Compare the Market - Case Study

Compare the Market share how Geektastic has helped them scale their engineering team whilst freeing up precious internal development resource.

Interview between Rick Brownlow, co-founder of Geektastic and Vivek Sud, Talent Acquisition Manager at Compare the Market.

• Please tell us a little about Compare The Market?

Compare the Market was launched in 2006 and has grown rapidly to become one of the UK’s most loved price comparison websites. We’re best known for offering an independent and impartial comparison on car and home insurance products but we also provide a comparison of the price, cover and features of van, bike, travel, pet and life insurances as well as energy tariffs, broadband and mobile phone packages and financial products such as mortgages, credit cards, loans, savings and current accounts. We don’t advise or provide a recommendation but we provide clear information so that a customer can go on to purchase a product that meets their needs.

• Why is hiring the right engineers and developers so important to Compare The Market?

Quite simply without them, the products and services we offer wont be able to run, so we need to hire the best! We’re here to provide our customers with a reliable platform and want to continue to develop the Compare The Market offering.

We can only achieve this by hiring the right people. Our engineers and developers work on our core services at Compare The Market and are 100% essential, not only to our day-to-day operations but to future ambitions.

• How many Engineers have you hired this year? How many are you expecting to hire over the next 12 months? 

Throughout 2020 so far, we’ve hired around 75 engineers and we’re expecting to hire another 100 throughout 2021.

• What are your biggest challenges when it comes to hiring developers? 

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced when it comes to hiring developers is being able to accurately identify a developers technical skillset. It can be difficult getting detailed information about a candidate that’s needed during the sourcing stage. We often have to bring a candidate in for an interview based on the limited information commonly available on a the candidates resume. Hence using the Geektastic platform to assess candidates when looking for niche technical skillsets within certain markets e.g. Data Engineering and Cloud.

• What has your experience with Geektastic been like? 

Great! It’s a really user friendly platform and everything is in one place which makes it easier to manage through the entire process. The team have been really helpful to ensure that we get the most out of the platform. Being able to provide constructive feedback to candidates has been a total game changer for us.

• How has implementing Geektastic improved your hiring process? 

Most of our tests are on the platform now and it has been very useful in filtering out candidates that are not strong enough. Geektastic has also saved our engineering leads a ton of time, by not having to review the tests

I also like the fact that the reviewers and candidates can respond on the platform with any key questions or answers on where things went wrong. This has been very handy as the candidate can then learn from this next time.

• What results has Geektastic been able to generate? 

The results Geektastic has driven when hiring developers and engineers has been invaluable. The platform has given us the ability to thoroughly assess candidates coding abilities in the key (and sometimes very niche) technologies that we recruit for. With solid reviews and feedback on tests, we’re assured that candidates have the skills required for the jobs they are applying for.

• Has the Geektastic platform allowed you to better filter people and reduce the number of interviews the Compare the Market Engineers now need to conduct? 

Yes definitely! By using the platform we’ve been able to identify relevant candidates faster, and then also take them through the hiring process faster. It’s saved the team loads of time by reducing the number of candidates we need to interview and has also improved our overall candidate experience.

• Why would you recommend Geektastic to other companies looking to hire developers? 

I’d recommend Geektastic as an assessment platform for number of reasons. Firstly, there are a range of thorough tests on the platform, which allows you to really assess even the most niche skill sets. .

There’s also a fantastic team of reviewers, so you can trust your candidates are being assessed by experts.

The platform also has the flexibility to allow you to use your own assessments too or create your own custom assessments. Either way, you will save so much time not having to review your own technical assessments anymore.

Most importantly though, they have fantastic customer success. The Geektastic team are always there to support and answer questions or solve any issues when needed.

• To conclude, how do you feel about introducing Geektastic into your hiring process? 

Introducing the Geektastic platform has completely transformed our hiring process at Compare The Market.

The overall candidate experience has been impacted incredibly positively. Using the platform has resulted in more relevant, top- quality candidates getting through the hiring process, where previously they might have been screened-out early on.

Geektastic has also drastically reduced our time to hire since we outsourced our technical assessments to them! This has made a huge difference to our hiring process and has saved our in-house dev team loads of time every week by not having to conduct technical assessments anymore. Time which is now being re-invested back into engineering.

Date: 15th December 2020