Remote Hiring – HackerRank Blog

HackerRank is Going All In On Remote Interviewing

Aditi Chandrasekar — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 07:15:05 +0000

The latest release in HackerRank's remote Interview solution, Pair Programming in Projects is bringing candidates and interviewers on the same page regardless of the miles (and spotty bandwidth) between them.

To meet the demand of the rising numbers of the remote workforce, HackerRank is investing heavily in its remote Interview solution. Following the release of Virtual Whiteboards and Interview Templates in the first half of 2021, HackerRank revolutionized the virtual interview process by launching Projects, real-life scenarios for Front-end, Back-end, and Full-stack developers, to get a taste of what it would be like to work with a candidate to bring an innovative idea to life.

HackerRank Projects is now enhanced with a collaborative editor

Within HackerRank Projects, an interviewer can now assess real-world skills in a pair programming way, making it easier to communicate in a virtual environment. Just by clicking the candidate's name, you can see the file they’re looking at. When they highlight a line of code, it will show up instantaneously on the interviewer's screen, making it easier to guide the candidate when they’re stuck and to get a feel for what it would be like to troubleshoot together.

Within the first 90 days of its Beta release, over 550 pair programming interviews have been conducted. Beta customers are reporting that it is providing a best-in-class candidate experience and mitigating pesky bandwidth issues you find while screen sharing.

One candidate summed up what it’s like to interview with these new sophisticated tools; “It definitely helped to be able to share the terminal. I liked being able to run code with full control over the file system and commands.”

“We wanted to build something that mirrored the experience developers are used to having in their day-to-day jobs,” explained Afzal Ashraf, the HackerRank Product Manager for HackerRank Projects.

Pair Programming is a concept that has been around for decades in the engineering field but has just entered technical recruiting. Now developers can communicate on the job and in the interview using the same experiences they love.

“Because our Interview product mirrors an actual development environment so closely, we’ve found engineers from the same company hopping into the product to work collaboratively through a problem together.” Explains Raghav Gopalakrishnan, a HackerRank Product Manager.

This is one of many feature enhancements scheduled for interviewing in HackerRank in 2021. As the company goes all-in on improving the user experience, including a complete revamp of the user interface, interviewing with HackerRank is set to remain the industry standard for remote technical hiring.

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Creating Delightful Interview Experiences at Scale at Yelp

Aditi Chandrasekar — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 11:58:51 +0000

In a survey conducted in 2015, a whopping 93% of Yelp employees said that it was a great place to work, while the average number at a US-based company was 59%.

The company has always put a strong focus on its values “be unboring, be tenacious, play well with others, be authentic, and protect your source.” which has allowed it to be a workplace for creative and motivated individuals to thrive.

Now that the world of work has pivoted online, how has Yelp ensured they continue to give the same importance to their values? How have they adapted to remote hiring, while ensuring they provide a delightful experience to their candidates?

To answer these questions and more, Grace Jiras Yuan, Technical Recruiting Manager, and Sharadha Ramakrishnan, Director of Engineering for Data and Analytics Platform at Yelp joined Hackerrank’s Raghav Gopalakrishan, Senior Product Manager and Aadil Bandukwala, Senior Director of Marketing for an enlightening conversation about adapting to virtual hiring processes, and tips for job seekers on HackerrankTV.

Click below to watch the livestream, or read on for takeaways from the discussion.

1. You don’t need to have a technical background to work in the tech industry.

The appeal of working at tech-first companies is at an all-time high, partly fueled by their synonymity with companies that offer extraordinary employee benefits and the opportunity to work on products and services impacting a digital native user base that grows by the second.

“You don’t need to have a technical background to break into the tech industry”, Grace says. A study published in 2018 by Glassdoor, showing that nearly half of the open roles at tech companies were non-technical, corroborates her statement.

Grace has been helping Yelp recruit stellar talent for over 8 years now. “When I first joined the company, I felt intimidated being around so many smart engineers, but I quickly learned that we’re all learning and growing together. We’re a team and every department at a company is as important as the other.” Grace reinforces an important piece of advice that’s often lost on candidates in a hypercompetitive job market - If you’re passionate about what you do, you can find a place anywhere.

2. Mock interviews are a great tool for preparation.

Sharadha says, “My no. 1 recommendation for candidates who are preparing for an interview is to take up multiple mock interviews. Find a friend, a relation, or an acquaintance who is willing to do one with you.”

Today, individual and community initiatives offering mock interviews are growing in popularity, a testament to the age-old adage, “Practice makes perfect.”

Grace adds, “Approach questions in a mock interview like you’re a teacher. Articulate the problem in your own words, and think the solution process out loud. Even if you don’t arrive at a conclusive answer, the interviewer becomes aware of your problem-solving process.”

3. Look beyond the challenges of remote hiring.

Recruitment teams have a lot on their plate, as the demand for talent surges.

