Online coding interview tools have helped many industries and companies make better hiring decisions and out-compete their competition. It’s important to have a thorough hiring process that goes smoothly and swiftly. Long hiring processes can turn away the best candidates, while speeding through the process makes for poor hiring decisions. The recruiting team is the backbone of every company's success. Putting the best resources into creating a more efficient hiring process pays off in the long run. When selecting an online coding interview tool, you will need to research the goals you are trying to achieve and what tools will fit you best.

What is a Coding Interview Tool, and How Does it Work?

Coding interview tools are features or products that automate parts of the interview process to help recruiters make faster and better decisions. Utilizing these coding interview tools gives better insights into the candidates you are interviewing. 

Depending on the tool, there are different ways to assess candidates. Since each tool's capabilities and support systems differ, researching each coding interview tool is important. This research will help you look for a coding interview tool that will work in the specific ways you require for your assessment.

What To Look For in a Good Coding Interview Tool

Researching your options in coding interview tools is important because everyone's needs differ. Since these resources require a budget, it’s necessary to know that the specific tool will achieve your goals. 

Two considerations that will help you guide your research are:

1. Know what goals you are trying to achieve in the interview process
2. Know the sophistication level of the tools necessary for achieving those goals

Consideration One: Your Goal Achievements

Understanding your goal achievements is important even if you are not looking for an online coding interview tool, but it’s especially important when you are. When assessing your goal achievements in the process, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Are there any skill gaps within the currently employed team for which you are hiring an employee for?

• This question assesses the current weaknesses of the team that needs coverage. If the team is experiencing a lack of leadership skills, then it would be important to assess candidates for their leadership capabilities. With each new hire, teams should strengthen and build on each other.

2. What is your ‘ideal’ hire?

• This question builds off the last by assessing the kind of personality and skill sets this individual will possess to prosper in the position. Though, make sure when answering this question that you don’t limit yourself. This question can be more damaging than helpful when answered with the wrong intentions. Diversity is extremely important in the workplace. The potential of a candidate is much more important than their pedigree. Therefore, do not limit your answer to gender, race, or background. Limit this question to the skills the ‘ideal’ candidate will need to possess to succeed. That said, the answer is important to give you a baseline of what you want to start building questions for the assessment. This question will also help when looking through resumes and weeding out candidates based on potential and talent.

3. What kind of assessment are you going for? Will it be an enterprise assessment level evaluation or a basic assessment?

• This is important because different tools will help different assessments. If the assessment is going to be an enterprise assessment level evaluation, then you will need to have an online coding interview tool that is able to support those questions. If you are only going for simple questions on a take-home test, utilize easier online coding interview tools so you aren’t spreading your budget further than necessary. 

4. How much time do you have to perform this assessment? Will you hold it in real-time, asynchronously, or both for different interview parts?

• This question is important because it helps you determine whether you need an online coding interview tool that supports real-time and asynchronous assessments. It also gives you a better understanding of the questions you will need to create. 

These answers allow you to understand what questions you’ll ask during the interview and the goal. Therefore, the second consideration is what sophistication level do you need your online interview tool to support?

Consideration Two: Sophisticated Tools?

The second thing to consider is the level of sophistication of the online coding interview tools you are researching. Based on the goals of your interview, the level of sophistication in the online coding interview tool will differ. The level of sophistication depends on the tool's level of support and abilities to offer insight into candidates' skill sets. 

Artificial intelligence resume screening is a great example of a sophisticated online coding interview tool. While it doesn’t necessarily assess the candidate's coding abilities, it still gives great insight into the overall skill sets presented on their resumes. It automates that part of the process, helping recruiters fasten the process without losing the quality of the assessment. 

Here are a few questions you will need to ask yourself when assessing what level of sophistication you need in a tool.

1. What kinds of questions are you asking the candidates? 

• Tools need to be as sophisticated as the answers they support. Multiple-choice questions are not as sophisticated as code snippet questions, where candidates fill in part of the code to make it run properly. The higher the sophistication of questions, the higher the sophistication the online coding interview tool will need to support. 

2.  What environments will need to be provided to the candidates?

• If you have a take-home test with questions requiring recorded answers, you will need an online testing environment that supports the use of cameras and a microphone. If you hold a live-coding assessment, you must provide an online conference room that supports pair programming. Further, to assess all the information later, you will need those platforms to save the candidate’s code and answers to a candidate's profile. 
• The most advanced method used in testing environments is creating an environment replicating the company’s tech stack. This method allows the candidates to code in an environment that is the same as the prospective company. Recruiters can then see if the candidate has any prior experience in relevant environments or if they are trainable. 

These questions can help you research how each online coding interview tool will benefit you and your candidates. After all, interviews are the first impression on both sides. While the candidate is the main one being assessed, they also assess the company's quality during the interview. If a candidate is perfect for the position but didn’t feel like the process was smooth, they may not accept the position. That is as much of a loss as it would be not to have assessed them properly since the result would be the same: they don’t end up working for your company. 

Filtered: An Online Coding Interview Tool To Assess Candidates

Understanding how to research online coding interview tools will help you answer how they work for you. Getting an under-sophisticated tool can waste time and money for your candidates and team. That is why selecting the online coding interview tool that matches all your needs will benefit you the most. 

Filtered provides an online coding interview tool that can support multiple levels of sophistication, including:

• Artificial intelligence resume screening
• Identity Verification
•  Take–Home Test platform that supports 
  - Multiple choice questions
  - Multiple answer questions
  - Fill in the blank questions
  - Code snippet questions
  - Recorded answer questions 
  - Procturing
  - Automatic grading 

• Live-Coding Environment that supports
  - Multiple coding scenarios
  - Pair programming 

• Virtual whiteboard that supports
  - EMR diagram building
  - Collaboration

‍Filtered is a leader in skills-based hiring. Our end-to-end technical hiring platform enables you to spend time reviewing only the most qualified candidates, putting skills and aptitude at the forefront of your decisions. We’ll help you automate hiring while applying objective, data-driven techniques to consistently and confidently select the right candidates. To get started, contact our team today or register for a FREE demo.