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In 2019, we surveyed 200+ stakeholders in technical recruiting and gathered feedback on tools and popular methodologies for how to efficiently screen and recruit engineering candidates. We published our results in this report and created a list of the top technical assessment platforms alongside it.
If you’re a technical recruiting or engineering hiring manager, here are the latest reviews of 2020’s top platforms for efficiently and accurately screening and interviewing developers and engineers.
1. Coderbyte
Coderbyte, my company, is one of the newest entrants into the market. In less than a year, its transparent pricing and simple user experience has led hundreds of employers to switch from more expensive and complex platforms. Coderbyte features a library of 500+ built-in assessments and challenges for various roles, in addition to the ability to create your own projects and challenges. It is one of the only platforms that continues to add challenges for the latest technologies and roles, such as React, DevOps, AWS, and iOS development.
Pros
- It’s cost-effective: Coderbyte is also the only platform that offers unlimited admins (recruiters/hiring managers), assessments, and candidates on any plan. The starter plan begins at $59/month and the enterprise plan is just $249/month.
- It optimizes for the candidate experience: Coderbyte tests all challenges and tightly regulates the ability to add custom challenges in order to ensure that the candidate experience remains the best in the industry.
Cons
- Coderbyte does not currently offer enterprise-grade features such as SSO or direct API access (API access is available only through Zapier).
Recommended for
- Tech-forward organizations that are interviewing at scale or intermittently, and are comfortable operating a self-service tool.
- Organizations that want to optimize the candidate experience to increase their hiring rates and decrease the number of candidates that drop out of the interview process.
HackerRank is a leading technical screening platform, backed by leading growth and venture firms. They target the Fortune 2000 with a robust and customizable platform for technical teams to recruit and hire for roles such as data science, DevOps, front-end developers, and more. They offer online coding assessments, real-time code-pair sessions, and take-home projects.
Pros
- Multiple ways to assess a candidate’s skills via take-home projects, online assessments, and code-pair sessions.
- Advanced customization for integrations, branding, security, and all enterprise needs.
- Advanced plagiarism detection, however, many candidates may choose not to take the assessment because of it.
Cons
- Enterprise plan, which allows you to invite multiple admins and more candidates to your assessments per month, requires a large up-front cost of at least $60k/year (although you can often get a discount).
- Many employers exploit the ability to customize their own challenges and have created a negative perception for assessments on HackerRank. Countless developers have noted this (here and here), and it’s common to see a significant drop-off in the number of candidates invited to a HackerRank assessment compared to the number that actually complete the assessment. The good news is that if you have the resources to purchase HackerRank, you can probably also afford to source additional candidates needed to offset the drop-off.
Recommended for
- HackerRank is great for multinational organizations in regulated industries that require and can afford compliance, heavy-duty security, and extensive on-boarding.
You can think of Codility as a less expensive and robust version of HackerRank, with a similar interface and level of customizability. Just like HackerRank, Codility is a software platform that helps technical recruiters hire and train stronger engineers. Codility generates automatically scored reports about each candidate’s coding abilities, empowering the whole team to gauge technical skills. You are able to hire for all sorts of roles on Codility such as front-end developers, DevOps, data science, and more.
Pros
- Has many of the same enterprise features and challenges catalogue as HackerRank.
- Has products for both screening and interviewing candidates on their platform.
- Advanced plagiarism detection, however, many candidates may choose not to take the assessment because of it.
Cons
- While significantly less expensive than HackerRank, Codility’s basic subscription begins at around $6-10k/year.
- The overall user experience for recruiters and candidates is dated and confusing (see platform image above).
Recommended for
- Codility is for organizations operating on more traditional technology stacks that need to assess candidates on basic problem solving and coding ability with coding challenges.
CodeSignal is a technical recruiting platform with three main products: screening, real-time interviewing, and Certify which allows you to scale your recruiting pipeline by using proctored coding assessments for software engineer certification. Their screening product makes it easy to make data-driven decisions about what candidates have the skills required for the job.
Pros
- Their Certify product is helpful because it can be used as an alternative to resumes and can help recruiters and engineering managers make data-driven decisions.
- Their screening (or Test) product has a nice UI and makes it easy to setup tests and start inviting candidates.
Cons
- Their basic subscription is more reasonably priced at $5k/year, but you may have to spend significantly more depending on how many candidates you’re sourcing since there is a monthly limit.
- There are limitations to the number of candidates you can invite per month to your tests, and a limit to the number of admins you can have on the account.
Recommended for
- CodeSignal is for hyper-growth, venture-backed startups and multinational organizations hiring 25–50 engineers per quarter.
Devskiller is a tech sourcing, screening, and skill mapping platform powered by their RealLifeTesting™ methodology. You’re able to screen and interview candidates for all sorts of roles on their platform like front-end, back-end, mobile developers, and more. They have a library of tests and challenges that relate to the actual jobs candidates are applying for. They are the ultimate do-it-yourself tool with virtually every imaginable feature for recruiters who really enjoy reinventing the wheel.
Pros
- Dozens of customizable features on their platform. You can create and edit custom tasks, access their API, and have access to a host of other enterprise features.
- They have a large library of predefined tasks for different roles.
- They give you access to an API which allows you to get all the information you need for your tests and candidates.
Cons
- Because they allow you to customize every feature, the platform UI isn’t the easiest to navigate (see platform image above).
- The pricing starts at $3k/year for basic features but can go up to as high as $10k/year if you want access to their full-suite of features.
Recommended for
- Devskiller is for highly technical talent acquisition teams that need advanced customization and control.
HackerEarth began as a platform for corporate hackathons and contests, and has since added a code screening capability. The screening product is similar to CodeSignal’s but with a lower entry price. While it does seem like a self-service product, there are still many limitations until you contact sales.
Pros
- More of a self-serve platform than other products, which allows you to get started without needing to schedule a call or contact sales.
- Allows an organization to screen candidates and also run internal hackathons all in one platform.
- Have a large set of features built around cheating and plagiarism detection.
Cons
- A large portion of candidates drop-off during the tests because of the extremely invasive anti-plagiarism features (like recording candidates faces while they code).
- The pricing plans are initially self-serve, but to actually start inviting candidates and admins to the platform, you’ll need to contact sales and upgrade to a more expensive plan beginning at around $5k/year.
Recommended for
- HackerEarth is great for companies that, for whatever reason, are sourcing candidates with a high likelihood of cheating and need invasive anti-plagiarism features to combat hiring unqualified candidates If you’re a mid-sized company with hundreds of junior candidates, this platform might fit your needs.