Overview
During onsite technical interviews, candidates are often asked to use the whiteboard to explain their approach to solving a problem. Hiring managers have found the whiteboard to be an effective tool for evaluating a candidate in the following aspects.
- System design skills
- Presentation skills
- On-spot thinking and communication
This article will give you a brief idea about whiteboards in interviews and their key features.
Whiteboard in Interviews
We have integrated a collaborative whiteboard inside our interviewing platform to elevate and align the remote interviewing experience with conventional onsite interviews.
HackerRank’s remote technical interviewing solution helps organizations conduct compelling technical interviews anytime, anywhere, in a real, interactive coding environment. Learn more about how to conduct interviews using the HackerRank platform here.
Key Features of the Whiteboard
The virtual whiteboard tool lets candidates and interviewers sketch diagrams using easy tools from the toolbar.
Here are some key highlights of the virtual whiteboard inside a HackerRank Interview.
- Basic Shapes and Text: The toolbar on the whiteboard hosts several commonly used shapes and text. You can choose a shape to draw by clicking on them or using their keyboard shortcut. The relevant keyboard shortcut is written below each available shape.
- Freehand tool: Candidates can also use the freehand option available in the toolbar to quickly sketch their thoughts on a data structure or an algorithm in a coding interview
- Working with Shapes: You can select either one shape or all shapes and move or delete them together. Use the Delete key from your keyboard after selecting a shape to delete it. You can also select and resize or rotate a shape if needed.
- Collaborative Experience: All participants present in the interview, at a time, can see the real-time cursor position of the others in the interview along with their names.
- Infinite Space: The virtual whiteboard removes the space limitation of a physical board at an onsite interview. It is an infinite space where you can scroll the existing content of the board up and continue with your sketch. Use the + and - icons at the bottom of your whiteboard to zoom in or out of the board.
- Images: You can upload predefined architecture images to the whiteboard during the interview. You can also save whiteboard questions with images of the architecture to enhance the whiteboard interview process. Therefore the candidates need not have to sketch an architecture to replicate an architecture stored in an image format of their company.
Start a Whiteboard in an Interview.
When you join an Interview, you will see the onboarding page. You will see different question types on the onboarding page, as shown below. Click on the Whiteboard question type option to open a whiteboard for you.
Whiteboard in the candidate report
When the interviewer ends the interview, the sketches on the whiteboard are captured and available in the candidate’s report.
On the Interviews tab of your HackerRank for Work account, click the View Report option on the relevant candidate’s record to open the Interview report.
Inside the report, scroll down to the Whiteboard section to view the candidate’s whiteboard. You can also view the whiteboard on full screen by clicking on the enlarge icon.
You can also view the final state of the whiteboard in the PDF version of the candidate’s interview report as well.
