About Folens
Folens is one of Ireland's leading educational publishers. To launch a digital product team out of India, the Head of Product needed a founding full-stack engineer strong in React and Python, capable of architecting from scratch, with no recruiting support behind him.
The problem
Why Folens brought in Fabric
A high-stakes founding hire, one product leader running the search, and an applicant pool that would consume weeks just to review.
2,000+
applications for one role
Volume without support
- No recruiting team, no HR support
- Head of Product running every step solo
- A founding engineer hire, getting it wrong costs months
3-in-1
interview required
Three skills to evaluate
- React and Python proficiency on real coding problems
- System design at founding-engineer level
- Ownership and tradeoffs from real prior projects
48%
of technical candidates flagged
Cheating eroding signal
- AI-assisted answers polluting interview results
- Hard to detect when interviewing yourself
- Without detection, the shortlist couldn't be trusted
The solution
How Fabric replaced first-round screening
Fabric ran a single 50-minute AI interview per candidate covering coding, system design and experience deep-dives, with cheating detection in the background.
01
One 50-min interview, three evaluations
- Live coding on real production-style problems
- System design with follow-ups on scale and failure modes
- Experience deep-dive on past ownership and tradeoffs
02
Resume screening up front
- Every application filtered against role-specific criteria
- Stack match, seniority and role fit auto-scored
- Sharans only saw candidates who actually qualified
03
Cheating detection in the background
- 20+ behavioural signals tracked silently per interview
- Tool-assisted candidates flagged with timestamped evidence
- Final shortlist included a cheating risk score per candidate
Results
What changed for Folens
Search speed
Faster Hiring
3 weeks
job post → offer
6–10 wks
typical solo-led search
2,000+
applications processed
Founder time saved
Bandwidth Preserved
50+
hours saved on screening
10
candidates shortlisted
Top 3
interviewed by Sharans personally
