How the German startup Klar hired 5 developers in a year with OfferZen

With many developers already inundated with messages on various hiring platforms, reaching out to great developers can feel like shouting into the void. Klar is a startup headquartered in Munich, building the data operating system to grow eCommerce businesses profitably. Here’s how they were able to tap into OfferZen’s responsive pool of developers and make 5 hires within one year.

Check out the full case study here!

Addressing Klar’s hiring challenges

Finding job-seeking developers with the right skills

For a growing startup like Klar, quickly finding the right people to scale your team can be an ongoing challenge. In particular, Klar found it difficult to pinpoint interested developers on LinkedIn who had the right skills and were job seeking:

“We basically had to approach people via ‘cold call’ over LinkedIn,” says Frank Birzle, Co-founder of Klar. “We had to then figure out if that person is actually working with the technology that we’re interested in, which is mostly not the case. We also came across a lot of fake profiles. It was like finding a needle in the haystack.”

Since using OfferZen, they’ve reported seeing great improvements in the conversion rate of candidates that progress through their hiring process:

“When we started with OfferZen, we didn't have any more fake profiles, and all candidates arrived for their interviews. The process was completely streamlined — it felt like such a big change to us, which made it a no-brainer to use OfferZen.”

Plus, the German based team was able to tap into OfferZen’s unique global talent pool. As Klar is both hiring developers remotely and relocating them to Germany, they can get full advantage of OfferZen’s marketplace, which give them access to hundreds of developers based both in Germany and South Africa.

“With OfferZen we could access a big candidate pool in South Africa. We’ve all worked in South Africa before and know the skill and qualification level that we would find, and it just works from a culture fit point of view,” says Frank.

Here’s what developers on the Klar team have to say about interviewing and working at the startup:

“What excites me the most about working for Klar is the opportunity to work with, and learn from, people that are really knowledgeable and passionate. The tech stack is cool and relevant, and I feel like the work I do has a very immediate impact on our end users. The interview process was great. Communication during the entire process was excellent, and I always received speedy responses to my questions.”

-- Jacob, Systems Engineer

Accelerating the speed of the hiring process

Besides being able to find the right fit for their team, several features on OfferZen helped Klar ramp up the speed at which they were hiring. This included the ability to easily filter for qualifications, and create a shortlist of candidates:

“It's easy to filter and search through the candidate marketplace to find the candidates suited for that role. We can specify the technical qualifications that we are looking for, seniority level, salary, and more,” says Frank. “The biggest advantage is how easily I can find matches. It’s also easy to communicate with the candidates via the platform.”

Candidate profiles on OfferZen also feature a summary of what developers are looking for in their next jobs.

“Knowing what developers look for in their next job helps in avoiding a bit of trial and error. For example, if someone says they don’t want to work for an early-stage startup, we know not to approach them. This curation of information really helps us not wasting time in the hiring process.”

Once they found the perfect match, Frank is able to leverage readily available message templates to quickly reach out to his shortlist, instead of writing each message from scratch:

“I refined my template in the beginning quite a bit and also the initial message. Now I'm screening the candidate and just hitting send. It's a very straightforward process.”

Lastly, they received feedback from developers in their pipeline that it was easy to supply the team with everything they needed to know. “OfferZen’s approach to standardising candidate’s details is very easy and helps the candidates a lot to fill in all their information quickly,” says Frank.

Saving on cost per hire with subscriptions

When they first started growing their tech team, Klar were spending a lot of their hiring budget on paid campaigns and paying upwards of 26% per hire to headhunters. That was significantly reduced when switching to a subscription plan on OfferZen.

“If you have an ongoing hiring need, then it's a no-brainer to subscribe to this model. If you compare the total costs to company with classical headhunting models, business models, or even just the fees that you would have to pay for placing job ads on the different platforms like LinkedIn, and sponsoring newsletters, it will be cheaper if you can fill all those role on OfferZen,” says Frank.

Want to start saving on hiring costs and make unlimited developer hires at a flat rate? On an OfferZen subscription plan, you can make unlimited developer hires and avoid paying individual, varying hiring fees for every hire. Learn more.

Dedicated support during the hiring process

As they continued using the platform to hire, Klar received hands-on support from their Account Manager, Derrick Lanor. Account Managers at OfferZen help companies hire the right talent by advising on successful hiring strategies, sharing benchmark data and best practices.

“Our Account Manager, Derrick, has always been very responsive. If I had any issues, within the next 15 minutes, I'll receive an answer from him,” says Frank.

He could also provide the Klar team with tailored insights and recommended next steps for every developer in their pipeline:

“For example, he let us know whenever a candidate was very popular on the platform, and let us know when we had to accelerate our own process. On the other hand, OfferZen’s team also reminded candidates when they had coding challenges pending. That’s the type of service you usually wouldn't get elsewhere.”

The results

Klar have successfully hired 5 developers on OfferZen, and achieved a higher conversion rate during their hiring process in comparison to their previous hiring solutions:

“On other platforms, we had something like a 1-5% conversion rate for outreach. On OfferZen, let’s say I'm inviting 10 people to interview: Around 8 of those people usually reply. I have a much higher success rate when it comes to outreach. And the people we hired via OfferZen are all still on board. Without those people, we could not have built Klar.”

Are you hiring software developers? OfferZen is a curated developer hiring marketplace that connects job-seeking developers with exciting opportunities at over 2000 companies in South Africa and beyond.

Hiring teams can make unlimited hires across all the roles on OfferZen, saving up to 50% compared to traditional recruitment costs.