- Technical interview company Karat announced it raised $28 million
- Tiger Global Management led this funding round and existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and 8VC also participated in this round.
Karat, a company that conducts technical interviews on behalf of companies, announced it raised $28 million in funding led by Tiger Global Management. Existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and 8VC also participated in this round.
With this round of funding, Karat is going to globally scale its category-defining solution and its community of Interview Engineers. And Karat is going to invest in R&D to leverage its body of structured-interview intelligence to continuously improve its highly predictive and fair technical interviews for hiring software engineers.
“We tripled the number of interviews Karat conducted last year and will triple again this year,” said Karat co-founder Jeffrey Spector. “With each interview we conduct, Karat is redefining the expectations of what an interview should be. Candidates are now able to interview 24/7, with a professional Interview Engineer, and have an opportunity to redo their interview with us if they felt like they could have performed better. Companies can now pinpoint the candidates who will excel in their environment and finally have the reliable hiring data and benchmarking needed to make strategic C-suite level decisions. With Tiger’s investment, we will double-down on delivering exceptional candidate experiences and providing deep strategic insights to organizations worldwide.”
This round of funding was a milestone for the creation of the Interview Engineering job category. Interview Engineers are experienced software developers who conduct live first-round technical interviews on behalf of companies. And clients are able to access Karat’s global dataset of structured-interview intelligence — which provides hiring analytics and talent-market intelligence to executives.
“Tiger’s investment in Karat is a watershed moment for the profession and science of Interview Engineering,” added Karat co-founder Mohit Bhende. “Just like Back-End engineers do Back-End work and Front-End engineers do Front-End work, companies need Interview Engineers who focus on interviewing with consistency, rigor, and empathy. As every company becomes software-driven, we are seeing the demand for Interview Engineering grow exponentially. Karat is uniquely positioned to address this universal trend and set the gold standard for technical interviewing. In 2019 alone, Karat’s clients will gain over one million engineering hours by accelerating hiring and unlocking developer productivity.”
Karat has become a mission-critical strategic partner for its clients including Roblox, InVision, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. And organizations working with Karat see an average 60% reduction in time spent on interviewing and increase hiring goal attainment by 20%. Plus 95% of candidates report a positive interviewing experience.
“We learned about Karat from several portfolio companies who really like their solution. We believe the Company helps their customers identify great engineering candidates more efficiently. We are excited to partner with Mo, Jeff, and the entire Karat team,” explained Tiger Global Management partner Scott Shleifer.
Karat was founded in 2014 by Bhende and Spector. Bhende used to be an executive at Microsoft and Spector was most recently Chief of Staff to Melinda Gates at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And the two of them determined that interviewing software engineering job candidates is essential capability in a software-driven economy.
“We introduced Karat into our hiring process and saw our year-over-year hiring numbers nearly double. Karat Interview Engineers provide a fantastic first-round technical interview experience that is consistent and makes candidates feel at ease. By the time they come in for their onsite interview with our engineers they are comfortable and able to perform their best,” noted Citrix principal program manager Trish Lincoln.
Interviewing can be a costly tax on developer productivity and most candidates dislike the process of interviewing. And Karat handles these problems head-on by establishing the profession and science of Interview Engineering plus bring highly predictive and fair interviewing to software-driven companies worldwide.
