Game, set, Ada lights up the stage!

The curtain fell on the much-anticipated 2024 HackerRank Innovator Awards and AI Summit this past 15 February, marking a landmark event in the heart of India’s tech capital, Bengaluru. Hosted at the luxurious Conrad Bengaluru, the event saw an impressive gathering of over 400 industry leaders from the realms of technology and talent acquisition.

In a dazzling showcase of innovation and brilliance, the summit was hosted by HackerRank’s AI Assistant, Ada, who captivated the audience with her insights and wit. This year’s edition not only celebrated the achievements of the brightest minds in talent and technology innovation but also set a new benchmark for the integration of artificial intelligence.

Ada opened the awards to an insightful keynote by Vivek Ravishankar, CEO and Co-founder of HackerRank, who took the stage to deliver a compelling keynote address titled “Shaping Tomorrow’s Tech.”

In his presentation, Vivek embarked on a profound exploration of the evolutionary journey of the developer’s role over the decades, offering a unique perspective on the technological advancements that have transformed the landscape. He meticulously charted the course of these changes, highlighting how each significant leap in technology has ushered in new directions for innovation and fundamentally altered the way we approach problem-solving in the digital realm.

Vivek’s keynote was not just a reflection on the past; it was a forward-looking analysis that connected the dots between historical advancements and the future possibilities they pave the way for. Through his insights, attendees gained a deeper understanding of the critical role developers play in shaping the future of technology, emphasizing the importance of innovation in driving the tech community towards new frontiers.

A Spotlight on Innovation

A standout feature of the 2024 HackerRank Innovator Awards and AI Summit was the eagerly anticipated Innovation Display. Orchestrated by HackerRank’s distinguished team of product visionaries, this segment was led by the trio of Abhilash NL, Afzal Ashraf, and Vijaya Rao, who are at the forefront of HackerRank’s product innovation.

This engaging presentation offered attendees an exclusive deep dive into the remarkable strides HackerRank has achieved over the past year. The team has pioneered product advancements with a laser focus on three key areas: cultivating a strong tech brand identity, revolutionizing next-generation hiring practices, and advanced upskilling methods to ensure future readiness.

Each initiative was showcased with an eye on how these innovations are setting new standards in the tech industry, driving forward the mission to match talent with opportunity in the digital age. This session not only highlighted HackerRank’s commitment to innovation but also provided a glimpse into the future of tech recruitment and professional development.

Hari Karunanidhi, Co-founder and CTO of HackerRank, led a compelling talk aimed at debunking the pervasive myth that AI represents a dystopian future. He emphasized the importance of reshaping our understanding and approach towards AI, highlighting its potential for positive impact and innovation in technology.

The HackerRank Innovator Awards Ceremony

As the summit progressed to its centerpiece, Aadil Bandukwala took center stage to host the esteemed HackerRank Innovator Awards. This annual celebration is dedicated to acknowledging the exceptional talent leaders who, through their creativity and unwavering commitment, have crafted unparalleled talent experiences, driving remarkable outcomes for their organizations. It recognizes those who have not only set new benchmarks in talent development and acquisition but also those who have leveraged their expertise to foster a culture of innovation within their teams and organizations.

By highlighting the achievements of these outstanding individuals and teams, the HackerRank Innovator Awards substantiate the profound impact of strategic talent leadership in shaping the future of technology and business.

This year, however, the team changed the award categories to reflect the changing priorities in these times!

Setting up Skills Strategy: this award recognizes excellence in building and implementing a robust skills-based strategy for talent assessment and development

Embracing AI: this is to recognize and felicitate the company’s forward-thinking adoption of AI in technical hiring and for prioritizing hiring AI first skills and talent rubric

Showcasing Your Tech Brand: this award recognizes exceptional work in building a tech talent brand that attracts top developers and competes with big tech for world-class talent providing a window into real-world challenges that showcase their innovative and dynamic work environment

Optimizing the hiring process: this award is presented for exceptional use of HackerRank to streamline tech hiring. This distinction acknowledges the ability to save time, increase quality of hires, and enhance the efficiency of hiring workflow through a data-driven, candidate-centric approach

Mobilize your Internal talent: this award is presented for outstanding commitment to fostering a dynamic internally tech talent ecosystem, celebrating the use of comprehensive skills data to fuel strategic talent development internally

