How PlexTrac Broke Through a Talent Bottleneck using SeekOut Spot

For many fast-growing tech companies, finding engineering talent is a race against time, but for cybersecurity platform PlexTrac, it became a hill nearly impossible to climb alone.

In the crowded marketplace for software engineers, PlexTrac was facing a problem that’s become all too familiar: not a lack of applicants, but a glut of them. Too many resumes were landing in hiring managers’ inboxes, but too few of them were right. Many were padded with buzzwords, some were outright misleading, and most lacked the combination of skills PlexTrac desperately needed.

The result was frustration, wasted hours, stalled progress, and a senior engineering role that sat open for longer than anyone wanted.

Until PlexTrac took a different direction.

Who is PlexTrac?

PlexTrac is an AI-powered platform transforming how teams document penetration test (pen test) results and manage threat exposure. The system lets cybersecurity teams move away from manually writing reports and instead manage their threat data in one organized place.

Many large companies and specialized security firms use PlexTrac to make their work easier and more effective. But while PlexTrac’s product momentum accelerated, its recruiting process stalled.

The Problem: Too Many Names, No Signal

Bobby Nelson, Software Engineering Manager at PlexTrac at the time, was tasked with hiring a senior engineer.

They needed a versatile, technically strong candidate who could:

• span front-end and back-end work.

• collaborate with remote teammates.

• succeed in a role that blended technical delivery with frequent customer engagement.

Nelson was overwhelmed by the volume of resumes that came in. Many candidates seemed good on paper but fell apart under closer inspection. While some profiles were overstated, others lacked the depth of experience PlexTrac needed. And despite weeks of reviewing applications and conducting interviews, Nelson was no closer to finding the right person.

This became a frustrating and costly bottleneck. Every hour spent reading poorly matched CVs was an hour taken away from product planning, mentorship, and pushing PlexTrac’s software forward.

A New Approach with SeekOut Spot

Rather than accepting months of ineffective searching, PlexTrac turned to SeekOut Spot, the managed recruiting service built on SeekOut’s agentic AI technology.

SeekOut Spot pairs advanced AI search and analytics with expert recruiters who work as an extension of a company’s talent team. Spot's goal is to shape the talent search end to end, starting with a clear definition of success and leading to candidates who are ready for meaningful interviews.

Kickoff Meeting

Spot’s recruiters begin by digging deeper than a typical job description. They ask nuanced questions about the hiring manager’s expectations, the team’s culture, and the unspoken must-haves that often decide whether a person will thrive in a role. This consultative kickoff refines the search criteria in a way that a generic job posting never could.

Sourcing with Agentic AI

Once the brief is fully understood, Spot’s agentic AI engines take over the heavy lifting: scanning millions of profiles across untapped talent pools, applying semantic analysis to find matches that go beyond keyword hits, and narrowing results to only those with the highest likelihood of success.

For PlexTrac, this meant no more sifting through endless, unsuitable resumes. Instead, Nelson got a targeted, curated pipeline built on real talent signals rather than surface-level keywords.

Results that Changed the Hiring Experience

Within 53 days, PlexTrac’s partnership with SeekOut Spot delivered what months of manual searching could not: a top-tier senior engineering hire whose combination of skills, mindset, and remote work experience matched PlexTrac’s needs nearly 100%.

“Our Spot recruiter asked targeted questions that made me think more deeply about the type of person we were looking for instead of solely relying on skill set,” said Nelson. “We really narrowed down the right profile.”

Spot went further than sourcing talent. The team conducted initial screening interviews and recorded them for Nelson, allowing him to watch and assess candidates on his own schedule. “It’s a huge time saver for my team to only see a handful of resumes versus hundreds,” said Nelson.

The results were clear:

• A focused candidate slate: PlexTrac reviewed a much smaller, much higher-quality group of prospective hires.

• Significant time savings: Hours of resume screening and early interviews were eliminated or handed off.

• A confident hire: The candidate who entered the interview pipeline was nearly 100% aligned with PlexTrac’s criteria.

What had been a burdensome chore became a collaboration between PlexTrac and SeekOut Spot. Nelson could focus on assessing a smaller set of higher-impact candidates and trust that the Spot pipeline was meaningfully aligned with PlexTrac’s goals.

The Bigger Picture in Tech Recruiting

PlexTrac’s experience with SeekOut Spot reflects a broader trend in tech hiring: traditional recruiting simply can’t keep pace with market demands, but intelligent, AI-powered processes can.

In today’s labor market, engineers with full-stack and customer-facing experience are in high demand. Cybersecurity roles are no exception; professionals with the right expertise are often courted by multiple companies at once. A passive job posting or keyword search is unlikely to find these people, let alone convince them to consider a new opportunity.

That’s where Spot’s hybrid model of AI capability plus human strategy matters most. While agentic AI can rapidly scan and match profiles based on deep semantic understanding, seasoned recruiters provide the judgment, context, and relationship-building that turn prospects into candidates.

Hiring with Confidence and Momentum

As PlexTrac continues to scale its engineering efforts, with postings for next-generation roles like Gen-AI staff engineer already appearing on recruiting channels, the company’s approach to talent acquisition has fundamentally changed.

No longer is the team buried in inboxes full of irrelevant applications. Instead, they’re engaging with candidates who bring real potential and purpose.

For teams under pressure to move quickly with limited resources, PlexTrac’s experience highlights a practical shift in how hiring works. When the focus moves from volume to relevance, searches shorten and outcomes improve.

With SeekOut Spot, that shift didn’t require additional strain on internal teams or extended timelines. It gave PlexTrac a way to hire with more clarity and less friction. For a closer look at how this approach worked in practice, schedule a meeting with our team or view the full PlexTrac case study.