First Offer in
5 Days
How a Series B fintech startup in Bangalore cut time-to-offer from 21 days to 5, freed founders from 15 hours/week of screening, and raised offer acceptance to 82%.
Company
Series B Fintech
Location
Bangalore, India
Engineers
42
Annual Hiring
30–40
Company Profile
| Type | Fintech Startup |
| Stage | Series B (₹28M raised) |
| Location | Bangalore, India |
| Headcount | 85 employees |
| Engineering Team | 42 engineers |
| Annual Hiring Goal | 30–40 engineers |
| Roles | Full-Stack, Backend, Mobile, Data |
Company name withheld at client request.
The Challenge
Speed Kills (When You Don’t Have It)
The startup was growing fast. Series B closed, runway extended, hiring plan approved. They needed to double the engineering team in 12 months.
There was one problem: they kept losing candidates.
“We’d find someone great, run them through our process, and by the time we made an offer, they’d already accepted somewhere else. We were always a week too late.”
— CTO
The Old Process
Their interview process was thorough — maybe too thorough:
Old Process — 21 Days
In a market where top candidates have 3–5 active offers, 21 days is a lifetime.
The Founder Bottleneck
The founders insisted on meeting every engineering hire. With two founders and 40 hiring interviews per quarter, calendar availability became the rate limiter.
“I believe in founder involvement in hiring. But I was spending 15 hours a week on screening calls and first-round interviews. That’s not sustainable.”
— CEO
The Metrics Before LayersRank
| Metric | Baseline |
|---|---|
| Time to first offer | 21 days |
| Founder hours on hiring/week | 15 hours |
| Offer acceptance rate | 65% |
| Candidates lost to faster competitors | ~40% |
| Recruiter capacity | 8 hires/quarter |
The Solution
The Insight
The CTO realized something: most of those 21 days weren’t evaluation time. They were waiting time.
Actual evaluation took maybe 4–5 hours spread across 3 weeks. The rest was scheduling overhead.
Why LayersRank
LayersRank offered a way to front-load evaluation without calendar dependencies:
Async assessment
Candidates complete on their own time, no scheduling.
AI first-round
No interviewer bottleneck for screening.
Comprehensive reports
Founders review reports instead of conducting screens.
Faster signal
Know within 48 hours if someone is worth pursuing.
“The pitch that sold me was simple: What if you could know, within 2 days of application, whether this person is likely to get an offer? You’d move heaven and earth to close them fast.”
— CTO
The New Process
Before — 21 Days
After — 5 Days
What Changed
The Bet
The founders were skeptical. Could an AI assessment really replace their phone screens?
They ran a test: For 20 candidates, they did both — LayersRank assessment AND traditional founder phone screen. They compared:
Validation Results
LayersRank recommendation vs. founder recommendation: 85% agreement
For the 15% disagreement, they tracked outcomes: LayersRank was right more often.
“That test convinced me. The AI wasn’t just as good as my phone screens. It was more consistent. I have bad days. The AI doesn’t.”
— CEO
The Results
Time to First Offer
Before
21 days
→
After
5 days
Founder Hours/Week
Before
15 hours
→
After
3 hours
Offer Acceptance
Before
65%
→
After
82%
Time to First Offer: 21 days → 5 days
The compression was dramatic. Candidates who applied on Monday could have offers by Friday.
This changed the competitive dynamic entirely. Instead of being the slow option, they became the fast one.
“Candidates started telling us, ‘You’re the first company to make me an offer.’ That’s a huge advantage. The first offer anchors the negotiation.”
— Head of Recruiting
Founder Time: 15 hours → 3 hours/week
Founders stopped doing screening calls. They reviewed LayersRank reports (15 min each) and did final conversations only with pre-qualified candidates.
Before
15 hours/week
Screens + interviews + debriefs
After
3 hours/week
Report reviews + final conversations
The CTO got 12 hours per week back — time that went into product, architecture, and team leadership.
