What is a Certified Assessment? 

HackerRank Certified Assessments are pre-built role-specific tests created after long-term research and analysis of the questions that match the industry standards for the given role and assure a quality outcome from the screening process. 

These Certified Assessments follow industry norms and design a universal test for a specific role. Any company that wants to hire for that role can use this single test to assess its candidates. This provides an unbiased interview experience for both the companies and the candidates.

Benefits

• 100% HackerRank Managed Screening: HackerRank entirely manages these assessments. You do not have to depend upon your recruiting and engineering teams to create the test questions or manage the test.  

• Unbiased Assessments: HackerRank uses a third-party content bias checker that helps to provide an unbiased assessment experience.  

• Leakage Protected Skill Bundles: You will not be required to keep a tab on your tests to check if a question is leaked. HackerRank automatically detects and removes the leaked questions and replaces them with new questions. The leak detection process runs daily, and questions are flagged immediately once detected during the daily run.

• Robust Plagiarism Detection: HackerRank provides the market's most powerful plagiarism detection software to detect malpractice. 

• Accurate Classification: Our team has built a machine-learning-powered role mapping engine that conducts in-depth research by scanning thousands of job descriptions throughout the industry. This approach helps us accurately list the skills required for a specific job role. 

• No Repetition: HackerRank follows a 10-step robust evaluation process to select questions. The possibility of two developers getting the same question is 1 in 1000.  

Creating a Certified Assessment 

• Click on the Create Test option and select the role for which you want to assess the candidates. 

• Search for the desired role or the skill you want to assess. If the role you selected has a Certified Assessment you can see the badge as shown in the below picture. 

• A Certified Assessment is categorized into skill-based sections. You can see the skills mapped to the role you have selected. You can add or remove these roles in the next step.

Tip: You can access the HackerRank Roles Directory to view the skills mapped to each role.

• On the test page, you can access details such as the selected role, core skills mapped to that role, and other relevant skills. You can click on the + icon beside the relevant skills to add them to your assessment.  

Section Level Settings

Shuffling Sections

You can rearrange the order of skill bundles within a test. To reorder the skill bundles, hover your mouse cursor over a skill bundle, and while keeping the mouse button pressed, drag the skill bundle upwards or downwards to the desired position. This allows you to easily shuffle and reorder the sequence of skill bundles per your preference within the test.

Skill Bundle Settings

• Hover over the skill section and click on the settings icon 

• Within the skill section settings, you can change its name, select the number of questions, and change the time limit to answer that section.  

• From the Advanced Settings, you can: 

  • Control if you want the candidates to see the sections when disabled candidates will only see the questions within a test.  

  • Enable or disable the sections to be shuffled for the candidates. 

  • Allow or disallow the candidates to revisit previous sections once answered.  

  • Allow the candidates to use the duration left in previous sections for the upcoming sections.  

Leaked Question Replacement Indicator

• Whenever a leaked question is automatically replaced, you will be notified with an indicator within the test. 

• You can click on the Review button to view the questions that have been leaked and replaced. This will help you check the accuracy of the replaced question compared to the original.

Note:

• Automatic question replacements work for all the published tests, even if locked. 

Customizing The Skills 

Coming to customization, if you feel that skill is not needed for the role you are hiring or want to test an additional skill in the candidates, you can customize the assessment at the skill level.  

Important Note: When you add or remove a skill, the test will lose its Certified Assessment status

Adding a New Skill

•  Click on Add New+ and select from the available options: 

  • Add Skill-Based Questions: Add questions curated by HackerRank and mapped to each skill.

  • Add Manually: Add questions from HackerRank or My Company library. 

• If you select Add Skill-Based Questions, you will be asked to choose the skills.

There are two types of skill bundles: 

• Basic Skill Bundles: These are standard skill bundles. The questions in these bundles are mapped to specific skills. 

• Leak Protected Skill Bundles: 

  • The questions in these skill bundles are safeguarded against leakage 

  • HackerRank exclusively manages these skill bundles. If any questions from these bundles are leaked, HackerRank replaces the compromised questions with new ones.

  • Leak-protected skill bundles are highlighted with the safeguard icon, as shown below. 

Note: Basic skill bundles do not support automatic question replacement. In case of a question leak, you must manually replace the question in that test.

• The skills are differentiated at three levels: 

  • Basic: Consists of questions with easy difficulty. 

  • Intermediate: Consists of questions with medium difficulty.

  • Advanced: Consists of questions with hard difficulty. 

• Next, you can choose the Question Type, such as Coding, MCQ, or Project type.

• After selecting the desired skill and question type, click Add to the test. The selected skill will appear in a new section, and the test duration will change accordingly.

Adding Questions From the Library

• Select the Add Manually option after clicking Add New+

• Select the Add From Library or Create Question option.  

• When you select Add From Library, you will be taken to the HackerRank library, where you can select the desired question using the available filtering options. Click on the + icon to add the question.  Selected questions will appear on the right pane of the screen. 

• Once you've completed it, you can click on Go back to test to proceed with the test. Selected questions are added as a section.   

Skill Bundle Settings

• Hover over the skill section and click on the settings icon 

• Within the skill section settings, you can change its name, select the number of questions, and change the time limit to answer that section.  

• From the Advanced Settings, you can: 

  • Control if you want the candidates to see the sections when disabled candidates will only see the questions within a test.  

  • Enable or disable the sections to be shuffled for the candidates. 

  • Allow or disallow the candidates to revisit previous sections once answered.  

  • Allow the candidates to use the duration left in previous sections for the upcoming sections.  

Note: You must add duration to each section to enable the above three settings.   

Removing a Skill Section

Hover your cursor over the skill you want to remove and click the delete icon. This will remove the skill section you chose.

Once done, you can Publish the test and start inviting the candidates.

Note: Shuffle sections is a default setting that cannot be changed.  

Related Article

Learn more about how you can set up skills weightage and cutoff scores for your certified assessments.