Recruiting without a job title: How to find roles that don't officially exist

Cloud ninja, tech champion or consultant?

Why job titles in the tech sector hardly say anything today

In traditional recruiting, job titles are the central management tool. But in the IT world of 2025, they are decorative at best - and misleading at worst. The title "Cloud Architect" can describe an enterprise licence salesperson, a project manager with cloud contact or a hands-on tech lead with terraform expertise. Recruiting without a job title

What does this mean in concrete terms for your recruiting?

• You exclude the best candidates because they are running under the "wrong" title

• You get irrelevant hits because you apply Boolean logic to superficial labels

• You are sourcing inefficiently because you are not thinking about the functional requirements

The most exciting tech talents in particular are often under the radar. One example: A candidate on LinkedIn with the title "Technical Consultant" describes his tasks succinctly as "supporting cloud projects". Only a closer look reveals that he has rolled out Terraform modules productively, designed landing zones for AWS and implemented IAM governance with Vault. He never appears in traditional search queries - he is a top hit for us. They have roles such as "Platform Owner", "Chapter Lead Backend", "Site Reliability Enthusiast" or simply "IT Consultant". They do not appear in any classic search mask because their title does not reflect their function.

How do I recognise whether I am title-driven in my search? Recruiting without a job title

3 typical symptoms of an outdated sourcing strategy

1. You get too many irrelevant results with every search. → You search for "Cloud Engineer", but mainly find helpdesk admins with cloud certificates.

2. You spend a lot of time manually checking profiles. → Because you can't read the context from the title.

3. You rely too heavily on LinkedIn filters like "Current Title". → These are based on self-assessment, internal job levels or HR systems.

If you recognise one or more of these symptoms, you work Title-centred instead of function-oriented. You are not only searching inefficiently - you are systematically missing your target group.

What is functional sourcing really?

How to identify roles based on tasks, not labels

Functional sourcing means evaluating profiles not by title, but by:

• Responsible tasks (e.g. "Infrastructure as code implemented with Terraform and Ansible")

• technologies used (e.g. "AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, GitOps")

• Context in the project (e.g. "Migration responsibility for 30 microservices", "Introduction of policy-as-code")

• Implicit competences (e.g. "security hardening", "API governance")

A concrete example: In one of our projects, we were looking for a DevOps profile for a highly regulated environment. Titles such as "DevOps Engineer" or "Platform Owner" led nowhere. Instead, we found a profile with the title "Software Developer" that had actually managed a complete GitOps infrastructure with ArgoCD, secret management via HashiCorp Vault and Ansible Automation. Matching by semantic analysis - not by title.

• Responsible tasks (e.g. "Infrastructure as code implemented with Terraform and Ansible")

• technologies used (e.g. "AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, GitOps")

• Context in the project (e.g. "Migration responsibility for 30 microservices", "Introduction of policy-as-code")

• Implicit competences (e.g. "security hardening", "API governance")

Example: A person with the title "Consultant" has actually automated a Kubernetes infrastructure, set up CI/CD and introduced alerting via Prometheus. Classic keyword sourcing would never find this profile. We would.

Which tools help with functional sourcing?

How to combine semantic search with OSINT and pattern matching

1. peopleGPT / WerAI
Use these LLM-based tools to search semantically for functions instead of terms. Instead of "cloud engineer", ask:
"Show me people who have operationalised Terraform, Kubernetes and GitOps in productive cloud setups."

2. promptloop + sheets / airtable
You import CVs or LinkedIn profiles, carry out semantic transformations and analyse implicit functions.
For example, we cluster 500 profiles according to "Security Ownership" without "Security" being written anywhere.

3. GitHub-Analysis
You can see who forks which repos, maintains which projects or comments on which issues:
→ An SRE is on the move here, even if the title says "Software Developer".

4 LinkedIn Graph Search & Co-View Strategies
We use network data to discover profiles that move in functional clusters, even though they are not classically discoverable.

How do you recognise roles behind misleading titles?

5 concrete case studies from our practice

You will only find these profiles if you understand the language behind the title.

Why functional recruiting is not easy, but scalable

And why exactly this can be your competitive advantage

Many people believe that sourcing can be automated simply by using better filters. This is a fallacy that we often see with new customers. Example: A company filtered its applicant database strictly for 'Cloud Engineer'. Result: zero hits. After semantic reinterpretation by us - based on tasks, not labels - we were able to identify five highly relevant candidates who simply had different titles. Conclusion:

• Filters work syntactically - functional thinking is semantic.

• Automation only works if you know, what you are looking for.

• Matching needs context, not keywords. But that doesn't go far enough. Because:

• Filters work syntactically - functional thinking is semantic.

• Automation only works if you know, what you are looking for.

• Matching needs context, not keywords.

We at indivHR combine:

• Machine pattern recognition (vector search, prompt loop)

• OSINT strategies (GitHub, Stack Overflow, event lists)

• human interpretation (what is between the lines?)

The result: hits that others don't even recognise. For example, an experienced SRE who worked for an energy supplier under the title of 'consultant' - but had in fact set up a complete Kubernetes stack with monitoring, incident handling and alert fatigue management. Invisible to traditional recruiters. A perfect match for us.

If you rely on titles when sourcing, you are working with blinkers on. If, on the other hand, you think in terms of functions, contexts and tech logic, you will find talent that others never get to see.

Functional recruiting is time-consuming. But that's exactly why it's your advantage.

Recruiting without a job title