In our Guide to Practical Tips for Remote Hiring, we highlight the importance of having a well-defined workflow for hiring. Along with this, Grace recommends, “Have your hiring managers meet with the talent acquisition team regularly to exchange feedback. It can be a simple conversation about what's working well and what can be improved. Challenges are best solved collaboratively”

Sharadha adds, “It’s also important to look beyond the challenges and discuss the opportunities that remote hiring and scaling brings, and capitalize on it. For one, the talent pool has now widened so you have the chance to bring in candidates from all corners of the world to build a diverse workplace.”

4. There is an increased responsibility on interviewers’ shoulders now.

Grace says, “In the pre-pandemic era when a candidate walked through a company’s doors, there were cues that they would pick up on to evaluate the workplace.”

The cues Grace mentions could be subtle - like witnessing an ongoing meeting or obvious and unignorable like Facebook’s electronics vending machines, Google’s massage rooms, and a funhouse in Lego’s Denmark office. The massive growth that tech companies experienced in the last decade brought about creative, and playful additions to offices and office campuses that have earned many excited whispers from job seekers.

“Nowadays, candidates pay more attention to how collaborative interviewers are and listen to their stories about their time at the company to arrive at conclusions about the work-life balance and general satisfaction of the employees. So, as an interviewer, there’s a huge responsibility on your shoulders of conveying the best parts of your company”, says Grace.

Sharadha adds, “You should be well-versed with the candidate’s background, why they're making the career move, and tailor your interview accordingly. Another tip would be to make sure you have a good number of open-ended questions that you can rotate through interviews so the practice of interviewing doesn’t become mundane for you.”

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The Value of Embracing Automation in Your Remote Hiring Process

Aditi Chandrasekar — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 16:01:56 +0000

Remote work isn’t going anywhere any time soon. According to a Growmotely survey, 74% of professionals expect remote work to become standard.

Since we can no longer ooh and aah at the alluring in-office perks like an air hockey table or a kombucha tap, the remote hiring experience has now become a factor in a candidate’s next career move. It serves as a lens into how your company manages communication, coordination, and adaptation. That’s why it’s in every hiring team’s best interest to prioritize the candidate experience.

However, as more and more roles open back up, hiring teams are facing limitations on bandwidth, and the candidate experience suffers.

That’s where automation comes in. Finding a tool that supports and streamlines your remote hiring process so your team can focus on the one-on-one interactions with candidates will be your key differentiator in hiring top talent.

We sat down with our very own Chief People Officer, Maria Chung, to discuss the importance of automation in the hiring process and how it enhances the overall interview experience.

Here are the benefits of weaving automation in your remote hiring process:

It helps you to stay competitive

Right now, all companies are tech companies. This means everyone is competing for tech talent. Building a seamless and transparent hiring process is your competitive advantage when it comes to attracting talent.

“We're in one of the hottest developer markets in a very long time. So, there's a lot of market demand for companies to be innovative,” says Maria. “Because of that, there is a huge hiring surge of developer talent everywhere. The fact that there's so much competition out there makes it imperative for our recruiting team to be more automated.”

Especially when hiring remotely, Maria suggests prioritizing the interactions between the interviewer and candidate as much as possible. Those connections are what stand out the most when candidates are making their final decisions.

Maria continues, “Whether it's through standardizing a couple of assessments in the initial pipeline, the greatest competitive leg-up to any company during the hiring process is giving your recruiters time to talk about the brand they're representing.”

It allows your team to communicate asynchronously

Whether you’re remote or in the office, gathering feedback from your team on a candidate can be a challenge. Someone might mention something on a call, another on Slack, and another team member might have taken notes during the interview but don’t know the best way to share them.

“Given that we're in a remote world, we're not able to see each other face-to-face and talk through the quality and the quantity of the candidates that we have,” says Maria. “Having these automated processes enables us to be very asynchronous when it comes to hiring the best talent. A source of truth allows our team to go in there in real time and provide the feedback all in one place at a time that’s convenient for them.”

Investing in a tool that allows your team to debrief asynchronously and all in a central place provides a thorough and holistic view of each and every candidate.

The Candidate Packet is one example of how HackerRank customers are using automation to make hiring decisions quickly and effectively. The Candidate Packet aggregates all the available reports, scorecards, and feedback on a candidate and creates a skill summary report. So whether your team takes notes during or prefers to share their feedback later, it’s all documented in one place.

It allows you to focus your energy on more important tasks

According to Maria, the most valuable part of hiring is the one-on-one time with the candidates and giving them your undivided attention so they can tell their story and learn about your company.

Automating menial, administrative tasks gives time back to your hiring team so they can focus on making those connections.

Because there's such a war for talent, some of the areas that we want our Talent Acquisition team to focus on is on the qualitative aspects of hiring,” says Maria. “Having more insights into the candidate’s background, level of experience, and personal journey, are the conversations that resonate so much more than just going through the overall process. But you can’t ignore the administrative tasks either. By not taking advantage of automation during the hiring process, it takes the time away from some of these really important aspects of how we look at talent.”