Offer Acceptance: 65% → 82%
Speed improved acceptance rates. Candidates who received fast offers were more likely to accept.
But it wasn’t just speed. The process itself impressed candidates.
“We heard feedback like ‘Your process was so professional’ and ‘I felt fairly evaluated.’ The assessment experience was better than our old phone screens.”
— Head of Recruiting
Full Results Summary
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first offer | 21 days | 5 days | -76% |
| Founder hours/week | 15 hours | 3 hours | -80% |
| Offer acceptance rate | 65% | 82% | +26% |
| Candidates lost to competitors | ~40% | ~15% | -63% |
| Hires per quarter | 8 | 12 | +50% |
Key Learnings
What Worked
Compressing the timeline ruthlessly.
Every day in the process was questioned. "Does this add signal? Can we get the same signal faster?" If the answer was no, they cut it.
Treating founder time as the scarcest resource.
The insight that founder hours were the bottleneck led to restructuring the entire process around minimizing founder involvement in early stages.
Using AI reports as a collaboration tool.
Founders and hiring managers reviewed the same reports, with the same data. Hiring decisions became discussions about evidence, not debates about impressions.
Measuring candidate experience.
They surveyed candidates about the assessment experience. Feedback was positive — candidates appreciated the flexibility and fairness. This validated that speed didn’t sacrifice experience.
What They’d Do Differently
The Candidate Perspective
“I applied on Tuesday, did the assessment Wednesday evening, and had an offer by Friday. I’d never experienced anything like it. Most companies take 3–4 weeks just to schedule a first call.”
— Backend Engineer, hired
“The assessment was actually harder than most phone screens I’ve done. But it felt fairer. I could take my time, think through my answers, and demonstrate what I actually know.”
— Full-Stack Engineer, hired
“I was interviewing at four companies. [This company] was the first to make me an offer — by over a week. That definitely influenced my decision. Speed signals that they have their act together.”
— Mobile Engineer, hired
Technical Implementation
Integration
- ATS: Lever
- Calendar: Google Calendar
- Comms: Slack notifications
- Scheduling: Calendly (final rounds)
Configuration
- Roles: 4 configured
- Questions: 9 per assessment
- Duration: 50–65 min (self-paced)
- Auto-invite: On application
Adoption (6 Months)
- Sent: 312 assessments
- Completion rate: 84%
- Avg time: 54 minutes
- Satisfaction: 4.2/5.0
Workflow Automation
- Auto-trigger LayersRank invitation
- Report generated
- Slack notification to hiring manager + founder
- Score ≥ 70: Auto-schedule final round (Calendly)
- Score 60–69: Manual review, hiring manager decision
- Score < 60: Auto-rejection email (personalized)
ROI Summary
Investment
| LayersRank subscription (Growth plan) | ₹4,80,000 |
| Implementation | ₹50,000 (one-time) |
| Total Year 1 | ₹5,30,000 |
Returns (Annual)
| Founder time saved | ₹30,00,000 |
| Additional hires closed | ₹24,00,000 |
| Faster time-to-productivity | ₹8,00,000 |
| Total Annual Value | ₹62,00,000 |
Year 1 ROI
1,070%
Payback period: < 1 month
Founder Perspective
“We went from losing candidates to being the first offer on their table. That changes everything.
When you’re competing against Google, Amazon, and well-funded startups for the same talent, you need an edge. For us, that edge is speed. We can’t outpay the big companies. But we can out-execute them.
LayersRank gave us back time AND made us faster. That’s rare. Usually you trade one for the other.”
— CTO & Co-founder
Related Resources
This case study is based on a real LayersRank deployment at a Series B fintech startup in Bangalore. Metrics are actual client data. Company name and identifying details withheld at client request.
For questions about this case study or to discuss how LayersRank could help your startup hire faster, contact info@the-algo.com
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