TLDR: If you meet certain requirements on the Triplebyte quiz, you can book a call with a potential employer right now. Your application will be instantly accepted and you can go directly to a recruiter or hiring manager’s calendar to choose a time to talk to a person through our new Call Guarantee feature.

Here’s how it works:

• Companies on Triplebyte set a list of criteria, like scores on certain quizzes. (They can require other things too, but many of them don’t, at least so far.)
• The company submits a booking link along with these criteria that is attached to a recruiter or hiring manager’s calendar.
• If you meet the requirements, rather than applying with a usual short message (like you do for other Triplebyte jobs), your application will be auto-accepted and you’ll be sent directly to their calendar to book a call. (If you don’t meet the requirements, you can still apply normally.)

That’s it. You don’t need approval from the recruiter, you don’t need to write a cover letter, you just have to pick a time to talk and you’ll get at least 15 minutes of talking to a human being with the knowledge that you have the skills they chose to look for. You can see the requirements for each Call Guarantee by clicking on the “Offers Call Guarantee” button on the job listing, as seen below:

If you’d like to learn more about the details and how it fits into our approach to building a better job search, read on. Otherwise, head to our job directory and look for roles offering Call Guarantees.

So, why did we build Call Guarantee - and why do we think it will work?

Well, back up: why don’t job applications already work this way? Why is the typical experience of an applicant to apply for dozens of jobs with no particular expectation of hearing anything more than a form rejection from most of them? Why is the typical experience of a recruiter to receive dozens of applications from people who lack even the most basic essential skills of the job for which they’re hiring? We are surely not the first people to have the idea that something is wrong here, and the solution we’re proposing isn’t particularly strange either.

The answer is pretty simple. There is no barrier to a weak applicant submitting applications to some arbitrarily large number of roles, nor is there significant cost for them in doing so. And there is no barrier to a recruiter using aggressive automated filters or very brief glances at a resume to filter applicants out without a second look (and indeed they’re quite incentivized to do so).

The missing link is the ability to filter for skilled applicants without relying on opaque resume screens. Most applicants for any job are not very good, and recruiters’ time is finite, so they’re forced (or at least strongly incentivized) to filter aggressively using as little of their own time as possible.

The reason that Call Guarantee works (or rather, the reason we hope that this experimental feature will work) is that recruiters are not opposed in principle to talking to people and creating a good experience. Quite the contrary: good recruiters go out of their way to do so for applicants in whom they are interested. They just lack the tools to decide which applicants to speak to. Fortunately, our quizzes provide just such a tool.
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Longtime Triplebyte users will recognize this as essentially the same argument for why our old FastTrack product worked (when it did work). So why build something in the same space now right after we moved away from that approach?

The answer is that the idea to build Call Guarantee came out of the discussion in which we decided to sunset FastTrack. We knew FastTrack wasn’t working logistically, for a number of reasons, but the fact that it worked at all still revealed some fundamental market inefficiencies that we were well-placed to fix. We still believe in the idea that good assessment data is the solution to a lot of problems in hiring, and the first question we asked when we realized FastTrack wasn’t the way to fix those problems was how we could salvage its value without being weighed down by its problems.

So, how does Call Guarantee avoid the problems of FastTrack?

• It lets every company decide their own threshold. This is much more flexibly responsive to the conditions of each company than a one-size-fits-all gatekeeping criterion was for FastTrack, and it means that a much larger cohort of engineers will have access to at least some Call Guarantees. In particular, the fact that companies can set requirements other than just scores opens it up to a much larger pool of jobs.
• It’s optional for engineers. Rather than having to take an assessment to access any features on Triplebyte, each engineer can decide for themselves whether this feature is important to them and choose whether or not to take an assessment to qualify. Those who aren’t interested aren’t blocked from doing anything else.
• It decouples the conflicting values of skipping to onsites and focusing on fighting credentialism. Investing a 15-minute phone call is a much smaller barrier to clear than skipping right to final onsites when you’re asking companies to consider applicants they normally wouldn’t. That means it’s potentially more effective at getting engineers looking for their first job in the door, particularly at larger companies (which have more rigid interview processes).

If Call Guarantee turns out to work, we want to explore this space further. One possible long-term vision for what applications look like on Triplebyte is that companies quantify their hard and soft requirements into thresholds that offer progressively more convenient and expedited processes for engineers who are particularly skilled.
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Finally, we’d like to give a shout out to a few roles that jumped at the chance to provide a great experience to engineers. The following companies were the first few to set up Call Guarantees (note that these requirements may change after this post is published), and in particular, the first few are offering guarantees even to engineers without experience if they do well on our assessments.

• Social media startup TUVU is hiring back-end and mobile engineers remotely or in Dallas, Texas. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with US work authorization and good scores on the Triplebyte Java quiz.
• Clojure-focused Composer Technologies, a fully-remote automated investing startup, is looking for early engineering hires. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with high scores on the Algorithms & Data Structures and General Coding Logic quizzes.
• Early-stage retail logistics and fulfillment startup Ox is looking for a front-end developer. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with good scores on the JavaScript and Front-end quizzes.
• Early-mid stage NYC startup Dandy is building a logistics platform for dental labs. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers who aced the General Coding Logic and Algorithms & Data Structures quizzes.
• Real-time video sharing startup CloudApp is looking for a polyglot developer with a background in C++, C#, and Electron for cross-platform desktop app development. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with 3+ years of experience who did well on the JavaScript and Front-end quizzes.
• Mid-stage edge computing/smart IoT company FogHorn is looking for a mid-level to senior C++ developer with a focus on performance. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with 8+ years of experience and US work authorization who did well on the Algorithms & Data Structures, General Coding Logic, Python, and Back-End quizzes.
• Fully-remote “YouTube for podcasts” Zencastr is looking for a senior backend engineer. They’re guaranteeing calls to applicants with 5+ years of experience who did well on the Algorithms & Data Structures, Back-end, Python, and JavaScript quizzes.
• Early-stage remote startup Milio is looking for a full-stack Node/React dev to build out their platform for managing employee pay. They’re guaranteeing calls to applicants with 5+ years of experience and US work authorization with high scores on the Front-end, Back-end, and General Coding Logic quizzes.
• Established e-commerce-for-cars site TrueCar is looking for a senior engineer to scale up their platform. They’re guaranteeing calls to engineers with 8+ years of experience, US work authorization, and top scores on the Front-end, JavaScript, General Coding Logic, and Algorithms & Data Structures quizzes.

If you’re excited about this feature and think you’d like to work with one of these companies, go book a call! If you meet those requirements they’re going out of their way to talk to you, so it’s likely to be worth your time and you’ll have a much higher chance of a good result than you would with a typical application.