Cutting wasted interviews by 67% using assessment-first screening
ScaleReal is an SME that hires 8-10 developers every year across multiple technical roles. Their engineering team was drowning in interviews—12 per week—and watching 70% of candidates fail basic technical rounds. They needed a better filter. Not another recruiter. A better way to know who could actually code before wasting everyone's time.
ScaleReal x Utkrusht: Key Takeaways
Sector
Technology SME
Requirement
Assessment layer to shortlist qualified candidates before technical interviews—stop wasting engineering time on people who can't pass basic fundamentals
Outcome
ScaleReal reduced interview load by 67% (from 12/week to 4/week) and now only interviews candidates who've already proven their technical depth—resulting in faster, more confident hiring decisions.
What They Were Doing Before
ScaleReal was stuck in the classic SME hiring trap: not enough resources to build a massive recruiting machine, but desperate need to hire good engineers consistently.
Their approach was a combination of everything most companies try:
Job Board Postings: LinkedIn, Naukri, AngelList—the usual suspects. Applications came in, but the signal-to-noise ratio was terrible. 100 applications meant 5-10 worth talking to, and most of those would fail the technical interview anyway.
Recruitment Agencies: Paid fees to agencies who promised "pre-screened technical talent." The agencies sent candidates with the right keywords on their resume, but no actual depth. It was resume forwarding dressed up as recruiting.
Internal Technical Tests: Built their own coding challenges and assessment questions. But maintaining these tests took time, and candidates could Google answers or copy-paste from Stack Overflow. The tests didn't reliably filter for real skill.
Manual Interview Screening: Once candidates made it past the initial filters, the engineering team had to interview them to assess technical depth. And this is where everything fell apart.
The process looked like this:
Post the role and screen resumes
Do quick phone screens to filter out the obviously unqualified
Schedule technical interviews with the engineering team
Watch 70% of candidates fail basic fundamentals questions
The remaining 30% move forward, but many still don't work out
Repeat endlessly
The result? The engineering team was doing 12 technical interviews per week—and most were a complete waste of time.
Senior engineers who should be building product were instead explaining why a candidate's "5 years of React experience" didn't translate to understanding basic JavaScript fundamentals.
It wasn't sustainable. And it definitely wasn't scalable.
The Challenges & Pain Points
ScaleReal's hiring problem came down to one brutal truth: they couldn't tell who could actually code until after they'd wasted hours interviewing them.
1. 70% of Candidates Failed Technical Rounds
The math was devastating:
12 technical interviews per week
8-9 candidates (70%) failed basic fundamentals questions
3-4 candidates (30%) passed and moved forward
That's roughly 9 wasted interviews per week. At 1-2 hours per interview, that's 12-18 hours of senior engineering time per week spent talking to people who had no business being in the room.
Multiply that by 4 weeks, and you're burning 48-72 hours per month on failed interviews. That's more than a full-time engineer's worth of productivity—gone.
And here's the worst part: the candidates who failed weren't failing on hard problems. They were failing on fundamentals.
"Can you explain how closures work in JavaScript?" → Blank stares
"Debug this simple API endpoint that's returning 500 errors." → Can't figure it out
"Write a function to filter and transform this array." → Copy-pastes from memory, can't adapt it
These weren't trick questions. These were baseline skills any engineer should have. But 70% of candidates making it to technical interviews couldn't pass them.
Why? Because resumes lie, and phone screens don't test real skill.
2. Interview Cycles Took 2 Months on Average
From opening a role to making an offer, ScaleReal was averaging 2 months per hire.
Here's why:
Week 1-2: Post the role, screen resumes, do phone screens
Week 3-5: Schedule and conduct 10-15 technical interviews, watch most fail
Week 6-7: Find 1-2 promising candidates, do final rounds
Week 8: Make offer, negotiate, hopefully close
Two months of work to fill one role. And if the candidate rejected the offer or didn't work out in the first few months? Start over.
For an SME hiring 8-10 people per year, that's basically continuous hiring. There was never a moment where they weren't in the middle of some interview process.
The hiring never stopped. And it was exhausting.
3. No Reliable Way to Filter for Fundamentals Before Interviews
The core problem was simple: ScaleReal had no way to know if someone could code before investing interview time.
