Hiring for Hypergrowth: Screening 200 CVs to Find One Perfect Hire

Most founders hire too quickly. They get a few promising CVs, interview a handful of candidates, and make a decision within weeks.

Barak Glanz takes a different approach. For every role at Coddy, his team reviews hundreds of CVs, conducts dozens of phone screens, and puts candidates through multiple rounds of interviews and home assignments before making an offer.

On a recent episode of the Levels Podcast, Barak walked through his detailed hiring process—one that might sound excessive until you realize that Coddy scaled to $1M ARR and 2 million users with a lean team of just seven full-time employees.

For founders looking to build high-performing teams, Barak's process offers a masterclass in thorough evaluation.

The Numbers: A Hiring Funnel

When asked about their hiring process, Barak laid out the exact funnel for a typical role:

"Let's say I get 200 CVs. Of them, I call on the phone to like 80 people for like a quick screening. And then of them, I guess like 40, I hop into an interview on Google Meet and then I send them like a home assignment to out of the 80, I would say like 20 gets the home assignment. And then I do another interview to about 10 of them. And from them, something like five goes to my office for a physical interview. And I pick one for the job."

Breaking this down:

• 200 CVs received
• 80 initial phone screens
• 40 video interviews
• 20 home assignments sent
• 10 post-assignment interviews
• 5 in-person finals
• 1 offer made

That's a 0.5% conversion rate from application to hire. For context, most startups probably interview 5-10 candidates total for each role.

Jason, one of the podcast hosts, admitted his own hiring process was far less rigorous:

"I probably got on the phone with like 10 and then I gave a home assignment to like four and then I picked one and it was just like, you know, the numbers were just so small and so amateurish compared to what they should be."

The difference in outcomes? Coddy consistently finds exceptional talent. Founders with less thorough processes get lucky sometimes, but they also make expensive mistakes.

Why This Level of Rigor Matters

Barak's philosophy is straightforward:

"The more important the position is, the more attention you need to pay to who you pick."

For junior roles where the impact is limited and mistakes are correctable, a simpler process might suffice. But for roles that will shape the company's trajectory—team leads, department heads, specialized experts—thorough evaluation isn't optional.

The stakes are particularly high in small teams. At seven full-time employees, every hire represents a significant percentage of the total workforce. A bad hire doesn't just underperform—they actively drain resources and attention from the entire organization.

Beyond individual performance, Barak emphasized another critical consideration:

"You also need to talk with their previous boss. You know what mean? It goes a long way."

Reference checks aren't just box-checking exercises. They're opportunities to understand how candidates actually performed in previous roles, how they handled challenges, and whether their story matches reality.

The Importance of Co-Founders First

Before diving deeper into hiring employees, Barak highlighted something even more fundamental:

"The most important thing is actually not to pick the right employees, is to pick the right co-founders."

This matters because co-founders multiply your capacity to hire well. With three co-founders at Coddy, Barak doesn't have to personally conduct all 80 phone screens himself—his partners share the load.

Paul Graham and Y Combinator consistently cite co-founder breakups as the number one cause of startup failure. Barak's experience building Coddy with childhood friends illustrates why strong co-founder relationships matter:

"This is not our first company together. Our previous startup was also together and it failed horribly, right? But we felt that we have a very good synergy and we knew back then that we're going to continue to work together at least for a long time."

Having co-founders who've weathered failure together and emerged still wanting to work together is a massive competitive advantage—one that pays dividends through every subsequent challenge, including hiring.

Structuring Home Assignments

Home assignments serve two purposes: evaluating technical skills and revealing how candidates approach problems. Barak's assignments include both analytical and interpersonal components:

"I include an analytical part, which is like a lot of math and statistics and stuff like that, and I also include a more humane part, you know. I try to understand how they work with other people, what their view is on certain things, how much experience they have with like social challenges in previous workplaces."

But here's the clever part—Barak adds one question to every assignment that reveals more than any coding challenge could:

"I ask them where and how they used AI to solve the challenges. Because I want someone to work for me to use a lot of AI. And I also want them to be honest with me how they solve challenges."

