Ather Craze-a-Thon Hiring Challenge: Finding The Next Gen Of ‘Crazies’

When Ather zipped into existence in 2013, it sought to revolutionize India’s massive two-wheeler market. In the last eight years, the power-packed startup has done just that, launching India’s first truly intelligent electric scooters, the Ather 450 product line. 

Today, the automotive organization–headquartered in Bengaluru–has set up Ather Space in 29 cities and offers Ather merchandise. It also has a comprehensive public charging network, the Ather Grid, to power its product line. 

As it continued to expand its footprint, Ather started looking for the next generation of “crazies” to take its offerings to the next level. What did this mean for its hiring strategy and practices?

In this case study, we explore exactly that, while also understanding how Ather and Unstop partnered together to find tech talent that was a cut above the rest. 

Potholes In The Recruitment Process

Ather, founded by IIT Madras alumni, prides itself on employing people who have a novel way of looking at the world. Thus, when it started hiring for software developers roles in application and mobile app development, data science, and engineering, Ather wanted individuals who were not only technically competent, but also fit for Ather’s culture. 

Ather looked to final-year undergraduates from engineering colleges (2022 and 2021 batches) for its hiring needs. But it soon realized that traditional practices that restrict themselves to shortlisting candidates on the basis of their resumes and technical knowledge alone, would not suffice. 

What Ather required were comprehensive assessment rounds and detailed interviews to find the next batch of Ather employees. What Ather needed was a platform that was an expert in connecting the right talent with the right opportunities aka Unstop. 

Solving For The Speed Bumps With Unstop

When Ather came to Unstop to address its offbeat recruitment needs, the Unstop team decided to tap into its rich experience of revolutionizing recruitment and craft a novel solution. The result - Craze-a-Thon hiring. 

Craze-a-Thon was an Ather Hiring Challenge comprising a five-round long recruitment process that tested candidates’ technical prowess and cultural fit. Each round was eliminatory and tested particular skill sets. Here’s a look at the rounds:

MCQ Round: The 60-minute-long round tested students on logical reasoning, aptitude, and coding. 

Coding Assessment: Shortlisted candidates from the MCQ round underwent a competitive programming challenge to test their basic coding skills. 

Application-Based Problem Statements: Candidates were further shortlisted and tasked with solving three problem statements. The shortlisted candidates had to select one of the three problem statements and follow the instructions to write the code. 

Interviews: The shortlisted students got an opportunity to showcase their technical skills, teamwork abilities and their passions through in-depth conversations on their projects and fundamentals, with panelists from Ather’s functional and people operations teams. 

Cultural Interviews: Finally, the candidates shortlisted from Technical Interviews were interviewed by the panel members from Ather's recruitment Team. This was to ensure the candidates were the right fit, culturally, for Ather. 

Not only did Unstop help Ather devise a comprehensive hiring challenge, but it also ensured that the detailed recruitment process progressed without a hitch. 

To streamline the process for all involved parties, all three technical assessment rounds were conducted on the Unstop platform. What’s more, even the results of the interviews were announced on Unstop. 

Result - Speeding To Success

Unstop crafted a hiring challenge that offered a seamless experience to both, Ather and the candidates. And the results speak for themselves. 

• Ather reached 21 lakh engineers through the craze-a-thon hiring challenge. 
• 26,000+ individuals, including 8,726 women, registered for the challenge to land a job at the automotive startup with a salary of INR 6-12 LPA. 
• Ather managed to expand its brand awareness and increase its social currency through interactive content on social media channels like LinkedIn and Instagram. 
• The talented pool of fresher engineers competed in a fair but stringent recruitment process - with 49 candidates making it to the final round, the cultural interview. 

Ather was able to meet its hiring goals through the tailored solution that Unstop provided. 

If you too are looking for the same, contact us at coffee@unstop.com and we can help organize a hiring hackathon or other engagement to meet your hiring goals.