Scoring Certified Assessments

Overview

HackerRank Certified Assessments allow you to assign weightage to skills and decide the cutoff score for a certified assessment.

Important questions answered:

• How can the top 10, 25, or 50% of candidates who have completed a certified assessment be identified?
• How can you determine the cut-off scores for a certified assessment?
  • Need more information on Cutoff Scores for assessments?

Weighting of Skills 

Adjusting the weighting of specific skills being evaluated within a Certified Assessment.

• Why weight skills?
  • Weighting the value of each skill evaluated in a Certified Assessment enables easy identification and segmentation of top performers.
• How does the scoring method work for Certified Assessment?
  • Hiring teams assign weights to skills based on their needs for any specific certified assessment.
    • Note: Default weight values are provided but can be customized.
  • Candidates who have taken the assessment are bucketed together into performance tiers. (Top 10%, Top 25%, and Top 50%)
  • HackerRank will then reduce the scores based on the weights you and your hiring team(s) assigned or default system-assigned weights.
  • Average scores were then established for each tier.
    • The average score can then easily be used to determine the performance of any candidate compared to the scoring average for the performance tiers. 

Sample scenario explaining the scoring method

1. A certified Assessment is created to evaluate two skills.
   • Section 1: PS Basic - Coding
   • Section 2: SQL Basic - Coding 
2. A recruiter assigns weights to skills. (Weighting below)
   • Weightage of PS Basic = 40%
   • Weightage of SQL Basic = 60%
3. Candidate Mary has taken a Software Intern Test with two sections. 
   • Section 1: PS Basic - Coding 
     • The section score of the candidate is 45/50
   • Section 2: SQL Basic - Coding 
     • The section score of the candidate is 50/75
   • Total Score 95/125 = 76%
4. HackerRank uses results collected through the assessment to provide the average score for performance tiers, including:
   • Top 10%
   • Top 25%
   • Top 50%

How is this helpful?

• Candidate Mary earned 95 of 125 possible points while taking the certified assessment, equaling 76%. Compared to the average for various performance tiers, Mary is clearly a top performer in the top 10% and is now easily identifiable.
• Noting the average score for the various performance tiers can help determine a poignant cutoff score to help differentiate the top performers.

Note: the final percentage can change depending on the weighting selected by the recruiters for each section. 

How can weighting alter the scores? (Sample scenario with updated scoring)

• Though the final percentage seems similar in the above example, it can change depending on the weighting selected by the recruiters for each section.
• Let’s say a  recruiter assigns weights to skills. (Weighting below)
  • Weightage of PS Basic = 30%
  • Weightage of SQL Basic = 70%