem is the conversion rates are usually very low, either because of a lack of response, low candidate quality, poor fit, unavailability, etc...<p>Targeted: This approach is the opposite of casting a wide net. You instead trying to find the most relevant candidates with a given set of experience/skills for a particular role. For example, if you are building a web based CAD tool, you find the 10 people in the world who have built webGL modeling tools and explain to them why you would be perfect together. You will have to spend a lot more time finding the right people and spending way more time on each one to convince them to join you, but hopefully the success rate is much higher.<p>In your experience, as someone who is building a team or as someone who has been recruited, which approach is more effective?