Recruitment start-up HackerRank announced yesterday that it has hired former Facebook and Google executive Grady Burnett as its President and COO, reports livemint.com. The company is jointly headquartered in Bengaluru and California. 

The company, which received USD 7.5 million in funding from Japanese recruitment firm Recruit Holdings’ HR technology fund in July, allows companies to set up coding challenges on its platform. HackerRank then automatically evaluates the code submitted by a programmer/jobseeker and ranks the submissions. This allows companies to hire purely on the basis of skill sets.

Vivek Ravinsankar, CEO of HackerRank, commented: “As we continue to help make the world flat by ranking programmers purely based on skill, it was crucial for us to bring on Grady, an expert in global sales and operations, to work with the HackerRank team and further accelerate our growth worldwide.”

Mr Burnett, who will be based in California, added: “Having built high performing teams of thousands of people at Facebook, Google, DoubleClick and Flurry, I’ve personally seen the holes in the traditional hiring process. In the past, we used blunt credentials like GPA or school to filter through high volumes of candidates. But these filters consistently leave out diamonds in the rough. Because HackerRank ranks programmers by coding skills, we democratise hiring and create opportunities for people from all walks of life.”