Resumes told them nothing:
"5 years of React" could mean anything from "built production apps at scale" to "followed a tutorial once"
"Experience with Node.js" could mean "architected microservices" or "installed Express and wrote Hello World"
Phone screens told them a little more, but not much:
Candidates could sound smart talking about concepts without actually understanding them
Charismatic people passed phone screens, then failed technical rounds
Quiet, introverted engineers who could ship got filtered out early
Internal coding tests helped somewhat, but they weren't reliable:
Candidates Googled answers during take-home assessments
The tests were too easy (everyone passed) or too hard (everyone failed)
Maintaining and updating tests took engineering time they didn't have
By the time ScaleReal brought someone in for a technical interview, they were still guessing. And 70% of the time, they guessed wrong.
4. Engineering Team Burnout from Endless Interviewing
12 interviews per week across the team meant every senior engineer was spending significant time interviewing instead of building.
Some weeks it was manageable. Other weeks—when multiple roles were open—it was crushing:
"I have 3 interviews today and a production bug to fix."
"Can someone else take this interview? I'm already at 5 this week."
"We need to ship this feature, but half the team is in interviews."
The irony was painful: they were hiring to increase engineering capacity, but the hiring process was destroying their existing capacity.
Worse, the constant stream of bad interviews was demoralizing. When you spend 90 minutes explaining basic concepts to someone who claimed 5 years of experience, you start questioning everything:
Are we posting in the wrong places?
Are we screening wrong?
Is the talent pool really this bad?
The answer to all three was: kind of. But the real problem was simpler—they were interviewing people before knowing if they could code.
How Utkrusht Helped
ScaleReal's breakthrough came when they stopped trying to assess candidates manually and started using an assessment layer that filtered for real technical skill before any human time was invested.
Here's what changed: instead of hoping candidates could code and finding out in the interview, they got objective proof of skill upfront—before scheduling a single technical interview.
The Utkrusht Difference:
1. Assessment Layer That Actually Tests Fundamentals
Most companies skip assessments or use the wrong ones:
No assessment → Everyone gets interviewed, 70% fail
Generic coding tests → Easy to Google, don't test real skill
Whiteboard interviews → Theater, not execution
Utkrusht's assessments are different: they test whether you can build and debug real things, not whether you've memorized syntax.
For a React developer:
"This component has a bug causing infinite re-renders. Debug and fix it."
"Build a form with validation that handles edge cases correctly."
"Refactor this component to be more performant and maintainable."
For a backend engineer:
"This API is returning incorrect data. Debug the issue and fix it."
"Optimize this slow database query without changing the schema."
"Design an endpoint that handles concurrent requests safely."
For a DevOps engineer:
"This deployment pipeline is failing. Fix it and optimize for cost."
"Debug why this Kubernetes pod keeps crashing."
"Set up monitoring and alerting for this service."
These aren't trick questions or abstract puzzles. These are real problems engineers face at real companies. And they reveal everything:
✅ Do they understand fundamentals, or just frameworks?
✅ Can they debug under pressure, or do they freeze?
✅ Can they write clean code, or just code that works?
✅ Can they think through edge cases, or only happy paths?
ScaleReal plugged Utkrusht assessments into their hiring process as the first technical filter. Before any engineer on their team spent time interviewing a candidate, that candidate had to prove they could code.
2. Task Simulations in Sandbox Environments—No Code Pairing Required
Here's one of the biggest bottlenecks in technical hiring: live coding interviews require an engineer to pair with the candidate.
This means:
Scheduling conflicts (finding time for both people)
Context switching (engineer stops their work to interview)
Inconsistent evaluation (different interviewers have different standards)
Utkrusht solved this with task simulations in sandbox coding environments:
Candidates get a real coding environment (not a whiteboard or pseudocode)
They complete practical tasks like debugging, building features, or refactoring code
Everything runs in the browser—no setup, no dependencies, no "it works on my machine"
The platform records their work (code, process, decisions) for review
No engineer needs to be present during the assessment
For ScaleReal, this was game-changing. They could assess 10 candidates' technical skills in the time it used to take to interview 2.
