Key Interview Features

Overview 

HackerRank Interviews is a live online interview platform for hiring companies to conduct coding interviews. The company's hiring managers invite candidates to log in to HackerRank Interview and participate in a live coding interview session. HackerRank Interviews enable the interviewer(s) and a candidate to communicate, code, and collaborate interactively.

The interview process is made easy and efficient with a wide range of features, which you can use to choose the best candidate from the lot. This article discusses all the key interview features available in the HackerRank for work. 

Virtual Lobby

Using a virtual lobby, a single interview link can be used for conducting multiple interviews. The single interview link has also resulted in a better candidate experience. They can remain in the same link throughout the onsite interview process instead of juggling multiple links for each interview. With numerous interviews happening using a single link, it becomes essential to ensure that the participants inside the interview are not disturbed by the sudden appearance of others. 

Note: After your candidates accept your invite and join the interview, they will either enter the interview directly or wait in the Virtual Lobby until you admit them inside, based on your settings. To enable virtual lobby, refer to the Enable Virtual Lobby article. 

For more information on Virtual Lobby, refer to Virtual Lobby in HackerRank Interview.

Virtual Lobby

Interview Participants

After you join the HackerRank interview, you can confirm the candidate's presence or any other participant by looking at the colored name of the participant at the top left corner of the screen. The quality of their internet connection is also displayed.

Interview Participants

If a candidate leaves the browser tab containing the interview, an "Out of Interview" message will be displayed with their name until they return.

"Out of Interview"

Candidate Workspace 

The key features of the candidate's workspace are discussed below.  

Code Editor and Programming Languages

The interview interface has a built-in code editor that supports various programming languages. HackerRank Interviews supports more than 40 programming languages. These are available in the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the page. You can change the language for each question. However, if you have disabled specific languages during question creation, you can choose only enabled languages.

Code Editor

Whiteboard

The virtual whiteboard lets candidates and interviewers sketch diagrams using easy tools from the toolbar. When the interviewer ends the interview, the sketches present on the whiteboard get captured and are available in the candidate's report. For more information on Whiteboards, refer to the Interviewing with Whiteboards article.

Whiteboard

Run Tests and Run Code

Run Tests - This will run all test cases, and the output of the same will be shown in the 'Output' tab. 

Run Code - This will run the code for the current input in the input tab, and the output of the same will be shown in the 'Output' tab.

Run Tests and Run Code

Live Text, Audio, and Video Chat 

The participants can use text, audio, and video conference to interact with each other according to their preferences and requirements. You can click the chat window to expand it and click the required icon to make a video call or phone call.

Tip: You can move the Chat Window on the interview screen.

Chat Window

Input, Output, and Console

There are Input, Output, and Console sections at the bottom of the page. You can click the upward arrow and the respective tabs to expand this section.

Input, Output, and Console Tabs

Input section: The Standard Input is used to test the code by providing input to the code in this section. After providing the input, click the Run Code button. However, if you want to use the pre-configured test cases for the question, select the Run all test cases checkbox instead.

Output Section: The Output section displays the output of the code when Run. If there is an error in the code compilation, it is displayed here.

Console: This interactive console (REPL) executes the code of REPL enabled languages Python, JavaScript, and Ruby by taking real-time input. You can learn more about REPL support in HackerRank Interview here.

Import Questions

HackerRank Interviews support Coding, Front-end, Back-end, Full stack, Database Engineer, Diagram, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Whiteboard, and Subjective questions. You can import questions either from the landing page or inside the interview. 

• From the landing page: To import questions from the landing page, click on one of the questions types as shown below to open the respective code editors. Also, you can import from the HackerRank library or your company questions by clicking on the Questions Library option.  

Interview Landing Page

• Inside the interview:
  • Click on the Import Questions from the left pane and select the required question from the HackerRank Library or your company question.

Import Questions

• • You can click on the + icon to add questions, which will open the landing page from where you can import questions. The question is displayed in the left navigation pane. The candidates can write the answer in the respective question window.

Question tabs in Interviews

Interviewer Scorecard

This private scorecard for the interviewers shows a set of skills to be analyzed based on the candidate's role. You can rate these skills between a "Strong Yes" and a "Strong No" and write feedback specific to that skill. You can also write their overall feedback on the scorecard if needed. This feedback will be autosave on every action done in the scorecard. You can also copy this feedback using the "Copy to clipboard" option available in the scorecard. 

Interview Scorecard

Project Questions in Interviews

You can import Project questions (Front-end, back-end, full-stack, DevOps, and Data Science) inside HackerRank interview during a live interview. With this feature, interviewers will be able to assess candidates on skills like React, Angular, Nodes, etc., during live interviews and view their code inside the Interview report and rerun the same inside the IDE.

To know more on importing Project question interviews, refer to the Importing Projects in HackerRank Interview article.

Projects questions in the interview

Settings

The settings section enables you to customize the Interview experience:

• Quick Tour: You can click Take a quick tour of the HackerRank Interview Pad. Most of the features which can help in the interview process are highlighted in this tour.
• Theme: You can change the theme of how the questions and code appear. You can choose between Light and Dark, as required.
• Editor Mode: You can select the editor from the three given options.
• Tab Size: You can select the indentation for your lines of code from the three given options. 
• Font Size: You can select the font size for questions and code.
• Environment Documentation: Click the Environment Documentation option from the Settings icon to view the detailed interview Environment documentation that gives information on the version of each language used in the platform.
• Change Screen Name: You can change your display name in Interview Screen using this.   
• Interview Support: You can click this option to access the support documentation on the interview.
• Logout: Clicking on Logout, you can log out from the Interview session without ending it for the other participants. 

Interview Settings

Leave/End Interview 

Click on the Leave Interview button to leave the interview. The candidates will be automatically moved out of the interview if there are no other interviewers online. Click on the End Interview button to end the interview for all.

Leave/End interview

You can reopen the interview or view the report in your HackerRank for Work account after closing the interview. 

End of Interview

Sample Interview

To understand the Interviews platform, you can try out a sample interview as an interviewer using this link. You can also share the sample interview link with candidates to make them familiar with the platform before an interview. For candidates, you can share this link with them https://hr.gs/sampleint.