Running Interviews Developers Love on CodeLive

We’re about 5 months into the sudden shift to working from home, and by now, we know what is working, and what isn’t. Aside from virtual happy hours, and custom Zoom backgrounds, virtual interviewing is our new normal. But is it working for candidates?

In 2020 alone, Hiring Managers have hosted over 36,000+ technical interviews on Codility’s interview platform CodeLive for everything from Fullstack to Devops roles. That’s 36,000+ developers who, before COVID, would likely have come onsite for a whiteboard interview. 

We’ve been surveying these developers, to find out what they like about virtual tech interviews, and what they think needs to still be improved.

Give us an interesting challenge!

Developers are natural problem solvers; experts in looking at problems from different angles and testing approaches until they find the right solution. It comes as no surprise that when we look at the developers who had the most positive interview experiences on CodeLive their descriptions often include two key concepts: 

• The interview was interesting: “The interviewer asked a good question that lead to lots of good discussion”
• The interview was challenging: “We had great questions to solve and the interviewer was helpful… I learned a lot today”

Ensuring that your interviewers have the right questions and problems ready to go makes for a great interview. The problems you pose your candidate should be difficult, but not excruciating. You want to provide enough information for the candidate to quickly form ideas and opinions, but leave enough space for discussion.

In CodeLive, your Interviewers can run an interview based on a template for the specific role, immediately placing some fun and challenging questions at their fingertips. At the same time, they can use the Canvas to facilitate a more abstract discussion with the candidate, using it just like a real-life whiteboard.

Don’t make me download anything!

Interviews can be stressful, so minimizing setup time goes a long way to reduce last minute stress and ensure your candidate comes to the interview ready to do their best work. By now we all have empathy for the moment 2 minutes before a meeting starts when you realize you need to install or sign up for some new software; so don’t put your candidates in this position. 

When it comes to technical interviews, make sure you have the right sort of environment to allow coding within a sandbox, drawing diagrams, and connection via voice and video.

We’re proud of the comments we’re getting from developers about CodeLive:

• “The interface was very user friendly and there was almost zero learn time”
• “It was nicely organized and I didn’t have to take a tour to understand usability” 
• “Simple and smooth environment which was good and functional”
• “Drawing board was easy to navigate, dark theme was clean, and common code editor shortcuts were nice” 
• “Just works, the real-time editor was very responsive”

What about Hiring Managers?

For most hiring teams, 2020 has forced them into remote hiring. This has brought new challenges around tooling, workflow, and figuring out how to showcase your company DNA virtually. 

We have partnered closely with our customers to help them deliver over 85% of those 36,000+ CodeLive interviews in a post-COVID world. 

To talk with us more about running virtual interviews on CodeLive, or learn more about Codility, book a demo with us or contact us at [email protected].