And the quality of the assessment was better:
Candidates worked in real coding environments (not whiteboards)
They had to actually build and debug (not just talk about building)
The assessment was standardized (every candidate got the same challenges)
Engineers could review results asynchronously (no live scheduling required)
3. Cover Video Submissions for Soft Skills
Technical skill isn't everything. You also need to know:
Can they communicate clearly?
Do they have the personality to work well with the team?
Are they articulate and thoughtful, or do they struggle to explain their thinking?
Most companies assess this in phone screens or live interviews. But those are expensive and inconsistent.
Utkrusht had a better solution: cover video submissions.
Candidates recorded short videos introducing themselves and explaining their background. ScaleReal could watch these videos in 5 minutes and immediately assess:
Communication skills: Are they clear and articulate, or rambling and unclear?
Personality: Do they seem like someone who'd fit the team culture?
Presentation: Are they professional and thoughtful in how they present themselves?
Enthusiasm: Do they actually care about the role, or just applying everywhere?
This replaced the need for early-stage phone screens. ScaleReal could filter for soft skills asynchronously, on their own schedule, without burning calendar time.
The result? They only spent time on live calls with candidates who had:
✅ Proven technical depth (passed assessments)
✅ Good communication skills (cover video showed it)
✅ High intent and fit (video demonstrated enthusiasm and alignment)
No more wasting 30 minutes on a phone screen only to realize the person can't articulate their thoughts or isn't actually interested in the role.
4. Question Depth Built by Ex-Google, Ex-Microsoft Engineers
One of the reasons ScaleReal trusted Utkrusht's assessments was simple: the questions were built by people who'd hired at the highest level.
When ex-engineering leaders from Google, Microsoft, and other top tech companies design assessment questions, they know:
What separates good engineers from great ones
What fundamentals actually matter vs. what's just trivia
How to test real-world problem-solving, not just memorization
What signals predict success in the role
ScaleReal's internal tests were fine, but they were built by engineers who were learning how to hire as they went. Utkrusht's assessments were built by people who'd hired hundreds of engineers and knew exactly what to look for.
The depth of the questions was immediately obvious:
Not "What does
map()do?" but "Refactor this code usingmap()and handle these edge cases."Not "Explain REST APIs" but "This API is returning errors—debug and fix it."
Not "What's a closure?" but "This code has a closure-related bug—find and fix it."
These questions didn't just test knowledge—they tested applied skill. And that's what ScaleReal needed.
5. Comprehensive Reports That Build Confidence
After candidates completed assessments, ScaleReal received detailed reports showing:
📊 Technical Performance:
Overall skill score (objective measure across all assessments)
Breakdown by skill area (fundamentals, problem-solving, code quality, debugging)
Performance on specific questions (what they got right, where they struggled)
🎯 Behavioral Signals:
Cover video review (communication, personality, presentation)
Intent to join (how motivated they are to switch)
Cultural fit indicators (self-starters, high agency, collaboration skills)
💡 Recommendation:
Clear signal on whether to interview this candidate or not
Context on what to focus on in the interview (strengths to leverage, gaps to probe)
These reports gave ScaleReal something they'd never had before: confidence that candidates could code before investing interview time.
When they saw a high score + strong cover video + good behavioral signals, they knew the interview would be productive. They weren't guessing anymore—they had data.
The Process:
Candidates apply through ScaleReal's normal channels (job boards, referrals, agencies).
ScaleReal sends qualified candidates to Utkrusht for technical assessment and cover video submission.
Candidates complete assessments in sandbox environments—building features, debugging code, solving real problems—no code pairing needed.
Candidates record and submit cover videos introducing themselves and explaining their background.
ScaleReal receives comprehensive reports with skill scores, assessment breakdowns, and cover video reviews.
ScaleReal only interviews candidates who've proven they can code—focusing the interview on culture fit, team alignment, and deeper technical discussions.
Result: 67% reduction in wasted interviews (from 12/week to 4/week of high-quality conversations).
"We were doing 12 technical interviews every week, and 70% of candidates couldn't answer basic fundamentals questions. It wasn't just frustrating—it was unsustainable. Our senior engineers were spending more time interviewing unqualified candidates than actually building product. We needed a filter that worked before we burned out the team."
