Case Study: Looker scales technical hiring and saves 12 hours/week per hiring manager with HackerRank

How Looker Evaluates Skills First to Foster World Class Technical Talent

Looker, a data-first business intelligence platform that grew from about 150 to 400 employees, faced a hiring crisis as it tried to rapidly expand its technical teams. The recruiting process was unstandardized, hiring managers were misaligned on skills and scoring, and engineers spent disproportionate time on manual screening and interviewing unqualified candidates—creating a bottleneck that put growth at risk.

Looker partnered with HackerRank to implement skills-first technical assessments (including a “Looker College Challenge” and a standardized 30‑minute SQL test), which benchmarked candidates early and aligned the whole team. The change saved hiring managers an average of 12 hours per week, improved candidate quality for onsite interviews, streamlined university recruiting, and extended to 20+ technical roles—helping scale teams (some nearly 3x) while keeping hiring standards high.

Looker

Jen Rettig

Director of Engineering Delaney Parker