How Netconomy reduced phone interview time by 53% and improved hiring effectiveness by 86% for specialized tech roles

The candidates they needed were rare. Their process made them even harder to find.

Netconomy is a software development and digital commerce consultancy based in Graz, Austria. Netconomy builds and implements digital commerce platforms for enterprise clients. The work is technically complex and client-facing, which means the people doing it need to understand both. An engineer who cannot engage with a client brief or grasp the business problem behind a platform requirement is not the right hire, regardless of their technical credentials. In specialisms like SAP Customer Experience and Google Cloud Platform, finding candidates who can do both is genuinely difficult.

Their hiring process had no way to test for it. Resumes and phone screens surfaced technical credentials but gave no reliable signal on whether a candidate could apply that knowledge in a business context or adapt as the technology evolved. Every specialized role started from scratch: no structured framework to evaluate the dual competency, no consistent benchmark to compare candidates against, and screening that consumed significant recruiter time before anyone worth interviewing was reached.

“Finding someone who understands both the technology and the business problem it’s solving, that’s the hardest part of hiring in this space. Our old process just wasn’t designed to test for that.”

CHRO, Netconomy

How Testlify was implemented

Coding challenges and business scenarios, both assessed before the first conversation.

Netconomy used Testlify to build tailored assessments for each role. For technical ability, candidates completed coding challenges relevant to the specific platforms and tools the position required. For business acumen, scenario-based questions tested how candidates reasoned through real client problems, not just whether they knew the theory. The two combined gave the hiring team a view of each candidate that resumes and phone screens never could.

Assessments were created and distributed through Testlify’s interface, which integrated with Netconomy’s existing recruitment tools without changing how the team worked. Hiring managers reviewed results and compared candidates without adding new systems or administrative overhead. Candidates responded positively as well, finding the assessments relevant to the actual work and seeing them as an opportunity to demonstrate real capability rather than answer generic questions.

Results

Less time on the wrong candidates. Better decisions on the right ones.

Phone interview time dropped 53%. Time to candidate activation fell 47%. Hiring effectiveness improved 86%, the result of a process that filtered on actual capability before any recruiter time was spent. The team stopped working through candidates who looked right and started working with candidates who had already shown they were.

“For the first time, we could look at two candidates side by side and make a decision based on what they could actually do, not decide based on resumes.”

CHRO, Netconomy