The Indian hiring team at German Security Tech Company had a problem: their R&D engineers
were too expensive to interview candidates.
Not expensive in salary but expensive in opportunity cost.
For the org, every engineer’s time is tracked in FTE hours, each one tied directly to
product development. When the team is building currency sorting machines and payment
infrastructure for banks, any hour spent interviewing is an hour diverted from engineering
work.
“We have critical projects and tight timelines. We simply can’t afford to pull engineers
away from what they do best.”
But the company had just made a massive business decision: close an overseas R&D center and
move the entire software-heavy product range to India. Build a Global Capability Center from
scratch under the existing mechatronics R&D in Bangalore.
The challenge? They needed to hire an entire software team - architects, developers,
testers, leads, but the technical leadership wasn't based in India yet. The existing
mechatronics team worked on different tech stacks.
So, who would evaluate the candidates?
The Hidden FTE Cost That Was Bleeding R&D Hours
This is not a typical tech company. A 170-year-old global engineering and security-focused
organisation, their Bangalore R&D center had spent the last decade focused on mechatronics,
not software.
When the HR Leadership joined three years ago, the center had 130 people. Hiring wasn't a
pressure point. Attrition was low. They hired freshers as trainees who gradually moved into
positions as they opened up.
The new two-site strategy changed everything overnight.
Here's the math the HR team was staring at: L1 assessment, L2 technical round, sometimes L3.
Three rounds. Multiple engineers pulled from their work. Hours of scheduling, follow-ups,
feedback loops.
“For one candidate, we are investing 5–6 hours. If I involve my own team for every role,
it's a huge cost to R&D.”
Something had to be done.
Why AI Didn’t Make the Cut, and Humans Did
The team explored several assessment platforms. Most offered AI-driven interviews. They
rejected them immediately.
“AI is only as good as the data you feed it. It can grade output, but it can’t judge
reasoning, adaptability, or the ‘why’ behind a candidate’s choices. That’s why having a
human interviewer wasn’t optional but essential.”
They decided to try.
Intervue stood out for 3 reasons:
- Crisp, score-based reports
- Rubric-level customisation
- Reliable support
This wasn’t a tooling choice, it was a leadership decision: replace the cognitive load on
R&D with structured, human-first evaluation.
Building Momentum: The New Hiring Funnel
The hiring funnel today:
- Sourcing
- L1: Intervue technical assessment
- HR check
- L2/L3: Internal technical rounds
If a candidate clears Intervue’s L1, they have a 60 - 70% chance of clearing L2.
“That’s our benchmark. Intervue has evaluated them well. The remaining 30% we do
internally.”
Intervue didn’t replace internal judgment. It frontloaded it.
The Before - After: What Transformed
Before Intervue, the HR team was drowning in logistics. Scheduling. Following up with
candidates. Chasing hiring managers for feedback. Waiting for two-liner emails that would
inevitably get messed up.
Now?
“The workload has decreased significantly and the time-to-hire has improved by 1.5X.
We don’t do follow-ups anymore. We just share the information with the hiring leaders.”
Every morning, the HR leader logs in and checks the dashboard. Recommended or not
recommended. Complete report ready. No chasing. No waiting.
“Even if a candidate scores a two, the report tells us exactly where the gap is. That
helps us fix the sourcing funnel.”
Objectivity matters too.
"We're not seeing any bias because there's a third party involved. It's a very neat and
clean assessment."
Protecting R&D Time = FTE Optimisation
“These are R&D engineers. They’re not trained interviewers. They can talk for two hours and
still reject the candidate.”
Without structure, interviews weren’t just expensive, they were inconsistent.
With Intervue:
- L1 is fully offloaded
- R&D only steps in for L2
- Time-to-hire drops
- Engineers stay focused on products, not interviews
It wasn’t just a hiring fix. It was an FTE optimisation initiative.
Advice to Leaders Scaling GCCs
Protect expert time. Measure FTE Costs.
“Every hour your top engineers spend interviewing is an hour away from product work.
Calculating FTE costs makes the impact instantly clear.”
Choose human-driven over AI
“Hiring is trust-based. AI can score answers, but humans can judge reasoning and fit.”
Look at the full funnel
“Detailed feedback reports help you improve sourcing, not just screen candidates.”
The Bottom Line
The team is scaling a new GCC from scratch, building a software-heavy team inside a
hardware-first company, competing in Bangalore’s unforgiving talent market, all without
burning out R&D experts.
They’re doing it by understanding a simple truth:
Not everyone should be interviewing. Some people should be building.
“Intervue is one of our key partners for this entire transition. They’re supporting us
really well.”
The GCC is growing. The engineers are building. And the HR team isn’t chasing feedback
emails at 9 PM.
That's what winning looks like. The signal is loud & clear.
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