Enterprise tech company rethinks technical phone screens to save engineers thousands of hours
Challenge
After receiving dozens of complaints from engineers saying they were feeling overburdened by interview demands, both recruiters and engineering leaders knew they needed to make a change to their hiring process for industry talent.
There were two main points of friction causing wasted time: the technical phone screen and the on-site interview. Phone screens required engineers to manually prepare questions and write feedback, and on-site panels were frequently frustrated because they were meeting with unqualified candidates that (in theory) should have been screened out earlier in the process.
Solution
The company changed its hiring process to leverage CodeSignal’s Industry Coding Framework—a validated, asynchronous technical screen—to replace their traditional technical phone screen for senior level candidates. They had recruiters first screen candidates and explain the hiring process up-front, emphasizing that the new assessment was a fast-track to the on-site stage.
Results
The team wanted to keep a close eye on potential drop off after switching to an asynchronous assessment. However, they found that using an assessment improved the process for both their engineers and candidates alike.
The team ran an A/B test where one pool of candidates participated in an engineer-led phone screen and another took the asynchronous assessment. They found that their assessment completion rate exceeded benchmarks and did not lead to additional drop-off. When given the choice, more candidates actually preferred to do the asynchronous assessment over a proctored interview, plus they found the assessment improved their ability to predict quality of hire early in the process.
Their engineers reclaimed thousands of hours spent on manual phone screens, and focused their time on qualified candidates at the on-site stage. All the while, candidates were happier with their experience, too.