HackerRank customers save time during the hiring process by using Automatic Scoring for Data Science Questions when screening for tech talent. This feature automatically grades data science questions in the early stages of recruiting, so the Talent Acquisition manager doesn’t have to rely so heavily on the hiring manager to manually evaluate candidates.

It helps support assessment validity and reduce unconscious bias

As Talent Acquisition leaders strive to develop a more diverse and inclusive workforce, reducing unconscious bias continues to remain a challenge. Without a standardized process of evaluating candidates, unconscious bias will inevitably creep in.

According to an Entelo trends report, 61% of talent acquisition professionals believe recruiting automation can help reduce unconscious bias.

“We are all human. And with that comes unconscious biases that we may not be thinking about,” says Maria. “Especially when it comes to developer talent, you have to set a certain bar that fits the role you’re hiring for so you're not inserting your own biases into your framework. By automating the first couple of stages in the hiring process, you’re delivering a consistent standard to test against and eliminating any biases that might come into play.”

At HackerRank, we’ve incorporated reducing unconscious bias into the very fabric of our product by helping Talent Acquisition teams standardize a remote screening process for evaluating all candidates.

“HackerRank has always led in terms of automated remote hiring through our assessment platform and content,” says Fred Rafilson, HackerRank’s Chief I/O Psychologist. “Because linking skill-based test questions to critical role-specific skills have always been a laborious and time-consuming process, we’re building job analysis, validation, and fairness analysis capabilities directly into our platform. This leap in technology allows our customers to ensure their assessments are not only effective and fair but also will ensure that they are legally defensible and meet federal EEOC and OFCCP requirements.”

It allows you to gain feedback on your process

Automation promotes consistency. And when a process is consistent, you measure its performance and identify what areas need improvement.

“It’s all about time-to-hire,” says Maria. “From sourcing and screening the candidates, to sending out invites, and scheduling interviews, we’re always exploring ways to improve the process by reducing time-to-hire. The sweet spot of automation is all about finding gaps or lags where technology could potentially take over, give time back to my team, and still deliver an excellent candidate experience.”

Investment management organization, Vanguard, has seen a significant reduction in the number of interviews needed in order to hire the same number of high-quality candidates since using HackerRank. Find out more about how Vanguard reduced their time-to-hire by leveraging HackerRank to source and screen top tech talent.

Making automation work for you

Automation doesn’t have to be a scary transformation. It begins by simply trying out new technology and testing what works (and doesn’t work) for your team.

Whether you’re ready to jump in and revamp your entire remote hiring process or just starting to get your feet wet, HackerRank can help. Click on the banner below to start screening high-quality tech candidates for free.

The post The Value of Embracing Automation in Your Remote Hiring Process appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

4 Ways Candidates Can Prepare for a Remote Interview

Jannelle Sanchez — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 07:50:33 +0000

This post was updated with current data by Brianna Hansen.

As a candidate, going through the hiring process is naturally nerve-wracking. But interviewing when the entire hiring process is done virtually can be downright intimidating.

As more and more companies hire remote roles, it’s important to continue refining your remote interviewing skills.

According to a LinkedIn survey, 70% of respondents agree a hiring process that combines virtual and in-person processes will become increasingly standard due to the associated cost and time savings.

Remote job interviews are a new format for most people. As a candidate, it’s ok to be concerned with how this change may affect your chances of landing your dream job.

Here are 4 ways to prepare for your next remote interview, from HackerRank’s Co-Founder & CEO, Vivek Ravisankar:

Remote Interview Best Practices

1. Ask what the remote interview process will look like

If your recruiter or hiring manager doesn’t communicate what their online interview process will look like, don’t be afraid to ask.

“Some companies do this proactively, but a majority don't,” Vivek says. “Ask upfront about the different interview rounds and what you need to prepare for each of them.”

Here are a few basic questions you can ask each company prior to your first remote interview:

How many interview rounds can I expect?
How will your company introduce your culture to me in lieu of me visiting the office?
Who should I contact in case I experience technical difficulties prior to my online interview?
What is the expected dress code?
What tools or platforms will I be using during my interview?
How many candidates are being considered for this role?
How can I best prepare for the interview?

2. Take extra time to set up your physical interview space

Take some extra time to think about the setup of your interview environment. Here are a few interview environment factors you should check before your remote interview:

Is there clutter in the background that could distract the interviewer?
Did you close any unnecessary tabs that you could accidentally click or make noise during the interview?
How stable is your internet connection? Can you hardwire your connection if needed?
Are your phone and laptop notifications on mute?
Are all your monitors properly set up? Is your camera on the same monitor you’ll be looking at during the interview (to mimic face-to-face communication)?
Is your camera enabled on your laptop? If you’re using a browser-based video interview tool, does that browser have camera access?
Will you be in a noise-free environment? Do other people in your home know the time and duration of your interview?
Are you in a spot you can comfortably stay in for the duration of the interview?

