How do you find the right IT candidate for the job? Hackerrank has a solution

Once upon a time, not so long ago, potential coders used to read out their test codes over the phone so that interviewers at the other end of the line could enter it into a system and verify whether they were correct. Sounds tedious, right? Fortunately, there are easier alternatives today, thanks to startups like Hackerrank.

The brainchild of 27-year-old NIT-Trichy grads, Vivek Ravishankar and Harishankaran K, Hackerrank (earlier known as Interviewstreet) gives companies a comprehensive platform that allows them to set coding challenges, test candidates, analyse results and conduct telephone interviews before deciding whom to meet in person.

“We want to provide support for the entire hiring pipeline,” co-founder Hari, said in a phone interview with_Firstbiz_. “Our products cover the sourcing, testing and phone interview phases.”

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The products available are HackerRank (for sourcing and filtering), an online, social platform where programmers can compete and solve challenges in their chosen disciplines; HackerRankX (for testing), which allows companies to conduct online programming tests and evaluate candidates; and CodePair (for telephone interviews), a real-time code collaborator.

Like many entrepreneurial pursuits, the idea to develop a simplified, consolidated interviewing platform came when Hari and Vivek were required to screen candidates while working at IBM and Amazon, respectively, and wanted to simplify the process. “We were wasting a lot of time trying to find candidates who could clear the minimum bar and we thought it would be much easier if the process was automated,” Hari explained.

Since their NIT days, the duo were involved in developing interview platforms: at first, they catered to students by creating mock interview sessions. The idea didn’t take off since students were unwilling to pay the set rate and company employees were unsure of the legal implications of participating in mock sessions before the real interviews. So Hari and Vivek turned to the other side: they decided to work with companies to create a product that would save time during hiring.

“We built the first version of Hackerrankin 10 days and showed it to start-ups like Flipkart and Bandbazaar,” Hari said. The initial product, created in 2009, catered only to online tests and did not include the coding platform and collaborators.

One of the first start-ups to use Hackerrankwas WisdomTap, a Bangalore-based search platform that facilitates product comparisons.Hari and Vivek managed to get the demo through a friend’s referral. After using the product for a week or so, Vijay Ramachandran, CTO of WisdomTap, got back to them.

His feedback provided valuable insight into the kind of candidates a company looks for and the type of questions that separate those with promising potential from the rest. One very important topic that Ramachandran brought up was pricing.

“Our idea was to keep the price low, about Rs 20 per candidate, so that cost would not be an issue when a company considered us,” Hari explained. But Ramachandran pushed them to change that thought process, pointing out that he would pay Rs 100 per candidate since the product reduced his recruitment time. Instead of charging him for the demo, Hari and Vivek requested him to simply ‘spread the word’ about Hackerrank.

That turned out to be a good decision. Ramachandran, an ex-Yahoo engineer, sent an email about Hackerrank to a former junior who then worked at Flipkart. In no time, Hari and Vivek got a call from Flipkart, which quickly became one of their first clients. The product’s popularity spread rapidly after that.

Soon, calls were pouring in from Amazon India, Facebook India, Coupon Dunia, Directi and other large tech companies. The well-connected HR community, in effect, did all the marketing for Hackerrank.

Although the product was taking off in India, Hari and Vivek were still on the lookout for funding and kept applying to international accelerator programmes, an all-in-one start-up launching unit that provides mentorship, networking, workspace, funding and everything else entrepreneurs need. They finally got accepted into the highly competitive, three-month US-based Y Comb programme on their third attempt, in the summer of 2011.

Vivek moved to Silicon Valley to participate in the programme and sell Hackerrankto US clients, while Hari took care of operations in India. Their product survived the rigors of the Y Comb accelerator to emerge as one of the winners of the batch, fetching themjust under $100,000 in funding.

[caption id=“attachment_82136” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Hackerrank co-founder Harishankaran K. Image: Hackerrank[/caption]

But Hari and Vivek’s good fortune didn’t end there. The culmination of the Y Comb program is the Demo Day, organized by the accelerator, where big time investors come to check out the latest start-ups creating a buzz. Hackerrankcaught the attention of Indian investing tycoon Vinod Khosla, who put in “a few million,” according to Hari.

While at Y Comb, the pair received some advice that took their product to the next level. Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail and a partner at the accelerator, suggested that the duo could add value to their services by providing companies with a pre-filtered list of top ranked candidates.

“We didn’t want to be threatened by someone who came along and offered both sourcing and filtering services,” Hari said, “so we built the platform ourselves.” And thus Hackerrank came about in its new avatar.

Though it might seem like Hackerrank has had a dream run, it hasn’t been easy. With offices in India and the American West Coast and an over 12-hour time difference, success has come at the price of sleep.

“Vivek would go for demonstrations at 4 pm PST (Pacific Standard Time), get customer feedback and call me at 4 am IST,” Hari explained, going on to say that he’d then sleep from 7 am to 10 am before getting up to service Indian clients.

“We still do that when Vivek is here,” he said. “We sleep alternate days to serve US customers and work 36 hour shifts.”

That dedication was what caught the attention of The Morpheus, a Chandigarh-based accelerator program that worked with Hackerrank. “The one main reason for us to associate with Vivek and Hari was their unfailing belief in themselves and their passion to learn and execute,” Nandini Hirianniah, co-founder, The Morpheus, said. “Their eye for detail, their need to understand, their curiosity and their endless zeal to work all day long to arrive at a solution the users want is impeccable!”

Hackerrank’s customers have been all praise for the platform. “We come across a lot of CVs of developers and often it becomes hard to shortlist candidates and needed a tool which helps us narrow down the qualified candidates in a very time efficient manner,” said Sameer Parwani, CEO, CouponDunia. “HackerRankhelps us streamline the process and hire efficiently. We can ask the candidates relevant questions and even time them.”

With initial investments of Rs 4 lakh (Hari and Vivek put in Rs 2 lakh each) and the various funds raised from investors, the company has crossed the million dollar mark and is now at over $1.25 million with a healthy 38 percent growth month on month and over 30 staff members. The platform boasts over 500,000 programmers and is only increasing.

The company has big plans for 2014 - apart from taking Interviewstreet to the Asia Pacific and a rebranding of the entire product ( it is now called HackerRank), the pair hope to grow the company in a way that lets them focus on the mid-level professional, with about 10-15 years of experience. “Right now HackerRank is used only for those with five to six years of experience,” Hari said.