Imagine walking into your first job without the familiar panic of “Where do I even start?”
Joining a sprint meeting, picking up a Jira ticket, and collaborating on GitHub as naturally as scrolling through your phone. This is not a distant dream; it is the reality Scaler envisions and builds for its learners. In an era where the hiring season has dissolved into a year-round talent hunt and where proof of skill trumps paper credentials, Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder of Scaler, is rewriting the rules of employability. From embedding industry-grade projects into classrooms to reimagining B-school and engineering education, his mission is clear: create graduates who do not just get jobs, but hit the ground running from day one.
What is Scaler, and how did the idea originate?
Scaler was born out of a challenge I witnessed while working in New York: engineers with strong academic credentials often struggled in real-world technology environments. They lacked hands-on experience, system design skills, and the ability to deliver production-ready code from day one. This gap between college education and industry expectations led to the creation of InterviewBit and, eventually, Scaler in 2019.
Scaler was built as a career accelerator focused on real-world readiness. Our programmes go beyond theory: learners work in teams, solve industry-grade problems, and receive mentorship from professionals at leading global technology companies. Every course, from software development to AI/ML, is designed in consultation with recruiters and industry leaders to ensure complete alignment with current industry demands.
To address deeper gaps, we launched two offline institutions: Scaler School of Technology (2023), a four-year residential Computer Science programme with advanced specialisations and industry internships, and Scaler School of Business (2024), an 18-month postgraduate programme blending management education with technology immersion.
At its core, Scaler exists to make learners truly job-ready, empowering them to enter the workforce with confidence and impact from day one.
The traditional notion of a placement season has become a relic in many sectors. From Scaler’s lens, what new models of employability are emerging, and how should institutions adapt to these paradigm shifts?
The placement landscape has undergone a fundamental transformation. What was once a fixed, season-bound process is now fluid, dynamic, and aligned with real-time business needs. From our perspective at Scaler, employability is evolving into a continuous, outcomes-driven journey where learning, proof of skill, and hiring occur simultaneously. Today, organisations do not wait for a ‘season’ to hire. They seek job-ready talent year-round and increasingly assess candidates based on demonstrable outcomes, real-world projects, live portfolios, and open-source contributions rather than traditional degrees.
Institutions must adapt by rethinking the student lifecycle. They need to integrate industry-relevant learning into the core curriculum, foster sustained engagement with recruiters, and establish robust career readiness mechanisms that operate throughout the year, rather than only during placement windows. At Scaler, we have created a placement ecosystem that functions 365 days a year, aligned with organisational hiring cycles rather than graduation timelines.
Scaler’s placement pipeline spans companies like Google, Amazon, and McKinsey. From your recent placement cycles, what are recruiters explicitly valuing today beyond technical know-how — think attitude, adaptability, or cross-functional exposure?
While technical expertise remains essential, recruiters today are placing increasing emphasis on softer, high-impact traits such as ownership, adaptability, and the ability to collaborate across diverse teams. In our recent internship cycles, feedback from hiring managers has consistently highlighted a growing demand for candidates who demonstrate real-world thinking and contextual awareness.
They are assessing whether a candidate can thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments, make informed trade-offs, and communicate effectively across functions. For example, engineers who can articulate their architectural decisions to product managers or align their work with business objectives are often rated higher than those who are solely technically proficient.
This is why, at Scaler, we have intentionally designed our learning experience to extend beyond coding. Our learners are trained to work in agile teams, engage in product discussions, and navigate cross-functional collaboration, skills that mirror the environments they will encounter in their professional journeys.
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With the launch of Scaler School of Technology and School of Business, you have gone from being a supplementary skilling partner to a full-stack education provider. What gaps are you trying to solve with this bold vertical integration?
The decision to establish the Scaler School of Technology (SST) and the Scaler School of Business (SSB) was driven by a clear and consistent market insight: even students from reputable universities were graduating with considerable theoretical knowledge, yet lacked the readiness to create impact in their roles. Recruiters repeatedly shared that while many graduates were able to clear the interview bar, they often required six to twelve months of onboarding before they could deliver meaningful contributions.
That is the gap we set out to bridge. With SST and SSB, we are reimagining higher education from the ground up by creating full-time, residential programmes that prioritise industry immersion, mentor-led instruction, and experiential, product-oriented learning. These schools are not extensions of Scaler’s upskilling model; they are new-age institutions built for the careers of the future. Our goal is not only to help learners secure jobs but to prepare them to excel in their roles from the very first day.
Scaler School of Technology recently reported a 96.3% internship placement rate, with global offers from companies like Google and Sony. What do you believe tipped the scales in favour of your students in such a competitive talent market?
The 96.3% internship placement rate is a strong validation of our belief that depth, context, and readiness matter far more than pedigree. Our students are not merely academically proficient; they are prepared to operate in real-world engineering environments from the outset. Organisations today are seeking candidates who come equipped with the skills, tools, and mindset required to integrate seamlessly into existing teams.
At Scaler, our learners work on actual production-grade projects, participate in agile sprints, use tools such as GitHub, Jira, and Docker, and receive one-to-one mentorship from senior engineers employed at top-tier technology firms. They are not learning in isolation; they are building, shipping, iterating, and presenting their work just as they would in a professional setting. This tangible preparedness, combined with strong communication abilities and an ownership-driven approach, gives our students a distinct advantage in today’s highly competitive talent market.