First impressions matter. And with this new remote environment, anything that can hinder that first interaction can play into your consideration for the role.

“Spending 5 - 10 mins during the interview setting up due to technical issues not only gets the interview off to a bad start but also lowers your confidence,” Vivek says. Laying the groundwork to prepare will help put you at ease.

3. Practice, practice, practice

Just like you would for an onsite interview, spend time preparing yourself to answer common questions and problems.

If you’re a developer, you’ll most likely have a role-specific round to assess your coding skills and a system design round. Our HackerRank Interview Preparation Kit will help you sharpen your coding skills.

And don’t forget about soft skills. Spend time reading the company’s mission statement or values, and practice answering any value-related questions. Brush up your soft skills and practice answering common interview questions out loud.

This Ted Talk is a great resource for people who want to hone their body language and communication skills.

4. Bring your confidence

After you ask the right questions, set up a comfortable interview environment, familiarize yourself with the right tools, and spend time prepping, the last thing you need to do is deliver confidence. Interviewing can be stressful, but remember that you made it to the interview round for a reason. “Remember: they want you as much as you want the job,” says Vivek.

The interview is a two-way street: you should feel comfortable evaluating the employer in the same way they’ll evaluate you. Ask clarifying questions, speak, and present your work with confidence, and ask for feedback at the end of the interview.

Your Next Role Awaits

If you don’t receive a job offer, don’t feel defeated in your job search. Failure is just feedback. That means you are one step closer to finding that perfect fit.

There will always be more opportunities. Take some time to reflect on the entire experience, identify what areas you can improve on, and start preparing for your next remote interview.

The post 4 Ways Candidates Can Prepare for a Remote Interview appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

5 Steps to Creating a Seamless Virtual Onboarding Experience for Your Developers

Aditi Chandrasekar — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 18:58:41 +0000

So you’ve just hired a bunch of brilliant developers using HackerRank. Congratulations!

However, hiring them is just the beginning—ensuring their success in the new role is done through effective onboarding.

Many companies struggle with onboarding new employees. In fact, only 12% of people say their organization does a great job of onboarding employees, according to Gallup. Ouch.

Out of curiosity, we ran our own poll on Twitter to determine if remote developers felt the same way. Here are the results:

Hope is not lost! Addressing all that room for improvement could pay off in the long run. A study by Glassdoor found that organizations an effective onboarding process improves new hire retention by 82% and boosts productivity by over 70%.

So before you dismiss your new hires’ first couple of days as just a time to fill out paperwork, take a look at some of these best practices from our very own EVP of Technology, Jawahar Malhotra, for onboarding new developers:

1. Prepare them for their first day

Don’t wait until day one to get them started on the right foot.

Once it’s official, make a list of all the tools they will need access to right away. Send them their computer and a list of tools days prior to their first official day so they can install them and get accustomed to the new environments.

In addition to software, send any resources you feel will help set the tone for their first day. “Send them a book that is relevant to their work before their official start date,” says Malhotra.

2. Build a short-term and long-term plan

Setting expectations within the first week of onboarding can make a world of difference in productivity.

“Give them a plan,” says Malhotra. “What’s expected in the first week, first month, first quarter? What are the typical benchmarks for new developers in your organization? This can be a set of milestones customized for the developer by their manager. It can serve as a roadmap to determine if they are on track.”

If they’re jumping straight into a project, make sure you answer the following:

What is the function of the project?
What is my role within the project?
What are its short-term and long-term objectives?
Who are the stakeholders for this project?
What issues has it faced before and how have they been solved?
What issues is it facing right now or will face in the near future?
Which task within the project is the top priority right now?

Continuously tracking performance and setting goals will not only help them ramp up quickly but build their confidence in their new role.

3. Provide documentation

Your team’s productivity is only as good as your documentation. Without proper technical and project documentation, newly hired developers have no frame of reference to get started.

While this can seem like an overwhelming task for hiring managers, here’s a good visual reference for project documentation by stages and purpose:

Along with proper project documentation, you need technical documentation. Documenting the codebase, the processes followed, how code is deployed, etc. is essential for your new hire to get started.

“Provide documentation on everything a developer needs to get started—the codebase, the development process, the planning process, the deployment process, to name a few,” says Malhotra.

Technical documentation is not a “set it and forget it” project. Your software documentation lifecycle (SDLC) should be regularly vetted and updated. As your tools and processes evolve, so should your documentation.

“Keep the documentation current. Get feedback from each new developer and continuously improve the docs,” says Malhotra.

4. Assign a buddy

Probably the easiest and most effective step in successful onboarding is matching a seasoned employee with your new hire.

“Assign a buddy. Someone they can reach out to for any help they need. Or to just talk. It’s better to have someone who is not their manager and from a different department,” says Malhotra.

