Flexport is “the Operating System for Global Trade”. Freight forwarding is the circulatory system for global trade but it still largely runs on paper. Flexport is changing this with a strategic operating model for modern businesses that powers more transparent, more agile, more efficient, and more profitable global supply chains.

Triplebyte helps Mervyn Steadman and his team at Flexport with engineering hiring.

Can you describe your role?

I'm Technical Channels Manager and at Flexport since early 2018. We use a mix of sourcing platforms, placement agencies, and referrals to find great software engineers to join our team.

What are your main hiring challenges?

The number one problem we face is high competition for tech talent in the Bay Area. It's really hard to find great candidates. We are hiring for full stack engineers, but top tier candidates tend to be either already working at other well-known companies or actively sought after by these same companies. It makes it hard to know who we should reach out to and when the timing is right for them to consider a new job.

The second struggle we have is our limited interviewing bandwidth. We just don't have enough time and resources to interview all the candidates we would like to. Our technical screening is conducted by engineers “with packed schedules” and it's hard to balance the high number of candidate interviews with our engineers' availability.

Finally, we have difficulty in predicting how well candidates will perform during on-sites. Resume screens and initial calls are not always a good indicator that a candidate will do well at an on-site interview. We want to be respectful of both our candidates’ time and our team’s time, so we'd rather avoid bringing candidates on-site if there is a low chance we'll end up making an offer.

What were the main benefits of using Triplebyte?

Triplebyte has been able to help with Flexport’s 3 main hiring challenges:

First, Triplebyte has provided a robust volume of candidates that might not apply to Flexport through our traditional channels. Triplebyte gives us a chance for us to be in front of great candidates when they are activelly looking for a job.

Second, Triplebyte’s technical screening saves us time and gives our engineering team more bandwidth. It also accelerates candidates through our recruitment process.

Last, Triplebyte provides us with a score that shows how well a candidate performed on their technical screen, giving us a pretty good idea of how someone will perform in Flexport’s interview. It allows us to rely less on candidate resumes and bring top quality candidates on-site, regardless of their background or past experience.

Are there specific metrics Triplebyte has helped you to improve?

One of the more important metrics for Flexport is “time to hire”, and we've seen that improve thanks to Triplebyte. We see an average time-to-hire of 3 to 4 weeks with traditional sources, but Triplebyte candidates are closer to 2 to 3 weeks. Because we can skip the technical pre-screen, Triplebyte saves us over a week of scheduling and we can move straight to an on-site after an initial call with candidates.

Another interesting fact is that over 20% of our on-sites are Triplebyte candidates, this is a higher amount than our other sources.

Anything else you would like to add?

Triplebyte has a good blend of both traditional and non-traditional candidates. Triplebyte is able to surface non-traditional candidates that our recruiting team normally would have never come across given their background. Their talent pool has a good balance of high[-]caliber traditional candidates (i.e. degree from top schools and experience at well known companies) and non-traditional candidates with various background[s] and experiences.

Their candidate pool also has a balanced mix of seniorities: we see both junior and senior candidates and, more recently, even engineering managers.