The 13% Problem: Why Every Recruiter Emails the Same Engineers
Every sourcing tool buys the same data from the same two suppliers, and only 13% of it is reachable. Here is why the best engineers stopped answering, and how we built around it.
June 7, 2026 | Optimal Tech Partners Insights
Everyone is racing the same car
Nearly every sourcing tool on the market draws from the same place. The same two suppliers, Apollo and Clay, sell the same contact data to the entire industry. When everyone runs identical machinery, nobody has an edge.
The 13% bottleneck
Of all those licensed contacts, only about 13% have a usable personal email. So every recruiter on every tool is competing for the same 13% of people. The best engineers get the same message over and over, from a dozen firms a week, until they stop answering.
We do not buy a list. We find people.
We are not limited to a licensed pool. For 81% of any person we decide to target, anyone on LinkedIn, anywhere across the web, we find a verified personal address. 24% reply. Some say no thanks, and the rest, roughly 15 of every 100 we contact, want to talk about the role.
The network that never resets
Every engineer we source and enrich becomes part of our network, which stands at 100,000+ today and grows with every search. We call this talent engineering: building the network yourself instead of starting cold every time a role opens. Every search is pure contingency, with first candidates in 72 hours, and you pay when we place.
Published by Optimal Tech Partners. Read more insights at https://optimal.tech/blog