Sansan Inc.

Sansan has grown rapidly since its founding. In 2016, the company decided to double its hiring to further boost its product value. The HR team launched various recruitment initiatives, such as the “Sansan Recruit Event”. However, new challenges soon emerged. To improve the candidate experience, Sansan adopted Track Test as part of its recruiting process.

The Challenge

The company’s commitment to evaluating technical skills was not clearly communicated,
leading to losing out to competitors in the new graduate hiring market.
Due to a highly personalized and inconsistent selection process, the offer acceptance rate remained low.
At our company, we look to hire people who want to create value through technology and make an impact on society.

In our hiring process, we place great importance on whether candidates can think about why they use technology. However, when it comes to new graduates, we face strong competition from other companies targeting the same talent, which has resulted in a declining offer acceptance rate.

For the 2019 graduate class, even though we made three times as many offers as the previous year, the number of acceptances only doubled — bringing the acceptance rate down to nearly half of what it usually was.

To identify the reasons behind the declining acceptance rate, we interviewed several students who had turned down our offers. The feedback was strikingly similar:
“The company’s mission was emphasized too strongly, but there was little communication about its engineering policies or technical philosophy.”
“Questions varied greatly depending on the interviewer, and the focus was mostly on personal aspirations rather than skills.”
This clearly showed that our selection process had become too dependent on individual recruiters.

“Compared to other companies, it didn’t feel like my technical skills were really being assessed. Candidates were worried about whether I could develop my engineering career after joining.”

Hearing this directly from students made us realize we needed to better convey how much we value technical excellence.

While researching possible solutions, we came across Track, an online coding test platform. We thought that by properly implementing coding assessments, we could better demonstrate Sansan’s commitment to technology.
After discussing the benefits of using Track for hiring with our CTO, VPoE, and Head of HR, everyone quickly agreed, and the adoption process went smoothly.

Sansan’s commitment to assessing technical skills was not communicated clearly, and it led to losing top new graduate talent to competitors.
A highly personalized and inconsistent interview process also resulted in a lower offer acceptance rate.

Sansan aims to hire people who want to create value through technology and make a real impact on society. To do this, it places strong emphasis on whether candidates understand the purpose behind their technology.

However, this approach alone was not enough in the competitive new graduate market. For the 2019 cohort, despite making three times as many offers as the previous year, the number of acceptances only doubled, cutting the acceptance rate nearly in half.

The team interviewed several students who turned down offers to find out the reasons, and the feedback was consistent:

• “The company’s mission was emphasized too much, but its engineering philosophy and technical approach weren’t communicated enough.”
• “Questions varied too much between interviewers and focused more on personal goals than technical skills.”
• This highlighted that the selection process was too dependent on individual interviewers.

One student said, “Compared to other companies, it didn’t feel like my technical skills were being evaluated, which made me worry about my career growth as an engineer.” Sansan realizes that the needs to better showcase its dedication to technical excellence.

The team found Track Test, an online coding test platform. Sansan saw an opportunity to demonstrate its technical focus with Track Test. After presenting the idea to the CTO, VPoE, and Head of HR, everyone agreed on the great solution.

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The Solution

Sansan was able to show its commitment to evaluating technical skills and to unify previously inconsistent evaluation standards by having coding tests and in-depth code reviews in its interviews.

Candidates now take a coding test on Track Test before their first interview. In the interview, engineers use the results to dig deeper and ask targeted technical questions.

Previously, Sansan relied on students bringing in their own projects or code samples, but this varied greatly and made it hard to assess candidates consistently. The team now has a clear standard and can have deeper and more meaningful technical discussions was a major benefit.

“Having a consistent standard while being able to explore how candidates think as engineers is a huge advantage.”

Feedback from interviewers now frequently includes comments like, “When I asked about this part of their code test…”, showing how Track Test’s results are now integral to understanding each candidate’s technical thinking and decision-making. Track Test results have naturally become part of the final hiring decision process.

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The Impact

With this new approach, Sansan has built a screening process that communicates its commitment to technical excellence, and it is greatly improving the candidate experience. No students have turned down an interview because of the Track Test. On the contrary, it helps candidates see Sansan as a company that truly values engineers’ skills.

The biggest benefit is that interviews now allow for deeper technical discussions based on candidates’ actual code, leading to more accurate evaluations. Encouragingly, successful candidates have shared feedback such as: “I felt my technical skills were properly assessed”.

Based on these positive results, Sansan plans to continue using Track Test to strengthen its hiring process.

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“Candidates who pass the selection process have said they feel their technical skills are properly assessed.”

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