— ScaleReal Engineering Team
The Results
ScaleReal didn't just save time—they fundamentally changed how they hire. Instead of interviewing everyone and hoping for the best, they now only invest time in candidates who've already proven they can code.
Interview Load: 67% Reduction (From 12/Week to 4/Week)
Before Utkrusht:
12 technical interviews per week across the team
70% of candidates failed basic fundamentals
9 wasted interviews per week = 12-18 hours of lost productivity
With Utkrusht:
4 high-quality technical interviews per week
Only candidates who've proven technical depth get interviewed
Zero wasted interviews on people who can't pass fundamentals
That's 8 fewer interviews per week, or 32 fewer per month, or ~380 fewer per year.
At 1.5 hours per interview, that's 570 hours per year saved—the equivalent of 3+ months of full-time engineering work reclaimed from the interviewing black hole.
Interview Quality: High-Confidence Conversations
The interviews ScaleReal conducts now are completely different from before.
Before Utkrusht:
Interviews were about figuring out if the person could code
70% of interviews ended with "they can't code, reject"
Engineers dreaded interviews because they were usually a waste of time
With Utkrusht:
Interviews are about culture fit, team alignment, and deeper technical exploration
100% of interviews are with candidates who've proven they can code
Engineers look forward to interviews because they're talking to qualified people
The shift is psychological as much as practical. When you walk into an interview knowing the candidate has already demonstrated strong fundamentals, you approach it differently:
You're not testing if they can code—you're exploring how they think
You're not trying to catch them lying—you're having a real technical conversation
You're not hoping they pass—you're evaluating if they're the right fit for your team
That confidence transforms the interview experience from interrogation to conversation.
Time to Hire: 2 Months Down to ~3-4 Weeks
By front-loading technical assessment, ScaleReal compressed their hiring timeline dramatically.
Old process (2 months):
Week 1-2: Post, screen resumes, phone screens
Week 3-5: 10-15 technical interviews, 70% fail
Week 6-7: Final rounds with the 30% who passed
Week 8: Offer, negotiate, close
New process (~3-4 weeks):
Week 1: Post, screen resumes, send to Utkrusht for assessment
Week 2: Review assessment reports, watch cover videos, select top candidates
Week 3: 4-5 high-quality technical interviews (all pass fundamentals)
Week 4: Final rounds, offer, close
That's 50% faster time-to-hire. Every week saved is a week of productivity gained from the new hire.
Hire Quality: All Hires Meet the Technical Bar
Here's the metric that matters most: Are the people they're hiring actually good?
With Utkrusht's assessment layer, ScaleReal is confident every hire they make has: ✅ Strong technical fundamentals (proven in assessments)
✅ Real execution ability (demonstrated by building/debugging in sandbox environments)
✅ Good communication skills (validated in cover videos)
✅ High intent to join (signaled through the process)
They're not hiring people who interview well but can't ship. They're not hiring people who look good on paper but have shallow knowledge. They're hiring people who've proven they can code before the offer letter is signed.
And the post-hire outcomes validate it: ScaleReal is very happy with all the hiring outcomes from candidates assessed through Utkrusht.
No regret hires. No "we thought they could do it, but..." situations. Just strong engineers who've proven their depth before day one.
Cost Savings: Hundreds of Hours of Engineering Time Reclaimed
Let's do the math on what ScaleReal saved:
Wasted interview time eliminated:
8 fewer interviews per week × 52 weeks = 416 fewer interviews per year
At 1.5 hours per interview = 624 hours saved per year
At $100+/hour fully-loaded cost for senior engineers = $62,000+ per year in productivity reclaimed
Faster time-to-hire:
4 weeks saved per hire × 8-10 hires per year = 32-40 weeks of empty roles eliminated
Each week an empty role costs the company lost productivity + delayed projects
Impossible to quantify precisely, but easily worth $50,000-100,000+ per year
Bad hires avoided:
With 70% of candidates failing technical rounds before, at least a few bad hires probably slipped through
1 bad hire = 3-6 months of reduced productivity + severance + re-hiring costs = $60,000-100,000 per bad hire
Total annual savings: $170,000-250,000+ from more efficient hiring, faster time-to-fill, and better hire quality.
That's not just ROI. That's transformational.
