HackerRank Updates

Our customers tell us that they often wish each Candidate being assessed is given a different Test. The idea is to have a pool of questions of a similar kind, and have the system select a subset of questions to present to each Candidate.

HackerRank for Work has long supported shuffling of Questions in a Test. In this model all candidates will see the same set of questions, but the order in which the questions are presented is different for each candidate. Today we are very excited to launch a new feature – “Dynamic Tests” that helps users automatically build an entirely different Test for every candidate based on specific rules.

The first thing you would do to start using the Dynamic Tests feature is to add tags to the questions you are interested in using in your Test. Make sure similar questions are tagged with the same labels. For e.g. add the ‘Easy’ tag to all questions you consider easy, or ‘Polymorphism’ to all questions related to object oriented inheritance concepts, and so on. Note that questions in the HackerRank for Work library are already extensively tagged.

Once you have your questions tagged, you can enable this feature by going to the Tests’ Advanced Settings page, Miscellaneous section. Once this feature is enabled, you will be able to add one or more rules, with each rule specifying the Tags to be matched and the count of questions to be picked with those tags.

Note: You can specify multiple tags in a rule. For e.g. you can choose 1 question that has both ‘Easy’ and ‘Algorithms’ tags. You can also specify a second rule to select 2 questions for Logic or Data Interpretation, etc.

Take this feature for a spin, and let us know what you think!

As a HackerRank for Work user, if you start a CodePair interview while already logged in to your HackerRank for Work account, it is reasonable for you to expect that you don’t have to log in a second time. Unfortunately that is not how it was. With a change that we are releasing today your HackerRank for Work and CodePair sessions share information so that you have to only log in once.

Here is what you would see if you visited a CodePair link while being logged in to your HackerRank for Work account from another browser tab.

This login sharing works in the opposite direction too. If you start a CodePair session, and then visit you HackerRank for Work account you will not be prompted for a password.

Finally, it is important to remember that if you log out of your HRW session while a CodePair is going on, you will be logged out from both places. Don’t worry that does not mean your data will be lost, it only means you will have to log in again to access your pad.

Any questions or comments? You can leave a note below, or write to us at support@hackerrank.com

As part of a series of changes to improve the phone interview experience, our latest update allows you to choose the font size of the code written by you or the candidate during a CodePair interview. This option is available from the settings menu just like the other customization options of selecting the editor mode, turning on/off intellisense. 

Earlier today, we rolled out an upgraded failover feature for CodePair. This allows a CodePair interview to continue on a secondary server if for some reason the primary server goes down. Even though our data center already guarantees 99.95% uptime, we believe it’s important to get that value as close to 100% as we possibly can, which is why we’re upgrading our failover system.

The way this feature will work is simple: if the primary server experiences downtime during a CodePair interview, both the interviewer and candidate see this pop up:

When the user presses “Continue”, their CodePair interview session restarts on a secondary server with all of the session’s previous details and code completely intact. The interview will continue with minimal interruption and no data loss.

If you have any questions about this failover functionality, please write to us at support@hackerrank.com.

Earlier this year we implemented a feature that allowed Coding challenge creators to add internal notes. The feature has been a hit with our customers, and many requested us to extend it to other question types. So here it is. From now on you will be able write internal Notes for all questions, just below the Problem Statement.

Just to recap – Internal Notes appear in the Question view in your HackerRank for Work account, and candidate test reports. Candidates cannot see them. So go ahead and use them to document what a reviewer should watch out for while manually grading a question, or to note down why a particular question is worthy of being included in your library, etc.

The test invitation email has been improved to provide a better experience to the candidates. The email will contain a “Start Test” button (see image below) instead of candidate email and password. Clicking on this button will take the candidate to a test login page which will be authenticated for that specific candidate and they will not be required to enter their email and password. Candidate will have to enter other fields, like “Univ/College Name”, “Full Name” etc (as applicable to the test) before starting.

Note

1. This change doesn’t apply to cases when a candidate uses a short test URL or public test URL (one where password is not needed) e.g. http://hr.gs/arpit. These links will behave exactly as they do today.
2. This change doesn’t apply to cases when the core email template is modified. By core email template, we’re referring to the part of the email which is non-editable from the invite candidate interface. It can only be modified by HackerRank support team as of today. The invitation emails sent for these cases will continue to include a password.
3. This change doesn’t impact CodePair.

We’ve rolled out a change to improve the state management of CodePair interviews. Before this change, if an interviewer did not click the “End” button at the end of an interview (see image below), that interview continued to be listed in the “In Progress” field of “Reports” and was accessible by the candidate, indefinitely.

The change ensures that all “In Progress” interviews are ended, and moved to the “Completed” state automatically after 60 minutes of inactivity. An interview is considered inactive when all the participants (i.e. the interviewer(s) and the candidate) leave the CodePair session.

We’ve also cleaned up all the old interviews in “In Progress” state as a part of this change. Please note that an interview may be re-opened (and moved back to “In Progress”) at any time by the interviewer by logging back into the session (at which point the candidate may re-enter, as well). It cannot, however, be re-opened by the candidate.

CodePair helps you get the best out of technical phone interviews. Besides the ability to see the candidates code real-time, one of the things that makes phone interviews more effective is to see candidates while talking to them. We’re excited to share 2 significant improvements to the video chat experience on CodePair:

Video call notifications: When someone initiates a video chat, it will notify the other interview participant(s) to join. This prevents any confusion and overhead communication between the candidate and interviewer around having to start the video chat at the same time.

Chat in full-screen: There’s an option to have an enlarged video chat so you can have a proper conversation looking at the candidate. The minimal video mode can continue to be useful when the interviewer wants to focus on reading the candidate’s code.

We hope these changes will help you conduct more effective phone interviews. Feel free to share any comments/suggestions.

The code editor in CodePair has been improved to help the interviewees feel at home. We strongly believe that CodePair must let the candidates remain focused on the interview questions and they shouldn’t have to spend time adjusting to the platform. Two of our recent changes will help candidates significantly:

Auto-complete: Intellisense, or suggestions for code auto-completion, is one of the most important feature offered by IDEs. This feature is now enabled in CodePair for C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby and PHP. If needed, it can be turned off from the settings menu.

Vim/Emacs editor mode: Many programmers are used to their own editor. With CodePair, one can now select Vim or Emacs as the editor mode and use the relevant shortcut keys.

We continuously strive to give the best possible experience to candidates so they are fully equipped to showcase their technical strengths in an interview. If you’ve feedback or suggestions wrt this, please comment in the section below.