Context
A new engineering function needed to grow from a small founding team to over 24 engineers in a short timeframe. The hiring bar, interview process, and candidate experience all needed to be built from scratch while the team was also delivering product work.
Challenge
Speed and quality are in tension at scale. At high hiring volume it is easy to lower the bar incrementally with each compromise. Keeping the process consistent across multiple interviewers, some of whom had never hired before, was a significant coordination challenge.
Approach
I designed a structured interview process with a small number of consistent signal areas, trained all interviewers before they joined panels, and introduced a calibration step after each interview cycle. I also took ownership of the candidate experience end-to-end — fast responses, clear feedback, and respectful rejections — because reputation compounds in a tight market.
Outcome
All 24 roles were filled. Interviewer confidence improved across the team. Several candidates cited the interview experience as a reason for accepting offers. The process documentation was reused in subsequent hiring cycles.