Now

Highlighted company: Engine by Starling
£120,000 to £140,000 in the advert, a 100% response rate, and 429 conversations started by a team of two.

Time to hire: cord vs recruitment agencies
A recruitment agency quotes 4 to 8 weeks to fill an engineering role. Most of those weeks are interviews the hiring team runs itself.

Applications per hire: cord vs job boards
A general job board brings in hundreds of applications for a tech role. Across the industry, about one applicant in 200 gets hired.

Time to hire: cord vs LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter finds engineers quickly. At a 5% reply rate in software, getting enough of them to answer is what takes the time.

Highlighted company: Haven
A fully remote Lead Engineer role at £90,000 to £120,000, and 967 conversations started by one recruiter.

Highlighted company: Thought Machine
The most messaged role on cord, a 100% response rate, and a recruitment team that has been on cord since 2017.
Changelog
Fixes and reliability (end of October 2026)
Seven fixes this week, from AI drafts that no longer invent a GitHub link to password reset emails that always carry the link. For companies Intros banner: The Intros banner on Discover could name a different position from the feed you were on, usually whichever one you'd opened last. It now always names the feed's own position, and once you dismiss it, it stays away until a new set of intros arrives. Intro qualities stay as you wrote them: When cord refined a position's qualities, it could reword one you'd typed yourself, label it AI-generated and later drop it. Your own qualities now stay word for word, the list keeps its order after every save, and editing or deleting a quality always acts on the row you clicked. Team members who leave: The public cord page of a deleted or hidden team member, with their name, photo and a Message button, stayed online. It now shows "This profile is no longer listed", and the same goes for everyone at a hidden company. Flag closed position: Company users could see this button on roles cord lists from elsewhere, but pressing it left the pop-up stuck with no message. It now only shows for job seekers, the only people it works for. For job seekers AI message drafts: If a company asked for something like your GitHub handle and it wasn't on your profile, about 1 in 5 AI drafts invented a link such as github.com/myhandle or left a placeholder in brackets. Drafts now use your real GitHub, LinkedIn or website when you have one, and leave it out when you don't. Password reset emails: Some email providers hid the reset button, leaving no way to reset your password. Every reset email now has the link written out under the button, so you can paste it into your browser. Readable position insights: On a position's Insights tab, the small print was faint in dark mode and the chart labels were faint in light mode. Both now meet the WCAG AA contrast standard in either mode.
October 26, 2026
AI search that reads your budget the way you mean it
When you refine a search by saying "65k a year, fully remote" it now sets the filters you meant, and says so when it reads something differently. Improvements Refinements that add any filter: Refining a search could only add the kinds of filter it already had, so "65k a year fully remote uk" added skills and nothing else. A refinement can now add location, remote work, salary or any other filter AI search can set. A salary is your budget: A figure like "65k" now sets a maximum, so you see candidates expecting up to £65,000. It used to set a minimum, which showed people expecting £65,000 or more, £120,000 included. Salary widened only when it helps: AI search used to stretch every salary by £5,000 to £10,000 without telling you. It now keeps your figure exactly, and only widens it when fewer than 25 people match. When it does, a note gives the real numbers, for example how many candidates the wider range brings in. Notes on what changed: On our public AI search, when a refinement reads something differently from what you typed, such as a salary or a request that left the search unchanged, a short note now explains it.
October 20, 2026
Fixes and reliability (late October 2026)
Two fixes for hiring teams this week, from importing jobs from Lever to a Discover feed that wouldn't load. For companies Full job specs from Lever: Importing a position from Lever only brought across the opening paragraph, so sections like "What you'll do" and "Requirements" had to be pasted in by hand. A posting with no opening paragraph came across empty. Every section and the closing paragraph now come across, with their headings and bullets, on new imports. Fixed discover feeds: If one person in a feed had no job titles on their profile, the feed showed "We couldn't load this" instead of its results, and the error followed you to every other page until you refreshed the browser. The feed loads now, and moving to another page clears any error.
October 16, 2026
Fixes and reliability (mid-October 2026)
Four fixes for hiring teams this week, from clicking through profiles to bank holidays. For companies Candidate profiles: Clicking through profiles with the next arrow used to stop at the end of the first batch, about 10 candidates, even on searches with hundreds of results. The next batch now loads in the background while you read, so you can click through a whole search, stream or shortlist without leaving the profile. Links in cord emails: Clicking "View profile" in a notification email could drop you on your Discover feed or a bare public page instead of the candidate. It now opens the profile inside cord, and if you need to sign in first, you land on it afterwards. Discover results bar: On smaller laptop screens, the results bar covered the filters and cut off the first candidate. Both now show in full. Response rate over bank holidays: Your 48-hour response clock already paused at weekends, and now pauses on English bank holidays too. A request sent at 5pm on the Friday before a bank-holiday Monday now counts as unanswered from 5pm Wednesday, not Tuesday.
October 12, 2026
Company spotlight

Highlighted company: Engine by Starling
£120,000 to £140,000 in the advert, a 100% response rate, and 429 conversations started by a team of two.

Highlighted company: Haven
A fully remote Lead Engineer role at £90,000 to £120,000, and 967 conversations started by one recruiter.

Highlighted company: Thought Machine
The most messaged role on cord, a 100% response rate, and a recruitment team that has been on cord since 2017.

Highlighted company: Bauer Media Outdoor
Five live roles, five published salary bands, and 338 conversations with engineers since February.

Highlighted company: Dunelm
One recruiter, 1,280 conversations, and a median first reply of 18 hours.

What companies say about their time to hire on cord
Twenty-five companies on how long it actually took them to fill a role.
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