What is an Unmask Scout?

The best talent I've ever met, I met through warm introductions. Not from LinkedIn. Not from job boards. Not from going viral. Just someone I trusted saying "you have to meet this person."

This is the insight Unmask is built on. And Scouts are how we make it work at scale.

The Thesis

Here's something most people in recruiting won't tell you: you can't actually outsource recruitment. Not at the early stage. The best recruiter a startup will ever have is the founder themselves. They have taste. They know what "good" looks like for their specific context. They can spot the weird, talented people that a traditional recruiter would filter out as too risky.

The problem is that founders don't have time to be full-time recruiters. And their personal network, no matter how good, has limits.

So we asked a different question: what if we could instantly amplify a founder's network by 100x?

That's what Scouts do. They're not recruiters. They're connectors, people already embedded in talent-rich environments who can identify potential before credentials catch up.

Who are Scouts?

Scouts are people with high exposure to undiscovered talent. They're not sourcing candidates from the same pools everyone else is fishing in. They're finding people before they're "found."

This includes:

• YC founders and alumni who know dozens of talented builders from their batch and beyond
• Hackathon organisers who see hundreds of engineers ship projects under pressure every year
• University professors and mentors who work closely with exceptional students but don't have time to make individual intros to every company
• Community leads running AI societies, dev groups, and technical communities
• Anyone talent-adjacent with taste who consistently know "the best person for this"

What they have in common: when someone in their circle is hiring, they're the first call.

Why Scouts? Why not traditional recruiting?

Traditional recruiting optimises for volume. Post a job, collect applications, filter through hundreds of CVs. It works at scale, but it misses the people who aren't actively looking. At the senior end, that's almost everyone worth hiring.

Referrals have always been the answer to this. The data is clear: referred candidates get hired faster, perform better, and stay longer. But referrals don't scale. You can only tap your network so many times before you've exhausted it.

Scouts change this equation.

When a Scout refers someone to Unmask, they're not referring them to a single job. They're referring them to a network, a stream of opportunities that keeps matching them to relevant roles as new companies join. The referral stays active. If someone gets hired two years after the original introduction, the Scout still earns.

This means Scouts can refer generously, without needing to know exactly which role someone is right for. They just need to know: this person is talented.

How it works

The mechanics are deliberately simple.

To refer someone: Forward their contact to the Unmask WhatsApp agent. That's it. No forms, no portals, no "submit your referral through our ATS." Just a message.

What happens next: The person you referred gets onboarded through WhatsApp. They fill out a quick profile, and then they start receiving relevant opportunities. Companies that match their skills, interests, and preferences.

When they get hired: You earn 2% of the placed candidate's salary. On an average placement of $150k, that's $3,000 per successful referral, and it adds up fast.

You stay in the loop: The Scout dashboard shows you who you've referred, where they are in the process, and when introductions happen. You're not sending people into a black box.

Opening doors that didn't exist

Here's a story that captures what this is really about.

A Scout in our network, a community lead running an AI society, referred someone who was weighing up their options for winter work. The obvious path was a spring week at a bank or a big consultancy. These companies sponsor campus events, run the career fairs, and dominate the conversation about what a "good opportunity" looks like.

Instead, they got introduced to a stealth AI lab through Unmask. A role they never would have found on their own.

"I didn't even know roles like this existed. I thought JP Morgan was the goal because that's all anyone talked about."

This isn't a story about students. It's a story about access. The best opportunities aren't advertised. They're not at career fairs. They exist in networks that most people don't have entry to.

That's what Scouts unlock. For anyone whose talent outpaces their visibility.

What makes this different

Refer at scale, forever. Traditional referrals are one-and-done. You introduce someone to a company, and if it doesn't work out, that's it. With Unmask, your referrals stay in the network. New opportunities find them automatically.

Your network compounds. When someone you refer gets hired, they can become a Scout too. The network grows with your career. The more you contribute, the more valuable it becomes.

Community, not just compensation. Scouts aren't just earning. They're joining something. We're building a community of connectors: people who care about getting talented people into the right roles. Private events, dinners, and access to other Scouts come with the territory.

Effortless tooling. Everything runs through WhatsApp and a simple web dashboard. We've removed every piece of friction we could find. Referring someone should take seconds, not minutes.

The bigger picture

We believe the next evolution of recruitment is community.

The old model (job boards, applicant tracking systems, recruiters cold-calling from LinkedIn) isn't going away. But it's not where the best hires happen. The best hires happen through trust. Someone knows someone. A founder mentions they're looking for an engineer, and a friend says "you have to meet this person."

Unmask is infrastructure for that. We're a community on top of communities, an interlinked network that connects talent pools that would otherwise never overlap.

Scouts are the backbone of this. They're the people who make the introductions that change careers.

A note on how you become a Scout

Scouts don't apply. You get invited.

This isn't about being exclusive for its own sake. It's about trust. The whole system works because companies trust that Scout referrals are meaningful. Someone has actually vouched for this person, not just uploaded a list of contacts.

If you're reading this because someone sent you an invitation: welcome. You're here because someone in the network believes you have taste, access, and the kind of judgment that makes referrals valuable.

If you're reading this and wondering how to get involved: keep doing what you're doing. Build your community. Help people find opportunities. The network tends to find the people who are already doing this work.

Unmask is building the referral network for exceptional talent. If you're a founder looking for warm introductions to vetted candidates, or a Scout looking to learn more, reach out at tryunmask.ai.