For companies hiring software developers today, remote interviews are the new normal in technical interviewing. Companies across the world are moving from in-person onsites to remote interviewing to preserve the health and safety of their teams, and their candidates.
At HackerRank alone, we’ve seen a 200% increase in use of our remote interviewing tool, CodePair*. To that end, we’re sharing some of our best practices for CodePair* users undergoing this transition. In this post, we’ll share tips on how to best prepare both interviewers and candidates for a remote technical interview. Plus, we’ll walk through best practices for getting the most out of your CodePair* sessions.
The goal of the onsite interview—or in this case, the remote interview—is to get an in-depth look into each candidate’s skillset. The more accurately you can evaluate their skill sets, the more likely you are to be able to ensure you’re choosing the candidate best suited to the role.
One way you can ensure thorough evaluations is through standardizing your questions. And that starts with forming an internal expert panel.
First, you’ll have to assemble a team of internal interview experts. When forming your expert panel, the goal isn’t necessarily to choose the most senior developers, or even the most tenured. The key is to look for developers at the organization with the most interviewing experience. They not only have in-depth knowledge of your engineering org; they also have an in-depth understanding of the company’s hiring process.
Ultimately, the goal is to work with the expert panel to create a library of interview questions that can be shared with the rest of the organization. By providing standardized questions across the org, you’ll not only make interviewers’ lives easier in the long run—you’ll also help to ensure you’re upholding a consistent bar of requirements when evaluating candidates.
Assessments can also be a huge help when identifying interview questions. If you’re using an assessment tool like HackerRank CodeScreen*, the remote interview is a great time to build on that. Consider starting the interview by pulling the candidate’s CodeScreen* assessment into a live CodePair* session.
Try referencing their assessment to ask questions like:
By building off of the code they’ve already submitted, you can start to understand their problem solving skills off the bat. It’ll also give the candidate a chance to give context to the choices they made during the assessment.
In a lot of ways, a remote technical interview might not seem like a huge shift from a traditional onsite interview. But there’s more to think about than you might expect, especially for those used to face-to-face interactions and whiteboarding sessions.
First thing’s first: like any remote interview, it’s key that both interviewers and candidates prep their physical environment for a remote interview.
Here’s a checklist you can share with your panel and candidates preparing to conduct a remote interview:
In addition to preparing your physical environment, it’s equally important to familiarize yourself with the CodePair* platform. That means spending time learning how it works—and that looks slightly different for both candidates and interviewers.
For candidates:
For interviewers:
Especially when it comes to technical roles, remote interviews aren’t always easy—but they are doable. If you’re transitioning from an in-person interview process to a remote one, remember to be patient with your team (and yourself) as you adjust.
And if you have any questions as you’re using the platform, don’t hesitate to reach out to your customer success manager, or our support team at support@hackerrank.com. We’re happy to support you in any way we can as you transition to remote interviews.
*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.