
Show HN: HackerRank's app guarantees an interview call after a coding challenge - rvivek
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/12/hackerrank-jobs-takes-the-mystery-out-of-technical-recruiting/
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sakopov
Are there actual licensed engineering professionals (ie electrical,
mechanical) who resort to some made up ranks to separate themselves from the
herd and use puzzles to judge the skillset of a potential employee? How does
this work in industries other than software? Just genuinely curious here.

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krupan
Putting the most positive spin on this situation as I can, I think the
difference between software and other engineering disciplines is in software
we are often hiring people to do things that have never been done before.
Other disciplines can say, "we need you to design this, have you ever designed
this before?" and the engineers can generally say, "yes, and this is how it
went." For software the best way we can guess if people will be able to do the
thing that they have never done before is to assess their general cleverness
and problem solving skills, with puzzles.

Or something like that.

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rahimnathwani
Is that true, or is it just that we're unaware of how much innovation exists
in other fields?

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stared
Is "Show HN" an appropriate category for a link to a TechCruch coverage?
(Unless you are the creator of TechCrunch... and expect us learn about it from
this post.)

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dang
The rules morph to accommodate the type of project. It's hard to show a mobile
app directly, so an article describing the work with a link to the app is ok.
In this case, since there's a web version, the Show HN post should probably
have linked to that, with a mention of the article in the comments. But it's a
bit late to change now so we'll leave it as is.

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ry_ry
Is it wrong that I have zero interest in a new job, but want to sign up for a
ready supply of interesting puzzles?

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akhilcacharya
Why not just use normal HackerRank then...?

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tryitnow
I love the general principle of this and applies to other professions.

I work in finance and accounting and it's rare for someone's technical skills
to be evaluated in an interview.

The problem with that is that the profession becomes overrun with people who
have zero ability to actually get things done in an efficient manner.

Not everyone need to be a coder, but most professionals do need to know how to
leverage machines to automate their workflow and generate deeper insights.

If I were hiring people in my field (finance/accounting) I would love to use
something like this to make sure a candidate can accomplish some basic
analytic tasks and workflow automation tasks.

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troy142
Looks like Uber and VMware are already using this product. Can anyone from
those teams tell us about their experience?

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kbuck
My team (at VMware) has used HackerRank to hire. It worked out pretty well.
The biggest advantage was being able to vet many candidates quickly. It's
definitely improved our hiring process (it used to take us much longer to find
a suitable candidate). I think my team was one of the first at our company to
use it (and we haven't done much hiring since), so my knowledge about the
specifics is a little out-of-date.

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akhilcacharya
It would be really nice if something like this existed for internships - some
of the companies listed (like Uber) seem to be extraordinarily hard to get a
response from if you don't go to a target school.

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rvivek
We have 5 companies already ready to take interns. If you are interested, you
can just email me: vivek@

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akhilcacharya
I'm down, will do.

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yarou
While I cannot vouch for whether or not this will land you an interview,
HackerRank was very useful in preparing for interviews.

Also, the team is great - I signed up a long time ago and had some performance
feedback for Vivek. They promptly implemented the change within a day. I
haven't used it recently, but at the very least you'll get something out of it
if you need practice.

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korymath
Canadian companies too?

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minimaxir
*guarantees an interview call after a coding challenge

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rvivek
Yes, that's correct. Guarantees after clearing the qualification score for a
coding challenge.

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minimaxir
The point is that the omission makes your submission title somewhat
misleading.

An app that guarantees an interview _ipso facto_ would be interesting. An app
that guarantees an interview after passing a coding challenge is standard fare
for most tech job-hiring startups nowadays. (It also doesn't make much sense
to offer a coding challenge on a smartphone either)

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rvivek
Got it. Will fix the title. However, the "guarantee" part if you pass a coding
challenge isn't a standard. For eg: if you would like to apply to Facebook,
how would you go about doing it now?

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minimaxir
Standard for job-hiring startups like Hired and TripleByte, for example, not
for the normal interview process. (Although I double checked and TripleByte
does not do a programming challenge; they go straight to the interview)

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rvivek
It involves a lot of manual work on both hired & triplebyte . For instance in
triplebyte, you get interviewed by the triplebyte team AND then proceed for an
interview. We are bypassing those steps and getting them connected directly to
companies.

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swagv
Sorry, Hacker Rank can't make me guarantee anything.

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dang
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