According to HCI, 87% of companies that assign an ambassador during the onboarding process say that it's an effective way to speed up new hire proficiency.

Although being remote makes it challenging to plan coffee outings and happy hours, having a buddy that regularly checks in on your new hire can make a huge difference with acclimation. Having an employee in their corner builds trust and offers opportunities to express any challenges they might be experiencing in a comfortable environment.

5. Over-communicate

Ensuring early wins for developers can be extremely challenging when remote. This is partly because all synchronous communication is done either over the phone or through instant messaging apps.

In the office, the new developer might sit next to their buddy or a colleague who can quickly see their screen and answer any immediate questions.

When remote, your new developer might be less inclined to keep asking questions they need the answers to… especially when they don’t get a timely response.

At HackerRank, our engineering team immediately assigns new developers a small project to work on. The team guides them at each step to make sure their first code goes to production without any issues or hassles. This first project does two things:

Builds their confidence
Helps them learn the process and how to collaborate with their colleagues, virtually.

“The first month is crucial in outlining expectations and making sure new hires feel empowered to ask questions,” says Malhotra. “Help them schedule meetings with people within the organization that they will interact with regularly to develop relationships in a virtual setting.”

Encourage your team to support the new hire and check in regularly on how they are handling their tasks. Create channels in your communication tool around different key projects so your new hire knows exactly where to direct their questions.

Empowering your developers from a distance

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to onboarding developers remotely.

However, without crucial steps like sharing resources, setting measurable goals, providing relevant documentation, assigning them a mentor, and empowering them to ask questions, you risk hemorrhaging talent.

By taking the time to set up an effective remote onboarding process, you’re not only ensuring early wins from your new developers, but you’re building a foundation for their success in the long run.

The post 5 Steps to Creating a Seamless Virtual Onboarding Experience for Your Developers appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

Introducing the HackerRank Hiring Maturity Model

Rob Banning — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 20:55:50 +0000

Would you like to find out how you stack up in the war for tech talent?

The Hiring Maturity Model breaks down, in granular detail, the various actions that companies can take to create more sophisticated hiring processes. These actions help companies obtain a competitive advantage for top talent while ensuring a world-class experience for candidates and interviewers alike.

The Hiring Maturity Model is emblematic of how incremental process changes can impact hiring in any organization, big or small. While there is not a single “right” way to get started, identifying areas within your process as it currently exists will help identify gaps and influence how organizations think about their hiring strategies.

Take the 2-minute self-assessment now to find out how you stack up.

Companies of all shapes and sizes consistently look for ways to improve their hiring processes. The central questions they’re trying to answer include:

How do I compare to other companies in my industry and beyond in hiring the best tech talent?
What can I do to make my hiring process more efficient, compliant, and fair?

Where do you fall on the Innovator Index?

If you’re interested in discovering how to improve your hiring process, follow these 3 simple steps:

Take the assessment (it’s only 5 questions!)
Receive your personalized results & find out how you compare to your peers
Access resources to improve your process and score

Coming Soon: Industry Report

Using the data provided, we will launch a State of Tech Hiring report in May, which will be free to all who participate in the assessment. This report will be the definitive guide for companies that are interested in finding out how they stack up today and how to improve in the future.

The post Introducing the HackerRank Hiring Maturity Model appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

How to Create a Positive Remote Interview Experience

Jannelle Sanchez — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 08:54:53 +0000

This post was updated with current data by Brianna Hansen.

Thousands of tech hiring teams have halted their standard hiring processes in favor of remote interviewing, sourcing, and screening.

When transitioning to an end-to-end virtual hiring process, there are a lot of new factors to account for—like the stability of the candidate’s internet connection and gauging a candidate’s interest face-to-face through signals like body language and eye contact—that are out of your control.

But there’s good news! There are some actionable remote interview tips to help hiring managers and technical recruiters cultivate a positive remote interviewing candidate experience.

If you have aggressive hiring goals this quarter, don’t let the switch to remote work hinder your hiring efforts. Follow these 4 steps to stay on track and deliver a candidate-first remote interviewing process.

4 Steps to Delivering a Candidate-First Remote Interview Experience

1. Master basic technical interviewing best practices

With today’s competitive tech talent market, one mishap or error during the interview process is enough to turn off interested candidates. While conducting remote job interviews, it’s crucial that you master the basic technical interviewing best practices to attract the interest of the right developers.

Before phone or video interviews, use a skills assessment.

Especially for high volume roles, a skills assessment tool helps weed out any candidates that are uninterested or don’t meet your hiring team’s skill requirements.

Requiring candidates to take a code assessment at the first stage of your remote interview process cuts down the number of applicants for high-volume roles and help you quickly identify which applicants should move on to the video conferencing stage.

HackerRank allows organizations to screen high volumes of candidates efficiently with challenges tailored to the skills required for the job. In fact, TrueAccord saved recruiting and engineering hours and reduced their on sites by 50% when they used HackerRank.

