How Cal.com filled every open engineering role with Jooba
“Inbound recruiting is dead. The best candidates already have a job. Finding the right person involves nuance, and Jooba's approach of using AI with an expert human like Kyle in the loop is exactly what's needed to reach the perfect fit. This is what modern recruiting looks like." ”
The challenge: great JDs, wrong applicants
Cal.com had the Scale Engineer JD posted for two months. Inbound applications trickled in, but none were the right fit for the opening, a trend they'd seen across every role they ran through inbound. Cal.com had never run an outbound search before, and like a lot of engineering leaders, Keith was skeptical that cold outreach could surface engineers aligned enough to add real value, especially for a role the inbound pool had already failed to fill.
“I'll be honest, I didn't know if we'd get any solid traction. The JD had been posted for two months, and we hadn't gotten any great fits from inbound applications.”
The approach
After a 30-minute intake call, Jooba took over top-of-funnel for the Scale Engineer role. The day after messages started going out, interested candidates began surfacing, with four qualified candidates intro'd that day. In under two weeks, Keith had a healthy pipeline of 13 qualified engineers, a stark contrast to two months of inbound silence.
Keith was specifically impressed by one of his first interviews. He asked a caching question he'd put to more than 50 engineers, one designed to separate engineers who recite answers from engineers who actually solve problems.
“She answered it immediately and crushed it. I'm rarely left speechless. I was like, 'Wow. Good answer. A very good answer.”
From there Cal.com scaled Jooba across every engineering opening and into the GTM org. Intakes for new roles were quick and frictionless, and Jooba could spin up on the team's needs at the snap of a finger, running the entire process through Slack for any type of role.
“I prefer this over many things. No extra software, no new board, no bullshit to fill, just seeing through Slack and getting it done. Amazing!”
The results
- Every open engineering role filled: all 4 of Cal.com's open eng roles hired through Jooba, plus 2 GTM hires
- Fewest interviews to a hire: 8
- Fastest intro after kickoff: 22hrs
- Fastest contact of a hired candidate: 23hrs after kickoff
- Saved vs. agencies: $100k+
Why it worked
Cal.com went from skeptical about outbound to running it as the engine for hiring across the whole company, in the span of a few months. Integrated across multiple hiring managers and orgs, Jooba became the outbound layer for the entire team: intake fast, identify the best candidates, reach them, and get interviews booked.
About Jooba
Jooba is reimagining recruiting services from the ground up. By combining proprietary AI tooling with experienced talent engineers, Jooba serves as an embedded recruiting partner running top-of-funnel for high-growth technology companies. Backed by a16z Speedrun, Genius Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Founders Future, and operators from OpenAI, ServiceTitan, and more.
