How 2 hiring tools helped Lenskart make remote recruiting possible

On a typical workday, Satish S – Senior Manager, Talent Acquisition at Lenskart – begins his remote recruiting by attending meetings on Zoom and taking remote interviews on FaceCode, HackerEarth’s remote interviewing platform. This work arrangement might sound familiar to most of you today but it wasn’t the case just a couple of months ago.

Hiring has always been a high human touch process. But thanks to remote being the new norm, a lot of businesses that are actively hiring are looking for ways to hire and manage people away from the confines of a traditional brick and mortar setup. What better way to enable this transition than through Lenskart’s recruiting success story!

“In the past, we haven’t been using a lot of tech tools in terms of hiring”, said Satish.“Till last December, we were following a very traditional approach to  assessments– the pen and paper model“

But what changed?

“We were looking to scale our hiring by 25% and took the call to move to remote hiring options like a developer assessment software and live video interviews just this February. Little did we know that it would actually help us close a few key positions during the lockdown as well as identify potent talent we could engage with at a later point in time.”

Remote recruiting tools that changed the hiring game for Lenskart

Coding assessment tools

These help recruiters create online coding tests for a wide range of pre-defined tech roles and programming skills. Using these, Lenskart was able to customize tests based on difficulty levels, duration, cut off scores and much more. 

“Developer assessments helped us understand coding patterns among candidates”, said Satish. “Earlier we would spend at least 45 minutes with a candidate to understand their coding capabilities. Using an assessment, we can roll out a common set of coding questions for a group of candidates and identify who is the best among them within a matter of a few minutes”

Bias-free assessments

The best part of coding assessments – they eliminate any kind of unconscious bias that could creep into the hiring process. These tests can also be run anonymously to completely eliminate bias based on pedigree, gender, background and other factors.

“We at Lenskart try to keep our hiring process as bias-free as possible. Only the skillset counts. We don’t hire based on academic pedigree. Using developer assessments helps us be very objective in the hiring process. Only skill matters.”

Video interview tools

These help recruiters screen candidates further. Generally, tech companies conduct at least 5 to 6 interviews in a single day. With a face to face interview, a hiring manager can evaluate skills through a white board approach or pair programming with future team members but it is nearly impossible to do this on a simple video call.

Hence, it is important to invest in a tool that comes close to the actual experience. Providing interviewees a holistic experience with an option to code in real-time is made possible today through live video interviewing platforms like FaceCode.

“There have been a couple of instances where we’ve hired candidates just by interviewing them through FaceCode Video Interviews, not administering a coding test, however tried Facecode and seemed quite useful for us as it helped us do the coding test live remotely.

Lenskart’s advice for choosing the right hiring platform 

According to Satish, this is what every recruiter needs to ask before adding a tool to their hiring arsenal –

1. Does the tool support the skills and roles you are looking to hire?
2. Does it have a live interview option to be able to view candidate’s code in real time?
3. Does it have an inbuilt feedback mechanism to coordinate better and make the right hires?

But it doesn’t stop with just investing in the right tool. Incorporating some interviewing best practices can help –

1. Make the interview process more personal. Always turn on the video during a call.
2. Get candidates warmed up before the process. Ask them a little bit on some tech projects they’ve worked on and derive questions that they can answer naturally
3. Don’t expect the candidate to explain code by talking or by writing code in a Google doc. Use a technical video interviewing solution so that the candidate feels comfortable writing code in an IDE-like experience.
4. Don’t have all of your interviews on the same day like how it happens in an offline setup. Instead, space them out over two days so the candidate gets a break in between.
5. Don’t get stuck on code. If the candidate gets stuck at some point, be comfortable to pause coding for some time, maximize the video, and just have a conversation with the candidate.

You are only as good as your team so make sure you hire a great one. For more information on remote recruiting, download our remote hiring checklist today!

Soumya Chittigala Author 14 Blogs