Need an engineer? Meet the Indian startup that’ll hire one for you

Photo credit: Pixabay.

India has one of the largest startup communities in the world, so why, when it comes to hiring, is good help so hard to find? Engineers are pouring out of schools in India, yet, upon graduation, they have a hard time finding work. Meanwhile, founders struggle to build themselves the right teams. Where is the gap, and why is it so large?

India has one of the largest startup communities in the world, so why is good help so hard to find?

The answer, Guruprakash Sivabalan found, may lie in the way that many startups hire their engineers. While getting his technology degree at SRM University, he worked on a search engine called SRM Search Engine as a school project. It was recognized by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and employed 71 people. According to Guruprakash, around 20 to 25 people would leave the project every month, leaving him to fill lots of spaces quickly and consistently.

The problem was big enough that, when he graduated last year, he decided it was the one he wanted to solve. Together with software engineer and SRM classmate Amrit Aacharya, he set about creating a website that would help businesses – particularly tech startups – hire people quickly and easily across the startup ecosystem. Their hiring portal Xobin launched in December 2015.

Xobin is a graduate of Axilor Ventures’ Accelerator Program. It has six team members in total, including the two co-founders. Its pricing plans are boat-themed and range from the US$149 “speed boat” plan to the US$1,350 “cruise liner” plan. Each plan is a one-time fee.

Concrete over abstract

Xobin’s team, affectionately known as Xobinhoods. Photo credit: Xobin.

Among Xobin’s key qualities is its emphasis on getting hirees to show off their skills early in the game, administering a multiple-choice test and various skills tests to applicants. The latter involves the applicant exhibiting developer skills through a computer-based trial as the hirer watches from the other end.

Guruprakash says the tests have been developed and evaluated by a team of research scholars and field experts.

“Existing players test in abstract concepts. If you were an author, they would check your grammar skills, but that’s not always good enough,” Guruprakash tells Tech in Asia.

The company also implements a scoring system that combines all the different testing scores to help rank applicants. The goal is that the applicant comes to the hiring company already trained and able to build a product from the get-go.

If you were an author, they would check your grammar skills, but that’s not always good enough.

Bringing tech into the hiring picture also helps ease the pressure on engineering recruiters, who are often engineers themselves. “Not all engineers are trained recruiters,” says Guruprakash. “Hiring is intense and time-consuming.” Having a test ready for applicants that evaluates candidates for those seeking employees can help.

The Axilor experience