Position yourself as the candidate’s go-to contact.

When remote interviewing, you won’t have the opportunity to create an in-person connection.

So it’s crucial that you stay connected and communicative to the candidate throughout the entire interview process.

To keep your candidates in the loop and your role top of mind, reach out to them at every stage of the evaluation process. Simple gestures like sharing some online interview preparation tips, hopping on quick phone calls, or scheduling regular updates will create a stronger bond between you and your candidates.

Prioritizing constant communication with your candidates will make them feel valued, and will leave a positive lasting impression.

Create a distraction-free remote interview environment.

When conducting a remote interview, remove all opportunities for interruptions.

To prevent wifi mishaps, purchase an ethernet cord, and use a hardwired internet connection during your interviews. To prevent other online interview interruptions, try muting notifications from apps like Slack and Gmail.

If roommates or family members are home during your working hours, communicate the time of your interview so they’ll know when you need a quiet, noise-free environment.

Even though you can’t control your candidate’s interview environment, it’s a good idea to send them an email that advises them to take the interview in a distraction-free environment with a stable internet connection.

2. Introduce your culture with branded content

Inviting your candidate onsite to meet future co-workers in person is a crucial step in the interview process.

When remote interviewing, your interviewees will be able to meet the hiring managers and potential teammates during video interviews, but they won’t have that in-person meet and greet experience. To give your candidates a more personalized introduction to your company’s culture and values, send them branded content.

Branded packages that have a mix of evergreen talent branding content are great resources recruiters can use to quickly showcase the company’s culture, values, and mission. Here are some assets you should keep on hand:

Company articles (e.g. major company announcements or meaningful press coverage)
Employee profiles that highlight members from the team you’re hiring for
A list of the hiring manager’s candidate team expectations
Videos, photos, or quotes of employees from your latest talent branding campaigns

3. Communicate the workflow at the beginning of the process

No one likes to show up unprepared and agreeing to a totally remote interview is new territory for a lot of candidates.

Now is the time to ramp up your communication and inform candidates what they should expect at every stage of the interview process.

Map out how many rounds of interviews the candidate will go through, which skills assessment platform you’ll be using, and send them a copy of your company’s mission and values.

If you’re using HackerRank to assess candidates, you can also send them interview prep materials like this HackerRank Interview Prep Kit.

And again: don’t be afraid of over-communicating. Lagging on communication is a common mistake companies make which can result in a negative candidate experience.

Stand out from your competition by staying in contact with your candidates from your first phone screen throughout the end of their onboarding process.

4. Use a tool that is easy for candidates and employees to navigate

In remote technical interviews, candidates don’t have the option to map out their work on a whiteboard in front of the hiring manager.

Virtual whiteboard tools allow interviewers to conduct pair programming technical interviews with build-in video calling, which creates a collaborative coding environment where hiring teams can assess a candidate’s coding skills from afar.

With pair programming tools, hiring teams can watch candidates build on code from pre-screen challenges in real-time, or run and test code together, all in a single session. It enables hiring managers to see a candidate’s problem solving and communication skills in real time—a practical alternative to onsite interviews.

Another concern with remote interviews is inconsistent and (often awkward) video interview transitions. When you have multiple people conducting an interview with a single candidate, ill-timed handoffs can look sloppy and distracting.

Tools that offer virtual lobbies for the candidate to wait in before or in between interviews make a great first impression and create a seamless transition from interview to interview.

Being remote isn’t an excuse for a poor interview experience

Like remote work, remote hiring is a new landscape that all companies are struggling to navigate. However, don’t blame the remote environment when you have an opportunity to improve the interview experience.

Having the right tools will equip your hiring team to create the best possible online interview experience, so you can make a lasting impression on your top candidates.

The post How to Create a Positive Remote Interview Experience appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

Mitigate Interview Inconsistencies with HackerRank Benchmarking

Mohit Prakash — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 08:51:27 +0000

Interview feedback is extremely subjective.

Every interviewer has their own style, questions, and expectations when they meet with a candidate. While it’s important to get these different perspectives and input, it can be challenging when it comes to making a hiring decision.

“We have a full spectrum of interviewers strict and lenient who are assessing candidates’ skills. This makes hiring decisions more complex and time-consuming”. This feedback came directly from a HackerRank customer.

The above problem resonates with a lot of our customers.

The bottom line is this: An interviewer's feedback is usually subjective, and each interviewer follows a different scale when rating a candidate.

Unlike a test with an absolute measure of performance, the challenge here is that two interviewers may capture entirely different ratings for the same skill during an interview because of their personal grading styles. For example, if an interviewer uses a 1-5 rating scale, but the average rating they give candidates is a 2, then a 3 or 4 rating would technically be an above-average rating for them.

At the beginning of last year, we introduced an Interviewer scorecard in live interviews. This scorecard is a private scorecard for interviewers to manually evaluate candidate skills during an interview. It displays a set of skills to be analyzed based on the role that the candidate is getting hired for. Scorecards make interviews more structured and provide valuable data related to the interviewer—which can help minimize inconsistencies.

