Unlock: Building a Platform that Helps Homeowners Exchange Home Equity for Cash
Unlock is a financial services company that helps American homeowners retrieve a portion of their home’s equity without selling or taking out a loan. After closing their Series A, Unlock approached us to help hire key technical roles. Over the next few years, we helped them build three cross-functional teams by filling 28 technical positions.
Unlock: Helping Homeowners Exchange Home Equity for Cash
Unlock gives homeowners a one-time, lump-sum payment for a percentage of their home’s future value. Unlike traditional loans or a reverse mortgage, Unlock provides homeowners a “home equity agreement (HEA)”, which means they aren’t charged interest or forced to pay monthly installments. Instead, homeowners simply pay Unlock a percentage of their home’s appreciated value when they sell.
The Challenge: Building a Hiring Pipeline for a Hypergrowth FinTech Startup
Unlock needed a robust hiring process to fill a diverse set of technical roles. Over 16 months, we helped them build a pipeline of highly skilled developers with the right skills to succeed in the fast-growing startup. During our partnership, we helped Unlock hire and onboard 28 team members, including developers, designers, and QA engineers.
“Scalable Path took the time to truly understand how Unlock operated and found dedicated talent quickly who reflected our needs and expectations.”
Paul Tucker, Head of Product
Combining Specialized Hiring Technology with Human Expertise to Source the Right Candidates
After an initial discovery call with Unlock to get to know their needs, values, and working style, we began our talent search. Using our proprietary skills matrix, we quickly identified talent with the right technical skills for each of Unlock’s roles. This part of the process is automated: we use custom-built technology to review our network of 30,000 freelancers and generate a list of potential candidates.
Next, our talent team designed technical exercises tailored to each of the roles Unlock was hiring for. These exercises help us more effectively predict a developer’s real-world performance, as they simulate actual work they’ll be doing on the job. We conducted the technical interviews live and on video to ensure identity verification and understand the candidates’ approach. Along with the technical interviews, we evaluated each developer’s English fluency, working style, and personality traits.
The top candidates from our interviews were presented to Unlock, with their profile, skills, experience, detailed interview notes, and interview recordings.
The Results
Over the course of two years, we helped Unlock build out three cross-functional development squads for different business units. Each squad had six to seven team members composed of developers, designers, QA engineers, and one product manager.
Two developers that Unlock hired quickly demonstrated their expertise and dedication to Unlock’s mission and were promoted to leadership roles on the team. A designer named Paul was also promoted to a leadership role on the Unlock design team.
“I needed a few key people who I could trust to make important decisions when I wasn’t there. The first two developers Scalable Path helped us hire showed me early on that they were people I could rely on.”
James White
Conclusion
Over the course of our partnership, we’ve interviewed hundreds of technical candidates for diverse roles, including full-stack developers, quality assurance engineers, designers, and technical project managers. Of the candidates we vetted, 28 were hired by Unlock, and 3 were quickly promoted to key leadership positions. We continue to work with Unlock today, helping them grow their team, onboard new developers, and continually refine their hiring process.
