This Hyderabad-based startup aims to disrupt the tech hiring space by creating job-specific hackathons
We live in a time when a new startup pops up every day, giving rise to a growing need for technical talent. While there are several online portals and recruitment services that help scout and find the necessary talent, they aren't effective when it comes to pure tech teams and developers. Being resume-based, these services aren’t exactly effective to get an understanding of whether a candidate is suitable or not.
Naren Krishna, Hari Krishna and Ashish Kumar Sahoo had seen most startups face this issue. “There were people from different startups who would tell us how difficult it was to find a legitimate techie,” says 22-year-old Naren. This prodded the duo to set up Stockroom.
Finding the right hacks
The duo have been friends for years now. Naren is a BITS Pilani alumnus, and a Kairos Fellow. Ashish, the CTO, was a full-stack developer and is an IIIT-Bhubneshwar alumnus. Hari Krishna has experience as the recruitment manager at Amazon. After several discussions and queries the duo found that resumes weren’t solving the purpose. They realised that the only details that a resume gives the employer are education and work experience, but the skill sets aren’t measured.
It was then that they realised that it would be a good idea to create a portfolio creation tool for developers. “We decided to do a non-stop 48-hour hackathon and build a prototype and launch it. We have launched the product four months ago on product hunt and emerged as one of the top-most voted product,” adds Naren.
Hiring is not the same for every company, as each one has different priorities and requirements. Naren adds that the team deals with companies more on a personal level by sitting with their technical team to get a better idea of their requirements.
Cutting down the process
Currently, the major problem companies face is that they get a lot of junk and irrelevant applications. Companies also spend a lot of time in the overall hiring process. Stockroom.io believes that hackathons are a quick and efficient way to find and hire developers quickly.
Once the team gets a hang of their client’s requirements, they create different problem statements or challenges for different participants, who in turn register for a challenge online. The selected candidates are then invited to participate in the hackathon challenge, and the top performers are hired by the sponsoring companies or the clients.
What do the companies get?
The clients get to remotely evaluate the candidate’s skills and compare the same with the other developers and then make the right decision. “We curate the candidates at all hackathons to ensure quality. Our company dashboard provides the companies with various metrics, making it easier for companies to get a better idea of the candidate and make the right decision,” adds Naren.
Once the candidates win the hackaton, and the companies decide on the candidates they pick, they can choose to invite the best developers to their office to discuss the different problems they are solving. Naren adds that this helps reduce companies' hiring time.
While the portfolio creation tool is free for the users and candidates, the team charges an operation fee and commission fee from companies for every hackathon. The team recently launched Stockroom Prime, which follows a similar model, but with a slight change.
Instead of the companies choosing from the different candidates who hack, only those who are successfully complete a particular challenge set by a particular company are allowed to apply for the job. Also the Stockroom Prime is restricted to certain jobs and skillsets that are marked as premium by the company.
“So far we have more than 10,000 developers registered on our platform and 10 paying clients like Mysmartprice, Sourceeasy and Thoughtworks,” adds Naren. Stockroom is a team of six full-time employees. The team recently raised a funding of $70,000 from an undisclosed investor. The funds are used towards further development of technology and product base. The team has over 16 clients, some of who are UrbanClap and Travel Triangle.
Hiring hacks
According to a recently published report by ManPowerGroup, 58 percent of Indian employers find it difficult to get the right kind of technical talent. According to reports by the Wall Street Journal published last year, the cost of hires is increasing drastically in India. Apart from that there also is a demand-and-supply gap.
While there are traditional online job portals like Hiree, and consultancy firms, many believe that hiring technical talent is very challenging. Another startup that uses a similar model to help companies find technical talent is Hackerearth.
Apart from this, there are several other online portfolio creation websites. While not exactly in the hacking domain, these platforms help showcase the different work done by each individual in different unique ways.