EXCLUSIVE: Hike is looking for engineers who lost their jobs during lockdown ⁠— here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the test candidates have to go through

• Hike is looking to hire engineers who lost their jobs and freshers to fill in around 20 new positions at the company.
• In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Anshuman Mishra, the VP of Operations at Hike outlines the four-stage process that candidates have to go through to get selected.
• Some of the roles that they’re looking at include areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and user research.

The Kavin Mittal-owned startup, Hike, is opening up hiring during the lockdown even as most companies have announced a . As they work towards launching HikeLand — an augmented reality-based based experience that nobody really knows much about — it has opened up around 20 positions to add to their 152-strong staff. And, all the hiring will happen virtually.

In addition to looking at freshers from IIT Kharagpur, IIT Dhanbad, Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT) and some other top tier colleges through its ZeroTo2 program — Hike is also looking to hire people who were laid off during the lockdown in hopes of picking up top talent on the rebound.

“We are reaching out to alumni networks, mapping and prioritising high pedigree candidates facing job and salary cuts and are actively accepting requests from organisations looking for outplacement support,” Anshuman Mishra, the VP of Operations at Hike exclusively told Business Insider.

The loopholes that candidates will have to jump through in order to get hired
“Once a candidate’s profile is shortlisted, we share custom-designed stimulations and assignments — depending on the role they have applied for — with each candidate. We have been using tech tools like Hackerank and in-house developed simulations,” explained Mishra.

Each simulation will have a cut-off and the scores will be compared to select the top performers depending on the number of positions available. “We use top percentiles to decide real-time thresholds for cutoffs, so that bar is always high,” said Mishra.

Once the top candidates have been selected, they will move to the second stage — interviews. Not just one, but every candidate will have to go through at least four rounds of interviews for Hike to evaluate their competency.

The interview stage is followed by one more check that candidates will have to clear — how they fit into the overall culture at Hike. “We introduce the candidates to Hike and assess how well do they align to Hike’s values, DNA and vision,” said Mishra.

Some of the roles that they’re looking at include areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and user research over and above the conventional hiring in product, design and marketing.

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