How Covalent Systems used video interviews and technical assessments to cut phone screening time by 77%

Too many applications, too much coordination, not enough signal

Covalent Systems is an IT services and consulting firm based in High Wycombe, England. Hiring technical talent across time zones with high application volumes had turned their recruitment process into a scheduling problem as much as a quality problem. Both needed fixing.

Covalent Systems hires for technical roles across a distributed talent pool. When application volumes are high and candidates sit in different time zones, the logistics of scheduling alone become a drag on hiring speed. A recruiter trying to coordinate a phone screen between a hiring manager in England and a candidate three time zones away is spending time that should not need to be spent at all.

Beyond logistics, the quality of evaluation was inconsistent. Resume screening gave the team a starting point, but no reliable way to verify whether a candidate had the technical skills the role required. 

Different hiring managers applied different standards in interviews, which made comparing candidates across the pipeline difficult. Decisions were made on subjective impressions rather than shared criteria, and the outcomes reflected it.

For a company competing for technical talent in the IT consulting space, a hiring process that was slow to move and inconsistent in its judgments was costing them candidates they should have been closing faster.

“We were losing time to scheduling and losing confidence in our decisions because everyone was evaluating differently. There was no shared baseline for what a good candidate actually looked like.”

Recruiter, Covalent Systems

How Testlify was implemented

Video interviews that candidates complete on their own time. Technical tests that filter before anyone picks up the phone.

Covalent Systems adopted Testlify’s one-way video interview feature as the first fix to the scheduling problem. Rather than coordinating live calls across time zones, candidates recorded responses to set questions at a time that suited them. Hiring managers reviewed recordings on their own schedule, removing the back-and-forth that had slowed the early stages of every hire. The time zone issue stopped being a constraint.

Alongside video, the team built role-specific technical assessments for each position. Candidates completed coding and technical knowledge tests before any live interaction took place. Only those who cleared the technical bar moved to the next stage, which meant hiring managers were spending their time on candidates who had already demonstrated they could do the work.

A shared scoring dashboard gave the entire recruitment team access to the same performance data, so candidate comparisons were grounded in consistent criteria rather than individual impressions. Hiring decisions became faster and easier to justify.

“The combination of video responses and technical scores meant we knew far more about a candidate before our first conversation than we ever had before. It changed how we used interview time completely.”

Recruiter, Covalent Systems