Below, we’ll look at some of the TOP platforms and coding tools to easily asses the programming knowledge of web developers. These automated skill testing platforms are indispensable assessment instruments in a recruiting toolset of any professional hiring manager, especially if you’re hiring remote web developers. We’ll go over the main features of each platform and look at the available pricing, so you can choose whichever tool suits your needs and budget.
What’s wrong with a plain text editor?
CoderPad
Codingame
CodeInterview
Testdome
HackerRank
Type12
Honorable mention: Codeshare
But, alas, why would you need a coding tool? What’s wrong with a plain text editor?
If you give a web developer a problem to solve in a plain text editor, he gets back to you with a completely viable solution, except that the code doesn’t run; it wouldn’t happen if the developer worked in a professional code editor, where his typo might have seen obvious.
Therefore, it’s a simple courtesy on your side to offer your prospective candidate an ability to showcase their best selves and the vast amount of knowledge they’ve acquired over the years.
Furthermore, it gives you, as a recruiter, a powerful tool to collaborate and work alongside a potential candidate.
Also, some platforms have pre-set coding challenges which you can send “as is”, or alter to create a customized challenge; some tools also offers insights into candidate performance, benchmarking them against peers, and measuring overall assessment quality.
CoderPad
CoderPad is a pretty famous interview tool, which has already gained popularity among individual tech recruiters and companies. Quora, Yelp, YCombinator, Dropbox, for example, have successfully used this tool to conduct remote technical interviews. Coderpad also integrates with popular recruitment software, like Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, and others, so you can schedule your interview sessions within your existing software.
Features:
— Support for over 25 languages
— Common testing libraries and other useful utilities for most popular languages
— Opportunity to create question libraries to standardize the interview process
— Recording of interviews and opportunity to play them back keystroke-by-keystroke for team revisions
— High Fidelity REPLs (interactive computer programming environment)
— Detailed editor settings: change tab-width, auto-bracket insertion, etc.
— Built-in video calling
— Custom SQL database: you can upload custom database environments from MySQL and PostgreSQL for candidates to show their SQL skills against your datasets
— Private interview notes which are stored along with the interview
Pricing varies and depends on the size of your business. For example, if you’re an individual technical recruiter, you’ll pay $50 a month for 20 interviews; if you’re a large enterprise, the cost rises up to $1500 per month.
[UPDATE Oct 18, 2019]
Codingame
Codingame is the European leader when it comes to the technical assessment of web developers/engineers thanks to the tool called Codingame Assessment. Codingame is already pretty famous amongst developers thanks to its platform where devs can come and play coding games. Community of 1.5 million developers, worldwide, and growing. Codingame’s clients are major corporations, such as EA, Facebook, Nintendo, Nasdaq, BNP Paribas, Fiat Chrysler, Winamax.
Among other features are:
— Supports over 20 languages
— Campaign Wizard that allows you to get a tailored testing campaign in 2 minutes.
— Strong anti-plagiarism detection
— A comparative score of candidates (with results of hundreds of thousands of candidates tested before) included in the insightful report with code playback
— Possibility to add custom questions
— Real work-life problems to solve (not just MCQ)
— Skype-like remote interview with a live coding interface (audio + video + chat + coding interface)
— 14-day free trial
Pricing starts at $249/per month for a yearly plan ($349 monthly). Possibility to get a custom price for bigger needs.
CodeInterview
CodeInterview is a cloud-based pair programming tool for code interviews. We’ve included it here since the platform offers a flexible pricing plan, which might be more desirable for some individuals and small business companies.
Features:
— Supports over 10 languages
— Provides a powerful code editor with a familiar interface
— Opportunity to create question library and code snippets
— Audio and Video interview features
— Interview notes for each conducted interview
— Use in-house tests or create your own
— Insightful reporting with code playback
— Opportunity to send take-home projects
— Cloud-based: all happens in a browser, without installation
Pricing: CodeInterview has “Pay as You Go” option, meaning you’re not paying a monthly fee, but rather for each conducted interview, which costs $5. There are monthly options for small businesses for as low as $49 a month in case you’re paying for the whole year upfront, or $55 if you pay on a monthly basis.
Testdome
Tesdome is much more than a simple coding interview tool — it’s a testing service that uses custom evidence-based hiring methodology to make data-driven hiring recommendations. Moreover, Tesdome offers free certifications for job seekers as long as they complete a set of coding challenges for a particular programming field (language, framework, etc). Testdome has been successfully used by such tech giants as eBay, PayPal, FirstData, and Birst.
Features:
— An ample number of pre-defined tests or an opportunity to develop custom questions
— Two question libraries: public, which is available for everyone, and private (premium) with hand-crafted questions
— Candidates receive coding challenges and complete them remotely without being able to cheat (online proctoring, copy&paste protection, etc)
— Insights and statistics: candidates are sorted into pass-fail groups, but you can manually adjust the cut-off scores
Pricing starts at $100 for which you can test up to 5 candidates. There are no monthly fees, you only pay for the number of candidates you test. Thus, for $1,000 you can check up to 100 candidates.
HackerRank
We’ve already featured HackerRank in one of our previous articles on Best Apps for Recruitment, but it’s worth mentioning it here, nevertheless, because it’s a fantastic tool with an ample number of advanced and customized features. HackerRank is essentially a combination of three distinct tools, which the company names as CodeScreen, CodePair, and Insights.
Features:
— CodeScreen: send pre-defined tests (a question library contains more than 1,500 questions across 35+ languages, 8 frameworks) or create your own coding challenges; review the results and detailed reports (Code diff, snapshots, timeline, plagiarism detection)
— CodePair: conduct real-time technical interviews in a real coding environment and see how developers tackle languages live; view key-by-key playback, get a deeper understanding on candidate’s approach to problem-solving, debugging, etc; integrate with ATS
— Insights: full tech talent matrix driven by machine-learning include Candidate Response Score and Assessment Quality Score; you can also measure your team’s own performance during the whole tech recruiting process
Pricing is, unfortunately, not very transparent and is determined on a case-by-case basis. There’s however a 14-day free trial, which is a great way to see if the platform is really what you were looking for.
Type12
Type12 is a relatively new platform that promises to provide an opportunity to test candidates with real-world problems in a realistic environment: employers and recruiters are encouraged to create their own environment using 40+ frameworks and 20+ programming languages and third-party libraries. Other cool features are described below.
Features:
— Ready-to-use tests to verify the technical skills of the candidates screened
— Opportunity to conduct audio and video interviews
— A separate interview environment for each interview with a pre-configured set of technologies
Pricing plans start from as low as $19 per month and include up to 10 interviews. However, if you need to conduct more interviews, there’s a plan for $99 that allows you to conduct up to 50 interviews with an unlimited number of accounts and full access to the in-house Environment Library.
Honorable mention: Codeshare
CodeShare is a free resource for those who’d like to code as a team together, interview or teach others. There’s no question libraries or particularly advanced features, however, there’s a video option, three keymaps, including sublime, emacs, and vim, and an opportunity to choose a particular syntax with an ample number of languages available.
Conclusion
Coding tool is a great opportunity to save time and (eventually money) during the hiring process, especially if you’re recruiting freelance web developers. Instead of using plain text editors, check your candidates’ knowledge in real time or allow them to take their coding challenges in the comfort of their own homes. Choose a set of pre-defined tests prepared by professionals, if you’re not a programmer yourself, or create your own test and set passing scores. Interview with a team or alone, check play-back videos to find out how candidates tackle problems, and many more! The complete set of features varies immensely by the amount of time and money you’re willing to put into the coding platform.
