How Houzz Hired 100 Engineers in 10 Months
A $4B company needed to scale their Taiwan engineering office 10X while competing against Big Tech. They chose speed over process.
The Situation
Houzz is a Silicon Valley unicorn - the leading platform for home remodeling and design. They weren’t a scrappy startup trying to find product-market fit. They were a $4B company with a proven product, strong funding, and aggressive growth targets.
The problem? They needed to scale their Taiwan engineering office by 10X. Fast.
In a market where every major tech company was competing for the same talent pool, traditional recruiting wasn’t cutting it. Internal HR was overwhelmed. Agency fees were eating into budgets. And the best candidates were getting scooped up before Houzz could even schedule interviews.
The Challenge
Three obstacles stood in Houzz’s way:
Talent shortage. Every major corporation was competing for Taiwan’s top engineering talent. The candidates Houzz wanted had multiple offers on the table.
Speed requirements. Houzz couldn’t afford a 3-6 month hiring cycle per role. They needed engineers productive within weeks, not quarters.
Operational complexity. Beyond hiring, Houzz faced logistics nightmares: IT equipment procurement, international shipping, customs clearance, device setup, and ongoing maintenance. Every new hire meant hours of coordination.
The Approach
Worca provided two things: talent and operations.
On the talent side, Houzz gained access to our pre-screened network of 25,000+ English-proficient engineers - the top 5% of university graduates. Instead of posting jobs and hoping, Houzz’s hiring managers received roughly five qualified resumes per week, pre-matched to their requirements.
On the operations side, Worca handled everything that wasn’t core to Houzz’s business: hardware purchases, leasing arrangements, international shipping, customs documentation, device configuration, ongoing maintenance, and offboarding logistics. One less thing for engineering managers to think about.
The Results
Key Outcomes
- 100 engineers hired in under 10 months
- 10:1 candidate-to-offer ratio - highly efficient pipeline
- 5 qualified resumes weekly delivered to hiring managers
- Near-zero retention issues - hires that actually stayed
- Zero logistics headaches - IT operations fully handled
The numbers speak for themselves. Houzz wasn’t just filling seats - they were building a high-performance engineering team at a pace their competitors couldn’t match.
The 10:1 candidate-to-offer ratio meant hiring managers weren’t wasting time on unqualified candidates. Every interview was with someone who could actually do the job.
Why It Worked
Two reasons:
Quality over quantity. We didn’t flood Houzz with resumes. We sent candidates who matched - both technically and culturally. Less noise, better signal.
Full-service execution. Hiring is only half the battle. Getting someone productive on day one requires equipment, access, and setup. We handled all of it, so Houzz’s engineers could focus on engineering.
Houzz had the funding and the mission. They needed a partner who could execute at their pace. That’s what Worca delivered.
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