If your hiring problem is "our technical screen is too noisy," Geektastic is a genuinely good answer. It replaces auto-graded coding tests with take-home challenges reviewed by real senior engineers, which catches things a machine misses — including AI-generated solutions. If you already have candidates in your pipeline and just need a trustworthy way to assess them, it's one of the better tools for the job. Geektastic is a UK technical-assessment platform founded in 2014 by Rick Brownlow and Charles Girdham, based in London (Tracxn). Its core idea is that a person, not an algorithm, should judge a candidate's code. In February 2024 it was acquired by Bristol-based development firm Deazy, and co-founder and CEO Rick Brownlow joined Deazy as its Vetting and Quality Lead (Tech.eu). The platform is still live and sold under the Geektastic name at geektastic.com. The assessments are graded by a network of vetted senior developers Geektastic calls "UberGeeks" — around 300 reviewers who work day jobs at companies like Google, Amazon, and Accenture (Deazy press release). They're drawn from a much larger community of developers who apply; Geektastic says only about one in a hundred applicants becomes a reviewer (geektastic.com).

There are two assessment formats (geektastic.com): Take-home challenges — real-world coding tasks a candidate completes in their own IDE, typically over about two hours, then reviewed by an expert assessor and returned with written feedback within 24 hours. Express challenges — shorter multiple-choice code assessments completed in under 30 minutes, with instant automated results for high-volume top-of-funnel screening. Reviewers are paid £25 per 30-minute take-home review (Geektastic for developers). You can use Geektastic's own challenge library or load your own challenges and review guidelines so the assessment matches your stack and standards. Companies including Skyscanner, Accenture, Just Giving, Compare the Market, and Payoneer have used it, and Geektastic reports it helps clients cut time-to-hire by roughly half (Onrec).

Human review catches what auto-graders miss. A senior engineer reading real code sees structure, judgment, and tradeoffs — not just whether the tests pass. That's the whole pitch, and it's a real one. It's built to spot AI-generated solutions. In a world where a candidate can paste a prompt into an assistant, a human reviewer who works in the field is far better positioned to tell genuine skill from a generated answer. Geektastic leans directly into this. Written, qualitative feedback. You don't just get a score. You get a reviewer's actual notes on how the candidate approached the problem, which is far more useful for a hiring decision than a percentile. Fast turnaround and flexible formats. Express challenges filter high volume instantly; take-home reviews come back within a day. You can run both, and you can bring your own challenges.

It assesses candidates you already have. Geektastic is a screen, not a sourcing engine. It tells you how good the people in your pipeline are — it doesn't fill the pipeline. You still have to find, attract, and manage everyone who takes the test. The verdict is a snapshot of a challenge. A two-hour take-home is a strong signal of coding ability under those specific conditions. Matching that signal to how someone performs across weeks of real, ambiguous product work is a separate judgment you make yourself. You still own everything after the score. Interviewing, offers, and — if the person is a contractor — the contract, payroll, and compliance all remain on your desk. Geektastic hands you a well-reviewed assessment; the rest of the hire is yours.

Here's the honest gap a test can't close: the best AI engineers never take your assessment. They're not in your applicant pool to be screened. They're already working — booked on a contract somewhere, heads-down on hard problems, not sending in take-homes. A great test only grades who showed up. The engineer you actually want never showed up. Nextdev reaches the top 1% of AI engineers — the ones who aren't looking. We go and find them. Then we prove them. We give each a real problem to build and watch how they actually work, so you know they're AI-native because we've seen it — not because a challenge came back with a good score and a reviewer's note. It's the difference between grading a code sample and watching someone build. Then we're done for you. We employ the engineer you want — one named person — and the contract, payroll, and compliance never touch your desk. Geektastic hands you a verdict and leaves the sourcing and the employment to you. We hand you a working engineer. A test is something you run. Nextdev is a partner who finds the engineer, proves them, and puts them to work — you're not picking from who signed up to be tested. You're getting the one who never would have.

Geektastic does one thing well: it puts a real senior engineer between your candidate and your offer, and that's a smart upgrade over machine-graded tests — especially now that AI can pass them. If your pipeline is full and your screen is the weak link, it's a solid, well-run choice. If your real problem is that the engineers you want aren't in the pipeline at all, that's a different job — and it's the one we do.