Deal-breakers up front.

Most hiring processes save the practical questions for last. Resume screen, phone screen, interview, second interview, reference check — and somewhere late in that sequence, the questions that should have been first: can you actually work Tuesday mornings? Can you commute to this location? Can you start by the 15th? Is the pay actually $18 an hour or is "competitive" code for $14? Every "no" at that stage represents hours of work, on both sides, that should never have happened.

The reason it works this way is partly cultural and partly platform design. Resumes don't surface availability, location, or pay. Job posts often hide pay behind "competitive salary" and obscure schedule details. Hiring software treats these as fields to fill in later, not signals to filter on early. The cost is borne by both parties.

A 10-factor hire surfaces deal-breakers first, not last. The candidate sees the pay, the schedule, the location, and the start date before they invest in an application. The employer sees the candidate's availability, commute radius, and start-date readiness before they invest in evaluation. The pool that's left is the pool that could actually work out.

The pushback is that early filtering shrinks the candidate pool. Right — that's the point. The pool you lose is the pool that was never going to work. A smaller, real pool beats a bigger, fictional one every time.