Benchmarking can surface and resolve inconsistencies in an interviewer’s ratings by providing more context to the hiring panel. With Benchmarking, the interviewer's rating can be compared to their historical ratings for a skill. This allows the hiring team to better understand the relative intent of each interviewer’s score and thus start looking at each subjective rating more objectively as a whole.

Let's dive into one example: Take a look at Visa’s Candidate Packet.

At a glance, she nailed her skill scores in the screening (100%), and she did great across the interview loop by getting 4 and 5 ratings, but she received a 2 from Dan (another interviewer). Is 2 a bad score? Well, according to the Benchmark, receiving a 2 from Dan is average. It turns out, Dan gives everybody a 2.

A 2 score from Dan has the same weight as a 5 score from Oded. Perhaps he’s burned out (a common problem with interviewers), or maybe his expectations are not aligned with the other interviewers.

The point is, you probably have a Dan hidden in your interview loop and don’t see it. The Candidate Packet and Interview Benchmarks create a consistent baseline for interview scoring so you can make well-informed hiring decisions.

Start Benchmarking your interviews today!

The benchmarking capabilities are available for all customers who have Projects enabled.

Click here to learn more about HackerRank Benchmarking and how it can be used to effectively screen and interview your technical candidates.

Mohit Prakash is a Senior Product Manager at HackerRank for Data & Analytics. Mohit is passionate about building products that make data accessible so customers can make data-driven decisions. He leverages his engineering & product background to help companies optimize their hiring process by surfacing the right insights into their own data. Previously, he worked as a product manager at AtHoc and BlackBerry.

The post Mitigate Interview Inconsistencies with HackerRank Benchmarking appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

How MathWorks Quickly & Effectively Transitioned to Remote Interviews with HackerRank

Aditi Chandrasekar — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:11:45 +0000

Remote work wasn’t the standard 10 months ago.

In fact, 80% of employers said they did not have a remote-work program before the onset of the pandemic, according to a MindEdge/Skye Learning study.

Remote work wasn’t the only area where companies had to adapt—remote hiring presented its own set of challenges. This forced companies, like MathWorks, to quickly pivot to keep up with their hiring objectives.

To understand how they adapted so quickly in such a short time while upholding their core values of growth and diversity, we spoke with Vipresh Gangwal, Manager of the Engineering Group at Mathworks, at our virtual HackerRank.main() event back in October.

Watch the full interview on demand or continue reading for key takeaways.

1. Always seek opportunities for growth

One of the core values at MathWorks is continuous improvement. They accomplish this by allowing employees to explore different opportunities within the company.

MathWorks put together a leadership development program providing recent graduates the opportunity to figure out where they fit within the company. Instead of assigning them to a specific role or team, they give them the flexibility to explore different facets of engineering.

“One such success story is actually myself,” says Vipresh. “I have a background in electrical engineering. My graduate studies were focused on perception and planning and robotics. I joined MathWorks because of my exposure to MATLAB and I thought I was going to be a software developer. But within a few weeks of joining, I was exposed to so many other roles and opportunities, I realized very early that I did not want to be a software developer. Today, I've been at MathWorks for more than eight years and have been a manager in the EDG (Engineering Development Group) program for more than half a decade.”

This philosophy also applies to how they approach hiring. “We are always hiring,” says Vipresh. “Part of my responsibility, along with helping engineers, is to help our department further our technical interviewing and hiring program and continuously evolve how we do things.”

2. Having the right technology makes it easier to pivot in times of crisis

Prior to the pandemic, remote work was not common at MathWorks. Vipresh and his team had to quickly shift and adapt pretty much overnight.

Since they were already in the throws of hiring with HackerRank, the transition was much smoother than anticipated.

“With HackerRank, it was easy,” says Vipresh. “Our phone interviews were the same, and HackerRank allowed us to take the onsite interviews and replicate the same level of assessment and engagement through the tool. The only difference was now, you’re not sitting in the same room.”

HackerRank’s virtual Whiteboard helps MathWorks conduct effective technical interviews from anywhere, using an interactive coding environment.

“I’m really excited about using the Whiteboard for virtual interviewing,” says Vipresh. “We have started to use it and I'm hearing good feedback from our technical interviewers on that.

3. Building a diverse candidate pool and skills rubric removes implicit biases and strengthens diversity

What does it take for someone to be successful on your team?

That’s the question Vipresh hopes to answer when building out his skills rubric for candidates. “When you anchor your interviews in fundamental technical skills, you remove variability between interviewers,” says Vipresh. “Once you align the HackerRank skills with the needs on your team, you eliminate implicit bias and really find the strongest candidates out there.”

Vipresh also recommends being proactive about incorporating diversity into your sourcing. He suggests getting involved in conferences that promote diversity in engineering along with attending virtual career fairs where you can attract diverse talent.

