July 2024 Release Notes

We are excited to enhance your HackerRank experience with our newest updates. Our team has worked diligently to introduce new features and improvements, including updates designed to help you manage higher candidate assessment volumes more efficiently during this university hiring season. If you need assistance navigating these changes, our dedicated support team is here. Reach out to us anytime at support@hackerrank.com.

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Question leakage is a significant concern during university recruiting season. To tackle this challenge, we have introduced the following features.

Leaked Question Alert Emails

You can now subscribe to instant leakage alerts for your tests that use HackerRank library questions, allowing for quick management of exposed questions. Additionally, if an automatic replacement fails, a curated list of reliable replacement questions will be provided for leakage-protected sections, preserving the integrity of your tests.

Learn more here📄 Email Alerts for Question Leakage

Leaked Question Replacement Indicator

We are introducing a new feature highlighting any question in your test that was leaked and automatically replaced for you. You also have the option to manually override replacements if needed, giving you complete control over your assessments. Previously, these changes were not visible, which could have led to some uncertainty.

Learn more here📄 HackerRank Certified Assessments

Leakage Detection & Automatic Replacement For Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ)

MCQ sections within📄 HackerRank Certified Assessmentsnow come with automatic leakage protection. This ensures your test content stays secure and maintains its integrity without any extra effort on your part.

Setting Custom Scores for MCQs

We have fully migrated to the new MCQ scoring model which provides you with greater flexibility and control while scoring your tests! Now, you can set custom scores for your MCQ questions, ensuring consistency as the test-level score will override all individual MCQ scores within that test.

Learn more here📄 Scoring a Multiple Choice Question

Ability to Shuffle Sections Without Section Time Limits

You can now shuffle sections without the need of adding a section time limit. This improvement means you have greater flexibility in structuring your tests, ensuring a fair assessment experience without the constraint of time limits.

Learn more here.

Improved Error Messaging & Handling When Bulk Invite Upload Fails 

Experience a new level of efficiency with our improved bulk invites feature! Now, if an upload fails, you will receive detailed error messages to help you make any necessary changes. Plus, our new progress bar provides real-time updates on the status of your candidate invites, making the process smoother and more transparent.

Learn more here📄 Sending Bulk Email Invites to a Test

Candidate Listing Performance Improvements

We have optimized the candidate listing page to ensure faster filter times. With this update, filters for candidate lists with more than 1000 entries are up to 7x faster. You will notice significant performance gains for very large candidate lists (>5000 entries), where filters that previously timed out now apply in under 2 seconds.

Assess Up to 100,000 Candidates Using Coding Assessments

You can now effortlessly conduct large-scale events and campus drives with coding assessments, supporting up to 100,000 candidates at once. Say goodbye to the hassle of managing multiple batches, creating and adding new questions to each batch, and dealing with logistical challenges. This upgrade ensures a seamless experience for your candidates, with code execution and compile times improved by 50%, making it the largest concurrent coding assessment support in the market.

Export Report Enhancements

We have significantly optimized and migrated our export processes to a new infrastructure, achieving a 10x improvement in download speed. Now, you can swiftly export candidate lists, interviews, and account-level test data from the insights section. This enhancement reduces export times from minutes to seconds, enhancing efficiency and productivity. Expect even faster times in future releases.

Test List export

You will now see an export button within the test tab which allows you to export the list of tests, including all information about the test beyond what is available on the user interface.

Learn more here📄 Exporting Tests Data

Upgraded VSCode and JupyterLab IDEs

Candidates will now enjoy the latest VSCode and JupyterLab IDE versions during assessments. These updates include accessibility improvements and security vulnerability fixes to ensure a seamless and secure coding experience.

• Commands in VSCode are highlighted, and scrolling is sticky in the terminal.

• The Explorer view in VSCode can now be moved to make more space for coding while solving problems. Some audio and video files can be previewed inside the IDE.

• JupyterLab now includes a virtual scrollbar for notebooks in windowed mode, with an optional scrollbar, delineating the active cell and selected cells. This allows users to navigate and jump to specific cells with ease.

• Candidates can now benefit from improved screen reader support with accessibility view, to ensure all users can navigate the editor and terminal effectively. 

All these improvements ensure that candidates have the latest and familiar tools while working on Fullstack, Frontend, Backend, and data science questions.

Interview

Pre-Interview Compatibility Check

Our interview platform now includes embedded compatibility checks to ensure the audio and video setup is perfect before the interview begins. Therefore, interviewers and candidates can avoid worrying about technical issues and focus on showcasing skills without interruptions.

Learn more here📄 Starting an Interview

Improved Whiteboard Performance

You can now conduct efficient system design interviews using whiteboard. The improvements mean that cursor movements and shapes appear on all participants' screens almost instantly, a significant improvement over the previous delay of a few seconds.

New Shapes Supported in Library

Drawing system design diagrams with HackerRank Whiteboard is now super easy with custom shapes for tech interviews, such as Database, Cache, Actor, Cloud, Service, etc. Additionally, you can get the convenience of custom colors and one-click shapes, making your diagrams clear and professional with minimal effort.

