Case Study: Growing an Engineering Team at Certn
About Certn:
Certn is a global technology company providing identity verification and background screening solutions to organizations worldwide. Through innovative technology and automation, Certn helps businesses streamline compliance, reduce risk, and make confident hiring decisions at scale.
10
Hires made
35.4
Days average time to hire
192k
Savings Vs Agency
The challenge
Certn needed to make a series of engineering hires at pace to support ongoing product development and hit key milestones. Engineering hiring is inherently complex, often involving longer timelines, technical interviews, and senior stakeholder involvement. In this case, speed was essential.
At the time, Certn was working with an external agency that was not delivering the outcomes required. The interview process was creating friction, with a high number of candidates progressing through early stages only to fail at the technical interview. This resulted in wasted executive time, slower progress, and frustration for both hiring teams and candidates.
In addition, there was a preference to hire locally in Calgary where possible, further narrowing the available talent pool for already hard to fill engineering roles.
“Scaling an engineering team quickly requires close coordination between engineering, People and recruitment. HighlightTA operated as a true extension of our team, taking the time to understand how we work and what we look for in engineers. That partnership made it easier to move quickly while still maintaining the high technical bar we expect.”
Key challenges
Hiring multiple engineering roles under tight timelines
Rebuilding alignment and process clarity for hiring teams after unsuccessful external recruitment efforts
Reducing drop off at the technical interview stage
Balancing speed with technical quality and executive involvement
Hiring within a preferred local market while remaining flexible
Scaling recruitment effort without overwhelming interview teams
The delivery
HighlightTA partnered closely with Certn’s engineering and People and Culture leadership to redesign the hiring approach and improve outcomes.
Reworking the interview process
The first step was to assess where candidates were being filtered out. Data showed strong pass rates at initial interviews, but the technical stage was acting as the primary bottleneck. To address this, the interview process was restructured so that following an initial recruiter discovery call, candidates moved directly into the technical assessment before progressing to final interviews. This significantly reduced wasted executive time and improved overall efficiency.
Deep stakeholder alignment
Weekly working sessions were held with key decision makers, including the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Engineering. These sessions focused on role clarity, technical expectations, cultural alignment, and interview capacity. Clear ownership and alignment ensured decisions could be made quickly without introducing unnecessary complexity.
Targeted sourcing and market insight
Hiring focused on roles ranging from engineering managers through to intermediate engineers. Initial sourcing prioritised Calgary based talent, with the option for onsite collaboration where relevant. Market data and LinkedIn insights showed that limiting the search to a single location would slow progress. HighlightTA shared these insights with leadership and recommended expanding the search Canada wide, while maintaining flexibility for in person sessions where possible.
Managing interview capacity
As hiring momentum increased, pressure shifted to the engineering interview teams. HighlightTA worked with Certn to introduce interview capacity limits, ensuring engineers could continue delivering on their core responsibilities while still supporting team growth. This balance helped maintain a strong candidate experience during periods of high activity.
The impact
HighlightTA supported Certn in hiring 10 engineers across a range of roles, from engineering managers through to intermediate engineers, during a critical product build phase. This represented a meaningful expansion of Certn’s engineering capacity at a time when delivery speed mattered most.
While later stage interview pass rates were already strong, the technical interview had been the primary blocker. As HighlightTA took ownership of the process and developed a deep understanding of Certn’s technical and cultural requirements, technical pass rates improved, allowing hiring to move faster without lowering the quality bar.
The revised hiring approach reduced wasted time for senior leaders, increased confidence across engineering and People and Culture teams, and helped Certn hit key product milestones. The result was a hiring process that engineering leaders could rely on without pulling focus away from delivery.
This engagement demonstrated how a consultative, embedded approach can materially improve engineering hiring outcomes while balancing speed, quality, and stakeholder experience.
“After onboarding a new CTO, we needed to rebuild our engineering team quickly with talent that was aligned with our mission, values, and culture. HighlightTA came in, created alignment with our CTO and engineering leaders quickly. They were able to rebuild our process from the ground up, they pushed the team to think beyond a preference for local hiring by providing data and sharing real time insights to the regional market. Ten hires later the team had the capacity to deliver against our CTO’s vision and created greater velocity than ever before.”