What Stood Out Most
When we asked ScaleReal what made the biggest difference, they pointed to two things: the depth of Utkrusht's technical questions and the task simulations that eliminated the need for live code pairing.
Question Depth Built by Ex-Google, Ex-Microsoft Engineers
Most technical assessments are garbage. They test trivia, syntax, or abstract puzzles that have nothing to do with real engineering work.
Examples of bad technical questions:
"What's the difference between
==and===in JavaScript?" (Who cares? Everyone Googles this.)"Reverse a linked list on a whiteboard." (When was the last time you reversed a linked list at work?)
"Explain the virtual DOM." (This tests memorization, not skill.)
These questions don't reveal whether someone can actually build software. They reveal whether someone studied for the interview.
Utkrusht's questions are different because they're built by people who've hired hundreds of engineers at companies like Google and Microsoft.
These are people who know:
What fundamentals actually matter (vs. what's just noise)
What separates engineers who ship from engineers who just talk
How to test real-world problem-solving (not just abstract algorithms)
What signals predict success in the role (vs. what sounds impressive but doesn't matter)
The result? Assessment questions that test applied skill, not memorized knowledge.
Examples of Utkrusht's questions:
"This React component has a performance bug. Find and fix it." (Tests: understanding of rendering, state management, optimization)
"This API endpoint is returning incorrect data. Debug the issue." (Tests: backend fundamentals, debugging ability, attention to detail)
"Refactor this code to be more maintainable and handle edge cases." (Tests: code quality, architectural thinking, real-world problem-solving)
These questions don't just test if you know React, Node.js, or Python. They test if you can think like an engineer and solve real problems.
For ScaleReal, this was the breakthrough. Their internal tests were fine, but they were built by engineers learning how to hire. Utkrusht's tests were built by people who'd mastered it.
The depth of the questions was immediately obvious. Candidates who passed weren't just good at Googling—they actually understood fundamentals. And that's what ScaleReal needed to know before investing interview time.
Task Simulations in Sandbox Environments—No Code Pairing Needed
The second thing that stood out was how Utkrusht eliminated the need for live code pairing.
Traditional technical interviews require an engineer to pair with the candidate:
Schedule a time that works for both people
Spend 60-90 minutes watching them code
Provide hints and guidance when they get stuck
Evaluate their performance subjectively after the call
This approach has problems:
Scheduling bottleneck: Finding time for both people is hard
Context switching: The engineer has to stop their work to interview
Inconsistent evaluation: Different interviewers have different standards
Time-consuming: You can only assess one candidate at a time
Utkrusht's task simulations solved all of this:
✅ Candidates work in real sandbox coding environments—not whiteboards, not pseudocode, actual browsers with real code editors, terminals, and live previews.
✅ They complete practical tasks—debug a React component, fix a backend API, optimize a database query, refactor messy code.
✅ Everything runs in the browser—no setup required, no "it works on my machine" excuses, no dependency hell.
✅ No engineer needs to be present—candidates complete assessments on their own time, their work is recorded, engineers review results asynchronously.
✅ Standardized evaluation—every candidate gets the same challenges, performance is measured objectively, no interviewer bias.
For ScaleReal, this was transformational. They could assess 10 candidates' technical skills in the time it used to take to interview 2.
And the quality of assessment was better:
Candidates had to actually build and debug (not just talk about it)
The tasks were realistic (not abstract whiteboard puzzles)
The environment was standardized (everyone had the same tools)
Engineers could review results on their schedule (no live pairing required)
This is what modern technical assessment should look like. Not 90-minute Zoom calls where candidates panic-code on a whiteboard. Real tasks, real environments, real proof of skill—no human time required until you're confident the person can code.
Why This Matters for SMEs Hiring Multiple Roles
When you're an SME hiring 8-10 people per year across multiple roles (frontend, backend, DevOps, full-stack), you can't afford to waste time on bad interviews.
You don't have:
A massive recruiting team to screen candidates
Unlimited engineering bandwidth for interviews
The luxury of taking 2 months per hire
You need a hiring process that's:
Efficient: Filters out unqualified candidates before human time is invested
Scalable: Works across multiple roles without custom setup for each
Reliable: Gives you confidence that candidates can code before you interview them
That's exactly what Utkrusht provided ScaleReal.
