DeNA Games Tokyo Inc.
By implementing a coding test into its hiring process, DGT was able to uncover engineers with genuine skills that are often impossible to identify through screening resumes alone.
Established in 2015 as a strategic subsidiary specializing in the operation of mobile games published by DeNA Co., Ltd., DGT (DeNA Games Tokyo Inc.) positions itself as a team of service lead engineers.
The DGT Technology Division believes that continually enhancing the user experience requires an organization that can flexibly adapt to rapidly evolving technology trends. From the beginning, DGT has prioritized hiring high-potential talent.
This case study explores how DGT uses Track to identify and assess engineers’ skills and potential capabilities that traditional resume screening often fails to reveal.
The Challenge
Bridging the Gap Between Resume Screening and Technical Interviews
It’s often difficult to accurately evaluate an engineer’s true capabilities through a resume alone.
When people think of “service operations,” they tend to picture a maintenance-focused, defensive style of work. But operating online games demands a proactive approach—constantly evolving and improving the user experience to keep players engaged. This means engineers need to be involved from the planning stages and be ready to adapt to fast-changing trends in user behavior and technology.
To meet these demands, DGT actively advanced candidates whose backgrounds suggested strong core skills even if they lacked direct experience in mobile game development or operations, to technical interviews.
However, despite intentionally broadening the resume screening criteria to uncover hidden potential, only a small number of candidates passed the technical interviews. Because these interviews require significant time and effort from engineers, the process was becoming inefficient.
“Could we be rejecting candidates with the very potential we need?”
Although the team carefully reviewed resumes to detect signs of the required qualities, it’s simply not possible to fully understand an engineer’s abilities through work history alone. Even with relevant experience, details such as project scale, specific responsibilities, and the challenges they solved are often unclear.
While past experience is important, relying on it alone limits hiring accuracy. This led DGT to search for a way to measure fundamental skills more objectively, separate from resumes, to make more precise hiring decisions.
The Solution
Giving Overlooked Candidates a Fair Chance with Track
There are promising candidates whose resumes may not reflect extensive experience but who possess strong fundamental engineering skills. To identify these high-potential individuals, Hiring Manager Tokuda and Head of Engineering Hiraoka sought ways to refine the selection process. Around this time, DGT’s engineers discovered Track at a developer event.
Track automatically and objectively assesses coding skills, making it the ideal solution to DGT’s challenge. Beyond measuring technical knowledge, it provides a diverse range of problem types, including algorithm challenges, and supports multiple programming languages, aligning well with DGT’s goal of evaluating genuine technical ability.
Track’s trial plan (please note: the trial plan is no longer available; please contact us for more details) made it easy to test the system’s effectiveness, lowering the barrier to full implementation. Within about a month, DGT had set up the contract and operations, and after three months of verification, fully rolled out Track.
“Even HR staff can quantitatively evaluate engineering skills. The HR-friendly features are a huge benefit.”
Track is designed for both recruiters and engineers, with user-friendly features that make it easy for HR teams to operate. For example, sharing test results with engineers and sending tests to candidates are simple tasks, reducing operational workload.
After candidates complete Track’s online coding test, DGT still conducts its traditional whiteboard coding test during technical interviews. Because the candidate’s Track code is available for review, interviewers can give more meaningful feedback and ask deeper, more technical questions, raising the quality of skill assessment.
The Impact
Uncovering Skilled Engineers and Strengthening the Employer Brand
Combining Track’s coding test and code review with interviews has significantly improved the accuracy of DGT’s evaluations. Candidates who might have been overlooked due to limited experience can now demonstrate their true skills.
This approach also helps verify whether a candidate’s skills align with their resume. Reviewing a candidate’s actual code during interviews enables deeper technical discussions and more precise assessments.
By welcoming less experienced candidates to prove their abilities through Track, DGT has built a reputation as a company that values genuine technical skill over just work history. As a result, more junior engineers with strong confidence in their abilities have applied. Within six months of adopting Track, the number of applicants and interview invitations increased by about 1.3 times.
“Since implementing Track, we’ve seen more applications from junior engineers who may have limited experience but are confident in their skills—and our total number of applicants has grown by about 1.3 times.”
