7 Practical Tips For Live Coding Interviews

In technical recruitment, coding interviews play a crucial role in hiring the top talent in your organization. Without a coding interview, it becomes challenging for recruiters to identify the right fit for their organization.

Coding interviews are said to be a great way of giving feedback to candidates so that they can improve themselves for future interviews. However, these pre-employment assessments make the recruitment process a little bit longer, but it is worth it in the long run.

Due to the lengthy process, most candidates step out of the application process, while some stick to it and know the importance of coding interviews.

Understand The Job Role

First of all, you must understand the job role you’re hiring for. It is essential to know the basics of a particular job role which will help you prepare for the coding test.

If you’re hiring for multiple vacant positions in the technical team, the screening process may vary. For example, the coding test for Java developers won’t be the same as for web developers.

Use The Right Coding Interview Tool

The next step is to use the right coding interview tool, which is crucial to enhance the candidate experience. Using a complex tool can make candidates step out of the application process, increasing the candidate drop-off rates.

You can leverage Intervue – which is an easy-to-use tool for live coding interviews. It uses an auto-grading system that automatically eliminates unqualified candidates from the recruitment process. Intervue has audio/video call functionality to monitor the candidate’s activity on your screen.

Investing in the right coding interview technology can help recruiters save a lot of time, money, and effort to hire the best fit for their organization.

Ask Relevant Questions

You must ask the questions relevant to the job profile you’re hiring for. For example, suppose you’re hiring web developers. In that case, you must ask coding questions related to web development and not from Android development.

During the coding interview, besides asking candidates to write a code, check if the candidate can answer related questions verbally. This will help assess the candidate's soft skills and whether the candidate has clarity about how things work.

Apart from technical skills, you can assess a candidate’s problem-solving, time management, communication, and creativity skills.

Use The Tool That Supports Multiple Languages

Most recruiters make mistakes in choosing the tool that supports multiple languages. Hence, it becomes inconvenient for recruiters, and they use various platforms for conducting coding interviews for multiple job roles.

Invest in a platform that is a jack of all trades. It means that you must use a platform that supports all programming languages so that it becomes easy for you to conduct interviews for multiple job roles in one place.

Give And Ask For Feedback

Communication is the key to help candidates shine in their interviews. While giving candidates feedback about the interview is crucial, you must also ask for feedback about their experience throughout the coding interview.

Getting feedback from candidates leaves room for you to make improvements in your existing coding interview process. Focusing on a candidate-driven approach can help build a positive employer brand and enhance the company’s reputation.

Coding interviews should be interactive as much as possible. If you see candidates getting stuck at some point, you can offer guidance to get them on the right track. As a recruiter, you must guide your candidates and give preparation tips to ace their future interviews.

Focus On Candidate Experience

Most candidates say that they didn’t receive any feedback from the recruiters after an interview. According to CodinGame, more than 80% of candidates say that the positive or negative candidate experience can impact their decision. As a result, you will miss out on many opportunities to hire the top talent when your process isn’t candidate-driven.

On the other hand, when you have successfully hired a candidate, try to offer flexible work hours – and especially ‘Work-From-Home.’ Candidates are said to be productive while they’re working remotely. It will not only enhance the candidate experience, but you can retain the top talent in your organization in the long run.

Involve CTOs And Senior Management

Not every recruiter is from a technical background. And if you’re the one, it might be challenging for you to ask tech-related questions and conduct coding interviews. Therefore, it’s always beneficial to involve CTOs and the senior management team who will help you prepare job-related questions and guide you in conducting a successful live coding interview.

Senior managers are pretty good, and they know exactly what would help other developers in the interview process and which questions are best for facilitating an accurate discussion of your candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

With the introduction of new tools and technologies, the demand for software developers and engineers will continue to grow. As live coding interviews are the future, it is a must for every organization to invest in the right coding interview tool to attract and hire the top talent.

Conducting coding interviews might sound complicated, but it will become easy to follow the tips mentioned above. A successful coding interview will help you enhance the candidate experience and hire quality candidates in your organization.