For the TA lead who fears being replaced or buried
Appnomic · AIOps, IT operations for large enterprises
Eighteen months in, the hiring got sharper, not staler, and the internal team never drowned.
- Sector
- AIOps, enterprise IT
- Engagement
- 13 roles, 18 months
- Read on one role
- 880 applicants
- Re-close after a backout
- 4 days
The situation
Appnomic runs AIOps for large enterprises, and its hires end up operating production systems for some of India's largest public-sector banks. The stakes are high, the inbound is relentless, and there is already an internal TA team. The risk in bringing in outside help is that it either buries that team in coordination or quietly makes it look redundant. Neither can happen.
The problem
The hardest role was a hybrid the market refuses to fill: an amalgam of DevOps and production support. DevOps candidates would not take what read as a support role, support candidates lacked the technical depth, so the middle went unhired. Underneath every role, the inbound never stopped. Someone has to read hundreds of applicants per role, and if nobody does it properly, the right person drowns in the pile.
The right person was in the pile. The question was whether anyone would read far enough to find them.
What the function did
- 01
Absorbed the reading, left the judgment
The function read and scored the inbound so the internal TA team never had to wade through it. On one role it read 880 applicants and passed 97 worth the client's attention. The team kept the decisions, which is the part they own.
- 02
Kept a warm pipeline behind every offer
Offers fall through. When one did, the role was re-closed with a different hire in four days, because the pipeline behind it had not gone cold. No six-week restart.
- 03
Let every reject teach the next batch
Each decision the client made tightened how the next round was screened. Over a year on one role, the share of the shortlist the client chose to interview rose steadily as the function learned the real bar.
The results
The rising interview rate is the tell. Most engagements decay after the first month. This one got sharper because every decision fed the next.
On one long engagement the share of the shortlist the client chose to interview rose from 20% to 49% over a year.
What it was worth
- The internal TA team never drowned in inbound, and looked good doing it, which is exactly what its lead said.
- A joining-date backout cost four days instead of the usual six weeks, so a filled seat stayed filled.
- Over 18 months the quality did not fade, it compounded, so the client got a hiring function that improves with use rather than a vendor that plateaus.
The hires now build for India's largest public-sector banks.
Your candidates get hired and we look good.
For a company like yours
If you have a TA team you do not want to replace, but the inbound is burying them, the win is a function that absorbs the reading and makes your team look good, not one that competes with it.