This question serves multiple functions simultaneously. It tests honesty—candidates who used AI extensively but claim they didn't immediately disqualify themselves. It tests technical sophistication—using AI effectively requires understanding what you're asking for and how to evaluate outputs. And it tests self-awareness—good candidates can articulate their process clearly.

The assignments themselves are designed to be unsolvable by simply pasting prompts into ChatGPT:

"The whole assignment that I give, it's not possible to just give it to AI and it will solve everything perfectly. It's more complicated than that. But even if AI was used a lot, you need to understand how the AI solved it, right?"

This approach reflects a mature view of AI in the workplace. Rather than trying to prevent its use, Coddy embraces it while ensuring candidates understand the outputs they're submitting.

Technical Interviews: A Different Beast

Barak acknowledged that his background in competitive programming gives him an advantage in technical interviews:

"With technical interviews, I did a lot of leet code back in the day. I was in my university team for competitive programming. So I'm really, really good at technical interviews. That's how I got into meta. I work for Facebook just because they were really impressed with how I solve all of their challenges in the interviews."

But he recognized that evaluating non-technical roles requires different skills:

"To interview someone who's not on a fully technical position, it's different."

The key is identifying what success looks like in each specific role, then designing interview questions around those scenarios:

"I try to understand what could be a possible scenario that they will face on the job that will be very important that they will act the way I want them to. And this is what I try to really understand when I interview them."

Rather than generic questions about strengths and weaknesses, this approach grounds evaluation in concrete, role-specific situations.

Building Internal Infrastructure

Coddy's technical co-founders built their hiring infrastructure in-house rather than using third-party applicant tracking systems:

"We do most of the things in house. I don't know if I suggest anyone to do that, but my co-founders are like super nerds, you know, they like building everything."

Their system assigns random keys to users at registration, then uses those keys for organizing candidates and tracking them through the hiring funnel.

While Barak doesn't necessarily recommend this approach for everyone—off-the-shelf tools exist for good reasons—it demonstrates the level of systematic thinking they apply to hiring. Every candidate moves through a defined process with clear decision points.

The Culture Fit Element

Beyond skills and experience, Barak emphasized that he views employees as family:

"After I pick the best one for the job, I make it work for them to put a lot of effort and I try to develop them. I kind of look at them as my children, you know? But it's true. I really care about them. They're like my family."

This isn't just feel-good rhetoric. When you invest this much time in hiring, you develop genuine relationships with the people you bring on. The extensive evaluation process ensures you're not just finding someone competent—you're finding someone you want to work closely with for years.

That emotional investment creates mutual commitment:

"I guess they care about Coddy as much as I do."

Employees who go through a rigorous hiring process and receive genuine investment in their development tend to reciprocate with loyalty and exceptional effort.

When to Invest Less

Barak's process isn't one-size-fits-all. The rigor scales with the importance of the role:

"If you hire someone very junior, I guess it wouldn't have that much impact if you hire someone that, I don't know, isn't familiar with all of the libraries or, I don't know, don't have a lot of experience with the specific product that you're developing."

For junior positions where mistakes are correctable and the scope of responsibility is limited, a streamlined process makes sense. The cost of a suboptimal junior hire is measured in productivity. The cost of a bad senior hire can sink departments or derail strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Rigorous hiring processes screening hundreds of candidates aren't excessive—they're how lean teams consistently find exceptional talent
• Every position should have a structured funnel: phone screens, video interviews, home assignments, post-assignment interviews, and in-person finals
• Home assignments should test both technical and interpersonal skills while being unsolvable through AI alone
• Ask candidates explicitly about their AI usage—you want employees who use AI effectively and honestly, not those who try to hide it
• Reference checks with previous managers reveal how candidates actually performed, not just how they interview
• Picking the right co-founders matters more than any subsequent hiring decision—co-founder breakups are the primary cause of startup failure
• Scale hiring rigor to position importance: senior roles demand exhaustive evaluation, junior roles can be faster
• Viewing employees as team members you'll invest in long-term creates mutual commitment and exceptional performance

Listen to the full conversation with Barak Glanz on the Levels Podcast to hear more about how Coddy built a world-class team while scaling to millions of users.