Learn more here📄 Interviewing with Whiteboards

Audio/video Performance Improvements

Interviewers now receive advance notifications about candidate compatibility issues, ensuring a smoother start to interviews.

Candidates are alerted when interviewers start the call, reducing wait time and anxiety.

You can also preview your audio and video settings before joining and get improved call quality with background noise suppression. 

These updates help create a more seamless and stress-free interview experience for everyone involved.

Learn more here📄 Audio or Video Device Selection During Interview

Integrity

New Plagiarism Model

AI Assistance tools are offering substantial productivity improvements for developers in their daily work. While we are actively embracing AI, we also acknowledge that AI usage is not always appropriate, especially when we are looking to assess a candidate's fundamental skills.

We are releasing a new version of the AI-based plagiarism detection model, which focuses heavily on signals associated with the usage of AI assistants and coding copilots. This model shows a much higher precision in identifying sessions where candidates have used AI assistance when explicitly asked not to.

Learn more here📄 AI Plagiarism Detection

Spoofing Attempt Detection

We have added the ability to detect if a candidate projects a static image during an ongoing test. This feature helps us identify candidates who try to use image spoofing software to pretend they are live during the test. With this enhancement, we ensure a higher level of integrity and security in the testing process, giving you confidence in the integrity of your candidates' session and performance.

Learn more here.

Webcam Switch Detection

We have added the ability to detect if a candidate switches their webcam during an ongoing test. This feature helps recruiters and hiring managers identify potential suspicious activity and allows for further investigation into why the webcam was changed mid-test, thereby strengthening the security & reliability of the assessments.

Learn more here.

Content

HackerRank's developer skill assessment library has been expanded to support a scientifically defined taxonomy across 9 job families, encompassing 77 roles and over 260 skills. The library now includes an extensive number of questions tailored to each job family as outlined below:

In the second quarter, HackerRank introduced 34 new hands-on projects targeting technologies such as AWS, Linux, Git, Node.js, and Spring Boot. Additionally, 162 new coding and database assessments were added, covering skills in SQL, Python, PHP, REST API, and various programming languages. The platform also launched 318 new multiple-choice questions in Hardware, iOS, Security, and Cloud domains. To ensure the integrity of the content library, over 2,000 URLs with leaked questions were removed through a DMCA takedown process. 

Admin

Flexible User Roles - GA rollout and added entitlements

Admins can now give each user the right level of access based on their organization's specific needs. You have up to 30 entitlements at the user role or individual user level, enabling you to customize their experience within their HackerRank account. This includes new entitlements like "Create Questions", "Edit Questions", and "View Test Report for Interviewers." This feature, previously opt-in, is now enabled for all users.

Learn more here📄 Flexible User Roles

Teams management improvements

Admins can now see the number of utilized user roles within a team, helping them track their allocated limit. Additionally, they can sort and filter the user list without resetting it, select users across multiple pages for bulk actions(lock, unlock, export), and choose all users from a filtered list. These new features enhance usability and streamline the management of large groups, improving workflow efficiency.

Learn more here📄 Teams Management

Engage

New Templates in Custom Sections

Engage now provides the capability to add custom sections in a grid format through new grid templates. With this, users can create custom sections that can make their microsite standout from their peers.

We have introduced 4 grid templates as below:

1. A grid of videos or images that allows users to create custom sections to share additional information about their employees or their company.

2. A grid of images with title and subtitle that allows users to create custom sections to share information about their leadership team or team members.

3. A text-only grid with title and subtitle that allows users to create custom sections to share any important details that need to stand out.

4. A title and image layout that allows users to showcase their prominent event banners.

Learn more here📄 Setting up the Event Microsite

SkillUp

User Management Enhancements

You can now manage upskilling efforts for your teams on SkillUp, with the ability to administer the product and gather rich insights, empowering organizations to better structure their user management. 

Admins can assign the manager role to any user, providing greater flexibility and control, while managers' access is limited to their team members and their reports, ensuring data security and focused oversight.

Manager Dashboards

To further empower managers, we have launched manager dashboards to facilitate team growth and development.

Key features include the ability for managers to assign customized upskilling paths, helping developers earn new skill badges and prepare for future roles. The dashboards also allow data exports for further analysis and reporting, giving you insights on your talent directory, upskilling progress, and certifications.

New Role Certifications and Skill Badges

We are launching 10 additional role certifications and 5 additional skill badges in SkillUp. These new additions are designed to help developers get future-ready for more roles and learn new skills in a hands-on way.

New Role Certifications available for: 

• Front-End roles: Front-End Developer (React), Sr. Front-End Developer (React)

• Back-End roles: Back-End Developer (Node.js), Sr. Back-End Developer, (Node.js), Back-End Developer (Django), Sr. Back-End Developer (Django)

• Full Stack roles: Full sack Engineer (React & Node.js), Sr. Full Stack Engineer (React & Node.js), Full Stack Engineer (Angular & Node.js), Sr. Full Stack Engineer (Angular & Node.js

New Skill Badges available for:

• React, Node.js, Go, Ansible, Dynamo DB

Learn more here📄 HackerRank SkillUp