The most wanted candidates join the company that wants them most
Candidates join where they feel wanted, a top recruiter says, and pay quickly becomes the new baseline.
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career · The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at CursorAdam Ward, the head of talent at Cursor, was explaining how his team chases the handful of people it wants most when he was asked about a phrase he repeats to recruiters. His mantra, he said, is "caring is free."
What he means is that outcaring another company is an advantage any team can claim. Ward argues that across years of candidate satisfaction surveys, the factor that ranks first is simple. The candidate felt the company wanted them and felt they belonged there.
That feeling is hard to build in a final meeting, Ward believes, especially when a prized engineer may also hold a much larger offer from a rival artificial intelligence lab. His approach is to sell throughout the process, not at the close.
Ward says his team tries to learn a candidate's motivations at the start and then shape the experience to speak to those motivations. The offer should feel like the natural next step, not the start of a sales pitch. He says they return to intrinsic reasons, the role, the team, and the people, rather than trying to win on extrinsic pay, even when that is difficult against enormous packages.
Money fades quickly anyway, he argues. People who chase the largest number often find that six months later the pay has simply become their new baseline, and they are not excited by the work or the people around them. Ward says, "there are right people for right companies at the right time," and he would rather discover a mismatch now than have to fill the same role again in six months.
Ward also argues that every highly talented person who does not join "can walk away as a net promoter," meaning someone who speaks well of the company to others. Because those people are influential and known to be good, he says, their praise carries extra weight. They tell a friend, who tells another person, and word spreads and makes the next hire easier.
Questions people ask
How do you actually show a candidate you want them?
Ward points to small, specific touches over grand gestures. That includes finding the right mutual connection for a warm introduction, matching the next interviewer to an interest the candidate mentioned, sharing meals together, and moving immediately when the candidate signals readiness. The theme is sustained attention, not one big closing dinner.
Does this work if another company offers a lot more money?
Sometimes it does, and sometimes the candidate leaves anyway. Ward says his team tries to take pay off the table as a deciding factor by focusing on role, team, and long term fit from the first conversation. If someone truly wants the highest bid, he argues it is better to lose them now than to rehire the job in six months.
What does it mean to leave rejected candidates as promoters?
It means even people who do not get hired or do not accept would still recommend the company to talented friends. Ward says those people are influential and known to be good, so their praise counts for more than an ordinary compliment.