Most institutions talk/stress about ‘placement percentages’, but very few speak on ‘placement quality’. How do you define and measure placement success at Scaler?
At Scaler, true placement success is not just about securing a job; it is about starting a meaningful career. We measure outcomes not only by the percentage of learners placed but also by the quality of roles, growth trajectory, and the transformative impact of those placements.
We look at whether learners are entering high-impact roles where they can learn, grow, and make meaningful contributions. We also track salary multipliers, particularly for students from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, many of whom see a three- to four-fold increase in income after graduating from Scaler. Another key metric is job stickiness. We monitor whether our graduates are thriving six to twelve months into their roles, whether they are being promoted, retained, and advancing into positions of influence.
These indicators help us determine whether we are truly fulfilling our promise, not just of employability, but of long-term career success.
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With over 1,200+ employer partnerships and audits by KPMG and Brickworks, what patterns have emerged in recruiter behaviour, especially in how they assess potential today versus five years ago?
Over the past five years, we have witnessed a significant shift in how recruiters evaluate potential candidates. Hiring today is not just faster; it is significantly smarter. Recruitment has moved away from fixed placement cycles to a dynamic, always-on model. AI-powered tools, which are now accounting for up to 70 per cent of hiring budgets, have enabled organisations to transition from transactional hiring to a more holistic talent strategy.
However, the real transformation runs deeper than technology. Recruiters are no longer focused solely on degrees or polished CVs; they are prioritising real-world readiness. Problem-solving ability, adaptability, and the capacity to deliver impact from day one have emerged as the new gold standard.
The most successful candidates are those who can effectively connect the dots between code and customer, as well as between product and business outcomes. As organisations navigate increasing complexity, they seek talent that combines technical expertise with curiosity and contextual understanding. In many ways, recruitment has evolved from checkbox hiring to potential-based hiring, marking a powerful shift.
In one of your videos, you mention that the curriculum is designed to make students “feel at home in their first job.” Can you unpack what that really means, and how Scaler simulates real-world complexity inside the classroom?
When we say our learners should ‘feel at home’ in their first job, we mean they should not face a steep learning curve when transitioning from the classroom to the workplace. They should be able to walk into a sprint meeting, pick up a ticket on Jira, collaborate on GitHub, and contribute to a live codebase with confidence.
At Scaler, we replicate this environment as closely as possible. Students work in teams that mirror real-world product squads, take on different roles within those teams, and experience the full development lifecycle, from ideation and scoping to testing and deployment. We teach through live case studies and projects that simulate actual product development challenges, including deadlines, resource constraints, and evolving stakeholder requirements.
Learners also receive feedback not only from instructors but from mentors currently working in the technology industry, providing authentic and contextual guidance. This immersive approach bridges the classroom-to-career gap in a way that traditional institutions often struggle to achieve.
From your perspective, how much of job performance today hinges on traditional functional knowledge versus skills like decision-making, stakeholder management, or working across cross-functional tech teams?
While technical knowledge is fundamental, it is no longer sufficient on its own. In today’s workplace, a significant share of job performance depends on an individual’s ability to navigate ambiguity, make informed decisions, manage stakeholders, and collaborate across functions.
Engineers no longer work in silos; they operate alongside product managers, designers, analysts, and business teams, often contributing to strategic decisions beyond writing code. At Scaler, we have recognised this shift and structured our curriculum accordingly, incorporating activities that replicate real-world stakeholder dynamics.
The objective is to ensure that our learners are not only skilled problem-solvers but also systems thinkers and effective communicators who can thrive in cross-functional, high-impact environments.
If you had a direct line with policymakers, what changes would you push to make India’s graduates globally competitive? And what must the graduate of 2030 have that the class of 2020 did not, and how is Scaler gearing up for that?
If given the opportunity to engage directly with policymakers, our core message would be this: India does not lack raw talent; what it needs are systems that transform that talent into global impact. We would urge policymakers to enable greater curricular flexibility, allowing institutions to update their programmes in step with rapidly evolving industry demands. We would also advocate for internship mandates beginning in the second year of undergraduate education, along with stronger incentives for academia-industry collaboration, not merely through MoUs, but through shared labs, mentorship programmes, and real-world problem-solving initiatives.
Looking ahead to 2030, the expectations from graduates will be vastly different. They will need to be AI-native, not just digitally literate. They will need global fluency, with experience of working in diverse teams and across borders.
Most importantly, they will require an entrepreneurial mindset capable of tackling complex, real-world challenges.
Scaler is already preparing for this future through AI-integrated curricula, global capstone projects, and mentorship from engineers and entrepreneurs working at some of the world’s most innovative companies. Our aim is not simply to keep pace with the future, but to help shape it.
Abhimanyu Saxena is the Co-founder of InterviewBit and Scaler. He began his entrepreneurial journey during his B.Tech at IIIT-Hyderabad, co-founding ‘Daksh Home Automation Systems,’ which developed an AI-based system to reduce household electricity consumption. A Malta-based firm later acquired the system. In 2010, he joined Progress Software as a programmer before moving to Fab.com in New York, where he worked for over three years. Observing a significant skills gap in the tech industry, he partnered with Anshuman Singh to launch InterviewBit in 2015, creating one of India’s leading tech-skilling and recruitment platforms. In 2019, they introduced Scaler, an online career accelerator programme designed to bridge the gap between academia and industry.