He says, “We hope these focused efforts of outreach create awareness so we can have more sourcing along those lines. Making sure that a diverse candidate pool exists is the first step, and then making sure that the interview process promotes diversity and treats candidates equally is the second. That will yield a good result in the end.”

4. Establish an expertise partnership to promote transparency and collaboration in hiring the right candidate

Hiring doesn’t happen in silos. Partnering with the right people to build a tech council equips recruiters to source the right candidates from the start.

Vipresh suggests, “Starting from sourcing all the way to your interviewing process and onboarding process, make sure you have that partnership so everybody has transparency and can work with each other.”

Vipresh also recommends taking the time upfront to have those meetings with the recruiting team so they not only understand the day-to-day tasks of the position but the day-to-day tasks of the hiring manager as well.

“When you talk to a recruiter or somebody in our recruiting team, they'll be able to describe the role as well as I can, because they have heard that from me, they know what I do on a daily basis,” says Vipresh. “If you can build that synergy and connect with recruiters the way you do with your colleagues, that's the way to go.”

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How UBS Standardized Their Remote Hiring Process to Globally Scale Their Tech Team with HackerRank

Aditi Chandrasekar — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:33:40 +0000

Last month, we hosted our largest HackerRank.main() event ever and announced the launch of our end-to-end remote hiring solution: the Developer Skills Platform.

But we didn’t do it alone. We spoke with thought leaders from across the globe about how they’re addressing the evolving challenges of hiring the right developers and scaling their engineering teams remotely.

One of the sessions included an insightful interview with David O’Brien, Group Technology Workforce Management at UBS.

Click here for the full interview or scroll down for key highlights.

Our CMO, Jennifer Stagnaro, led the discussion as David shared how his team used HackerRank to standardize their remote hiring process as well as improve the candidate experience.

Here are a few key takeaways from this talk:

1. Understand what technology can offer you, and rebuild and redefine the recruitment process from there

David’s recruitment challenge was the high volume of candidates made it discern if they were bringing the right talent into the organization. He wanted to equip his team with the right tech tools to assess skills with screening, process, assessment, and evaluation.

“Once we piloted HackerRank, there was lots of excitement around having the virtual Whiteboarding to code,” says David. “It resonated with the hiring managers because they can sit together with their candidates over an interview and actually get down to the nuts and bolts and get into the culture of what we do.”

David also mentioned the Scorecard functionality made life easy for the hiring managers to give feedback on the spot instead of waiting an hour or so later to provide that information.

2. Standardize skills globally

It’s no secret the COVID era has presented its own wealth of challenges for organizations. According to Gartner, 88% of the organizations, worldwide, made it mandatory or encouraged their employees to work from home after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

While it’s forced companies to fast-track remote collaboration, it has also provided an opportunity for organizations to widen their talent reach. Being remote means hiring is no longer limited to the talent available in your geographical area.

According to David, this “leads to greater flexibility, higher quality, and a more diverse talent pool.” However, this only strengthens the argument for a standardized assessment of candidates.

David wanted to define a standardized set of skills to vet their contingent workforce as well. “That’s why we brought in HackerRank,” says David. “we wanted to have a global standard of engineering talent coming into group technology. We have a huge contingent workforce. So, we wanted to make sure that we have the same measurement for our contingent workforce. And we actually use exactly the same tests for internal and contingency hiring.”

3. Invest in a tech council

You can source the highest quality candidates from across the globe but if they don’t fit within the needs of your team, consider them useless.

That’s why David recommends establishing a tech council that can identify the specific skills and qualifications needed for the role.

“We wanted to make sure that the candidates and the feedback that they’re getting were tied to the skill sets that the hiring managers wanted to see,” says David.

David also says having a tech council establishes more of an invested relationship between the hiring manager and candidate.

“It’s critical for the content to be driven by technologists,” says David. “That way, the hiring managers have more of an appreciation for the candidates they’re getting out of the process.”

4. Learn how to attract candidates to your organization

Hiring should be a two-way street—the process should be insightful for both the hiring manager and the candidate.

David and his team recommend keeping the candidate experience top of mind when reevaluating your recruitment process. HackerRank helps this do this by allowing hiring managers to be communicative and transparent with the candidates.

“We had an ‘a-ha’ moment once the initial tests were built,” says David. “We really shifted the mindset and improved the candidate experience as well as the overall quality of what our hiring managers could do with candidates, especially in the CodeScreen* aspect.”

But improving the candidate experience doesn’t end there. David hopes to not only seek out high-quality candidates but draw them to UBS as well.

“We’re discovering new ways of not processing candidates, but attracting candidates also to the organization,” says David. “And by using HackerRank, we’re actually improving the tech image of UBS.”

*Disclaimer: This blog post contains messaging around the “CodePair” and “CodeScreen” features which are now called “Interview” within the HackerRank product as of 10/06/20.

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