How Growzilla hired 20 technically strong engineers and cut recruitment cycle time by 86% with real-world coding assessments

Projects were slipping. The hiring process was why.

Growzilla builds software products, and its engineering team is the core of how the company delivers. When technical roles went unfilled or were filled by people who could not perform to the standard the work required, the impact was immediate: project timelines stretched, existing engineers absorbed extra load, and delivery commitments to clients became harder to keep.

The hiring team was relying on resumes and interviews to evaluate engineering candidates. Neither told them what they needed to know. A resume could list any technology stack. An interview could produce a confident-sounding answer about a candidate’s experience without revealing whether they could actually write the code. The team had no way to assess practical problem-solving ability before making a hire, and the pattern of mismatched hires showed it.

Without a standardized evaluation process, different hiring managers were also applying different standards. Candidate comparisons were inconsistent, decisions were harder to justify, and the recruitment cycle was long enough that good candidates were being lost to faster-moving competitors.

“We were hiring people based on how well they talked about coding, not how well they could actually do it. By the time we found out, the project was already behind.”

Talent leader, Growzilla

How Testlify was implemented

Scenario-based coding tests that showed how candidates worked before the first interview

Growzilla used Testlify to build technical assessments tailored to the specific requirements of each engineering role. The assessments were built around real-world scenarios, practical coding challenges, and collaborative problem-solving tasks that reflected the kind of work each role would actually involve. Rather than testing theoretical knowledge, the team could see how candidates approached problems and applied their skills under conditions close to the job itself.

Automated screening meant unqualified candidates were filtered out before any recruiter or engineering lead invested time in them. Detailed performance reports gave the hiring team a clear breakdown of each candidate’s results, so shortlisting decisions were based on demonstrated ability rather than resume claims. The entire workflow ran from one platform without adding complexity to how the team operated.

The outcome was 20 technically strong hires who performed to expectation from day one. Project execution improved, the burden on existing engineers eased, and the hiring team had a repeatable process they could use for future technical roles.

“For the first time we could see exactly how a candidate thought through a problem before we hired them. The quality of engineers we brought on completely changed.”

Talent leader, Growzilla