The assessment layer plugged into their existing process, worked across all their technical roles, and gave them objective proof of skill before any engineer spent time interviewing.
The result? 67% fewer wasted interviews, 50% faster time-to-hire, and 100% confidence that candidates have strong fundamentals before the first technical conversation.
That's not just better hiring. That's sustainable hiring.
Why ScaleReal Chose Utkrusht Over Others
ScaleReal had tried building their own assessments, using generic coding test platforms, and relying on manual interviews. So why did Utkrusht work when everything else failed?
1. Assessment Layer That Integrates Into Existing Process
ScaleReal didn't need to rebuild their entire hiring workflow. Utkrusht plugged in as an assessment layer between initial screening and technical interviews.
Their new process:
Post the role and screen resumes (same as before)
Send qualified candidates to Utkrusht for assessment (new step)
Review assessment reports and cover videos (new step)
Interview only candidates who've proven they can code (same step, but better candidates)
This wasn't a wholesale replacement—it was a surgical improvement to the part of the process that was broken (identifying who could actually code before wasting interview time).
2. Question Depth Built by Ex-Googlers and Ex-Microsoft Engineers
Generic coding test platforms are built for volume. They optimize for "can we test 1 million candidates?" not "can we accurately predict who will succeed in this role?"
Utkrusht's questions were built by people who'd hired at the highest level. They knew what mattered and what didn't. The depth was immediately obvious.
For ScaleReal, this translated to trust: they trusted Utkrusht's questions to differentiate good candidates from bad candidates.
That trust is what allowed them to move faster. They didn't need to second-guess assessment results or run their own tests to validate—the questions were rigorous enough to rely on.
3. Task Simulations in Real Sandbox Environments
Most assessment platforms give you multiple-choice questions or algorithm puzzles. Utkrusht gave candidates real coding environments where they had to build, debug, and refactor actual code.
This wasn't theoretical. It wasn't whiteboard coding. It was as close to real engineering work as you can get in an assessment.
And it required zero engineering time until ScaleReal was confident the candidate could code.
4. Cover Videos for Soft Skills Assessment
Technical skill isn't everything. You also need to know:
Can they communicate?
Will they fit the team culture?
Are they actually interested in the role?
The cover video feature let ScaleReal assess all of this asynchronously, without phone screens or live calls.
This saved time and improved decision-making. They could filter for both hard skills (assessments) and soft skills (cover videos) before investing any live conversation time.
5. Comprehensive Reports That Build Confidence
After candidates completed assessments, ScaleReal didn't just get a pass/fail score. They got detailed reports showing:
Technical performance breakdown
Behavioral signals (intent, communication, fit)
Recommendation on whether to interview or not
These reports gave ScaleReal something they'd never had before: objective data showing whether a candidate could code before scheduling the interview.
That data transformed hiring from guesswork into informed decision-making.
"We trust Utkrusht's questions to differentiate between good candidates and bad candidates. The depth is far superior to what we were asking before—these aren't trivia questions, they're real problems that test fundamentals. And the task simulations in sandbox environments mean we don't need to waste engineering time on live code pairing until we're confident the person can actually ship."
— ScaleReal Engineering Team
What's Next
ScaleReal isn't going back to the old way—12 interviews per week, 70% failure rate, months-long hiring cycles. They've seen what assessment-first hiring looks like, and there's no unseeing it.
When they open a new role, the process is clear:
Post and screen resumes
Send qualified candidates to Utkrusht for technical assessment + cover video
Review reports and identify top performers
Interview only candidates who've proven they can code
Focus interviews on culture fit, team alignment, and deeper exploration
Make offers fast with confidence backed by data
This isn't just faster—it's sustainable. They're not burning out their engineering team. They're not wasting time on unqualified candidates. They're hiring good people efficiently, consistently, year after year.
For SMEs where every hire matters and engineering time is precious, assessment-first hiring with task simulations isn't optional—it's the only approach that works.
"We went from 12 interviews per week—most of which were wasted time—to 4 high-quality interviews where we're fully confident the candidates have strong fundamentals. The assessment reports give us everything we need to know before we invest engineering time. Now interviews are about fit and alignment, not 'can you actually code?'"
— ScaleReal Engineering Team
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