When it comes to hiring, following a well-documented skills rubric is key to ensuring a uniform evaluation process. By defining required skills and competencies, they enable every interviewer to align around a shared definition of each skill. Using that shared definition, panelists can ensure they’re evaluating each skill in the same way: no matter the interviewer, the candidate, or the team involved. That helps to ensure hiring decisions are based on skills fit—not external biasing influences.
So to help our customers reap the benefits of a standardized skills rubric, we’re launching the HackerRank Skills Directory.
The HackerRank Skills Directory is a detailed library of in-demand technical skills—from .NET, to AWS, to Kubernetes, and many more—vetted by industry experts. Each listing in the directory has two core components: a definition of the skill, and a list of associated key competencies.
Example of a skill from the HackerRank Skills Directory that defines key competencies for three distinct skill levels
The key competencies outlined in the Skills Directory represent the core of each skill: or, the knowledge required to be proficient in that skill.
To vet these skills and key competencies, we formed the HackerRank Skills Advisory Council. The Skills Advisory Council is a panel of industry experts dedicated to identifying, vetting, and standardizing HackerRank skills. It’s a group composed of technical thought leaders, each renowned for work in their respective fields.
In order to create the skill rubrics in the HackerRank Skills Directory, each member of the council received a set of base skills aligned to their expertise. Using that as a guideline, the members identified key competencies that define proficiency in each skill. The council leveraged their collective industry expertise to outline key competencies for more than 60 individual skills.
We’re excited to introduce the founding members of the HackerRank Skills Advisory Council:
Kesha Williams
For Kesha, joining the Skills Advisory Council is a way to share some of the expertise she’s gained over her 25+ years of experience. “I joined the HR Skills Advisory council as a way to give back to the tech community,” Kesha said. “I’ve used HackerRank for years, and frequently in my roles as a software engineering manager and an adjunct professor. I was excited to join and help set the direction for HackerRank, because it’s one of my favorite tools.”
Karthik Gaekwad
Karthik was motivated to join the Skills Advisory Council to help create better interview experiences. He hopes that the Skills Directory will help create better interview experiences for hiring managers and candidates alike. “It allows for both parties to know what themes, problems, and ideas are important from a technology perspective. That allows for everyone to be better prepared,” Karthik said. “From a hiring manager standpoint, a skills directory will enable one to think about more real-world questions to ask a candidate, and ultimately, craft a better conversation with the interviewee.”
Sijin Joseph
It was Sijin’s work on the Programmer Competency Matrix, in part, that drove him to join the council. “Having worked on the Programmer Competency Matrix, I knew the importance of having a roadmap to navigate the vast and ever changing landscape of software technology,” Sijin explained. “For candidates, this is a great guidebook to follow when preparing for an interview or just looking to get up-to-date. For employers, this directory allows them to develop a standardized question set so that they can make apples-to-apples and unbiased comparisons when looking at different candidates.”
Errol Hooper
For Janani, joining the council was a way to enable engineering orgs to make the shift to skills-based hiring . “I just can not emphasize how important it is for the tech industry to become more meritocratic, more based on objective, clear-cut judgments of competence than on bluster or pedigree,” Janani said. She hopes that hiring managers can leverage the Skills Directory to do just that. “The HackerRank Skills Directory is a mechanism for exactly such hiring processes, and that’s why it is such a great tool for hiring managers.”
Harishankaran Karunanidhi is the CTO and Co-founder at HackerRank, where he’s scaled HackerRank from its first lines of code to a platform that now assesses 1 developer every 8 seconds. He previously worked as a software engineer at IBM, where he worked with DB2, Websphere, Cognos, and Datastage.
We’re excited to share the HackerRank Skills Directory to help hiring managers create more standardized skill rubrics. To learn more about the skills in the Skills Directory, visit the roles management page in your HackerRank account, or visit the full directory here.
Darshan Suresh