Posted by Every company says hiring top talent is their priority but very few are prepared to do what it takes to hire like it’s critical to the business. For instance, companies want to “close positions fast” and developers to join them within a month, but then take 2 weeks just to shortlist candidates and schedule interviews. Or don’t take a decision for days after the interview, leaving candidates puzzled and anxious. TerraPay is one of the few companies that walk the talk when they say they are serious about hiring.
Geektrust has worked with TerraPay since Dec 2021 helping them hire talented developers. They are different. Highly involved in hiring, open to looking at candidates that don’t follow a template and take bold decisions. They truly stand out in how they go about tech recruitment.
TerraPay’s challenges in tech recruitment
TerraPay hires via multiple job boards and recruitment partners. Over the years, the requirement has remained the same – backend developers in Java. The recruitment team had been finding it hard to shortlist developers with good Java skills and strong programming fundamentals. To make 100 offers, the team needed to process 1900-2000 profiles. After the offer, there would be drop-offs due to various factors as well, resulting in a <4% conversion rate from shortlisted profiles to candidates joining the company. The specific challenges were:
- Sourcing candidates with the right tech skills + interest + can work from office
- High drop-offs after the offer is rolled out
What made Geektrust a viable recruitment partner?
During the pandemic, the market was faced with a peculiar problem:
Vinay, head of HR at TerraPay says: “Tech adoption accelerated, businesses started building tech solutions aggressively. The sudden spike in demand led to scarcity for good Java developers. So we reached out to other companies and HR heads to find out what they were doing differently, but everyone was on the same boat, figuring a way out of the shortage of Java developers. Around this time, I came across Geektrust, and found the model quite interesting.
We love trying new things and experimenting with different approaches and solutions. Geektrust seemed to provide both a new and a different solution in this space. So we decided to try it as one of the channels.”
The mandate given to Geektrust was to help hire Java developers with 3+ years of experience, and ready to work in Bangalore.
How was the solution implemented?
As a part of the onboarding process, Geektrust did the following:
- Created a microsite that covered information about the company, the work, what’s interesting, the culture, interview rounds and more of what developers would like to know outside of the standard JD.
- Assigned an Account Management (AM) team to spot high-intent candidates, ensure transparency and offer solutions and guidance.
- The world’s first AI-based code evaluation tool: Besides a candidate’s education and employment history and achievements, the Geektrust platform shows a code report built using Codu.ai’s technology that assesses a piece of code based on parameters that matter in everyday software development. Codu is designed to read and assess code like a senior developer does. So a company gets an overview of a candidate’s skill proficiency as if they already conducted one round of tech interview, plus:
- the details of what’s good and what can be improved in the code
- how object-oriented, modular, well-tested or readable the code is
- and the actual code
This helps the recruitment team do an advanced level of shortlisting as Step 1 and present a handpicked list of candidates for tech interviews quickly. We call it The New Resume. The code assessment helps candidates build a ‘new resume’ which combines skill and experience. Companies get to use it to reduce the number of steps and speed up the hiring process.
The Outcome
TerraPay’s sharp focus on recruitment + the consultative approach of Geektrust led to a win-win for both sides and a great experience for candidates.
Vinay: “Geektrust has been performing well for us. After we saw the value in the initial engagement, we roped in Geektrust as a 10-20% fulfillment partner. Currently we are able to roll out 3-4 offers via GT every month. Rejection during the interview stage is <20%. While we’d like to hit a 100% conversion given how great the platform is, we’re more than happy with the current numbers.
The fact that candidates are already skill-assessed helps drop the rejection rate to almost nil. In fact, there is a monthly platform fee that I get questioned about by the Management – whether it’s absolutely necessary to pay a fee that’s not charged by any other recruitment partner – but I’m willing to expense it and take it on me to defend it because of the results”.
The power of involvement, collaboration and giving candidates a chance
Jaishree, TerraPay’s Account Manager at Geektrust says, “Part of the success is because during the previous engagement with TerraPay, we got a good idea of what is important to them. As for candidates, we figure out what their main concerns were and what kind of candidates would like to explore TerraPay. So we were able to shortlist with clarity.”
“The other factor is TerraPay’s approach to recruitment. They treat it as priority, there are daily sync-ups, and they move super fast once a profile is shortlisted. The 2 technical rounds are completed within 1-2 days or at the earliest as per the candidate’s convenience, and we get immediate feedback from the SPOC. While Geektrust’s process is designed to give fast and accurate results to clients, it’s when the company is equally serious that great things happen. TerraPay is a great example of this.”
Candidates also have a great experience with TerraPay. “Smooth and fast process”, and “the sort of questions that I felt good to answer” are the kind of feedback we’ve heard. A candidate who clears the first technical round would definitely clear the second round – shows accuracy in the shortlisting process, clarity and alignment of expectations within the hiring team.
TerraPay is one of the few companies that look for reasons to hire rather than reasons to reject in an interview, and this has paid off.
Jaishree shares an interesting hire made by TerraPay
“A woman developer experienced in Backend Development, with a 6 year employment gap registered on Geektrust, and she came up in the matching candidates list for TerraPay. Since she was picked by the system as a strong match, I reached out to her, and found out she is technically strong, is on a career break, but has been practising to get up to speed. So I shortlisted her profile.
Most companies would reject her and not even consider interviewing her just based on the gap. Whereas, TerraPay considered only her tech stack, and the recommendation made by my team to decide to interview her. The interviews went well. On the 4th day from the initial shortlisting, she actually joined TerraPay and started working there!
This was one of the best experiences for me as a recruitment professional, and I’m so happy for the candidate too!”
About TerraPay
TerraPay builds payments infrastructure globally, providing businesses with real-time cross-border payment services for both mobile wallets and bank accounts. Founded in 2015, and keeping steadfast at its mission of transforming financial inclusion, Terrapay powers transactions across 170+ countries in over 40 currencies, enabling real-time digital remittances for 46 million bank accounts and 1.5 billion mobile wallets.
Solving Tech Recruitment Since 2015
Geektrust is a tech hiring platform with a vision to build a world of potential. Today, we make this happen via our job platform for developers, and tech hiring solutions for companies. We’ve helped over 1000 developers find amazing jobs at 150+ companies like Thoughtworks, Intuit, Target, SocGen, Zensar, Capgemini, Zomato, Deserve, ServiceNow, Simpl, Ultrahuman and Scripbox.
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