What is Turing?
Turing is a tech hiring platform based in Palo Alto, California, US, which provides vetted talent to tech clients. Turing has a network of 150,000 developers from 130 countries, with a selection rate of 1%. It was established by Stanford Computer Science alumni. It states its objective as to provide Silicon-Valley level talent to companies and startups.
What does Turing do?
Turing’s vetting process involves human- as well as AI-based vetting, and it claims to follow the FAANG hiring process, and a selectivity of 1%. The hiring time is within days, with a two-week risk free trial. They provide full-time hires, but not freelancers and gig workers.
What Turing offers
Turing provides tech talent in 100+ skills across Full Stack, Backend, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, AI (+NLP), DevOps, UI/UX, and Mobile (iOS and Android).
Turing also provides a timetracking service, in the form of daily task sheets, so clients can effectively monitor and manage their hires.
Turing’s hiring process
Turing’s vetting process comprises automated as well as human evaluations. It begins with basic MCQ tests for the wider areas: frontend, backend, or mobile. There are also coding challenges for various skills: data structures, algorithms, Git, SQL. DevOps, Machine learning also have coding challenges. Apart from coding tests, there are project collaboration and system design challenges as well.
The MCQ tests are followed by a technical interview, 30 minutes long, in which experts test the candidates on their technical prowess as well as their communication and behavioral skills. The candidates also might have to write code during the interview.
Clients may specify if they want candidates with expertise in a specific skill or skills, and Turing can alter the evaluations specifically.
After the MCQ tests, Coding Challenges, and Technical interviews, profiles are evaluated on the basis of the candidate’s expertise and experience, as well as their availability and location. Turing ensures an overlap of 4 working hours between the client and the talent, for better communication. Turing also requires its talent to be proficient in communication in English.
Pros and cons of Turing
Pros:
Quick hiring
Turing’s vetting process is semi-automated, and they claim to provide talent to hires in days, not weeks (sic), custom-matched exactly as per the client’s requirements. Quick hiring is a requirement for many clients, so having an expedited system is always a good thing.
Risk-free trials/no commitment fees
Turing does not charge any commission fee before or during hiring. The first two weeks of every hire are free on a trial basis, only after which clients need to pay to continue. This is fairly common in similar tech-hiring platforms, but this only shows the level of confidence they have in their hiring process.
Cons:
Incomplete process
While Turing has a selective hiring process, it does not offer much else. Turing does not have a payroll system, and its time-tracking system is lacking, with little more than a daily checklist. Needless to say, Turing does not provide a complete hiring experience, with less compliance post-hiring.
Narrow hiring pool
Turing currently has a very narrow set of skill evaluations and is currently unable to provide a hire beyond that set. This might be a deal-breaker for many clients who require highly specialized tech professionals.
Is Turing right for you?
Fulfillment?
While Turing does have a robust hiring process for the skills it provides, Turing’s follow up doesn’t go much further. The payments are not flexible, and there is nominal time-tracking. The follow-up systems in Turing are not very robust, and it does not provide a fulfilling experience of hiring talent.
Value for money?
With the lack of follow-up services, the prices Turing offers to the client is too high for just the service of hiring a tech professional. While $50-99 per hour is a perfectly fine range to hire full-time employees by oneself, much more can be expected from a hiring platform, which Turing clearly lacks.
Process integrity?
Many candidates have raised their concerns about the screening process, especially vis-a-vis the take-home projects. Candidates claim that the projects are extra long, and take a lot of time and effort. Some candidates have even accused Turing of passing client tasks as take-home projects for free labor.
Crewscale is better
Crewscale is much better than Turing on several fronts: the skill pool is much wider, the hiring process much more robust. Crewscale’s Technical interview platform Codesync and Domain-specific project assessments are much superior as methods of candidate evaluation, both in terms of rigor and specificity.
Crewscale’s hourly rates are considerably less than that of Turing. The Crewscale experience also comprises automated timesheets and Automated payrolls, taxes, and compliances.