Winner of HackerRank Innovator Awards 2024

Category: Setting up Skills Strategy

Gold Award: Meesho

Platinum Award: Air India

Category: Embracing AI

Gold Award: Juniper

Platinum Award: Atlassian

Category: Showcasing your Tech Brand

Gold Award: ServiceNow

Platinum Award: Equinix

Category: Optimizing the Hiring Process

Gold Award: Cisco

Platinum Award: NVIDIA

Category: Internal Mobility

Gold Award: Cognizant

Platinum Award: TCS

A Memorable Conclusion

The HackerRank Innovator Awards and AI Summit drew to a resounding close with an exquisite networking session, accompanied by an array of delightful cuisine and refreshments. The atmosphere was charged with enthusiasm, as talent leaders from across the industry expressed their excitement and optimism for ongoing collaborations with HackerRank. This sentiment underscored the event’s success in fostering meaningful connections among the brightest minds in the tech and talent spheres.

This gathering was more than just a ceremonial conclusion; it served as a vivid demonstration of HackerRank’s unwavering commitment to pioneering innovations within the tech talent landscape. The event highlighted the company’s efforts to enhance candidate experiences, hire better, and set new industry standards.

A standout feature of the networking finale was the array of interactive booths arranged by the HackerRank team, designed to engage, entertain, and enlighten the attendees. Among these, the AI Avatar booth emerged as a sensational highlight, captivating the leaders with its innovative offering. Attendees were thrilled at the opportunity to have their personal avatars created by advanced AI technology, a fun and futuristic addition that sparked conversations and laughter.

The enthusiasm also spilled to social media, pre and post the event and here are a few snapshots that followed:

See you all at the next edition of the HackerRank Innovator Awards!

The post Celebrating Excellence: Highlights from the HackerRank Innovator Awards 2024 appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

What are the HackerRank Innovator Awards?

HackerRank Innovator awards recognize the best-in-class talent leaders who, with their ingenuity and dedication to create exceptional talent experience, drove exceptional results for their respective organizations. Furthermore, the event serves as a testament to the belief that collaborative partnerships with talent leaders enable transformative growth and innovation.

The 2023 awards was the ultimate tech and talent fiesta; leaders from over 100 organizations like Amazon, Prudential, HSBC, Flipkart, Cisco, EY, KPMG, TCS, and more, came together to swap stories and dive into some seriously interesting panel discussions. The previous edition also witnessed the participation of distinguished luminaries from Salesforce, Upstox, Swiggy, Atlassian, RazorPay, Dell, Oracle, Akamai, and numerous other organizations!

The awards’ selection criteria is as follows:

1. Overview of the technology used and how it helped in enhancing candidate experience 
2. Innovation in using the HackerRank platform 
3. Impact of the strategies on talent metrics
4. Originality and relevance of it in the talent field 

On the basis of the selection criteria detailed, HackerRank awards people for the following categories:

1. Excellence in Talent Acquisition – Recognizes exceptional talent acquisition teams who have revolutionized the technical hiring experience, leading to enhanced satisfaction among both candidates and hiring teams
2. Emerging Talent Accelerator – Recognizes the outstanding teams for their achievements in talent attraction and acquisition strategies
3. Innovators in Lateral Tech Hiring – Recognizes trailblazers for their outstanding commitment to hiring lateral talent and delivering exceptional candidate experiences at scale
4. The Developers Choice Award – Recognizes the teams who created exceptional interview and assessment experiences for developers
5. The Early Careers Transformation Award – Recognizes remarkable dedication in recruiting university and early-stage talent on a significant scale while ensuring an exceptional candidate experience

Besides these, HackerRank also welcomes leaders and organizations in “Innovators Hall of Fame” whose efforts in harnessing the power of HackerRank to effectively help engage, connect, and nurture talent in a candidate-friendly manner.

Winners of HackerRank Innovator Awards 2023

This year, the awards started with an address by Juan Herrera, President of Global Field Operations at HackerRank, where he dove into how the winning organizations are measuring skills over pedigree. He detailed how there’s an increasing demand for skills strategies and tech brand enhancement, and how HackerRank is bridging that gap. 

This was followed by a keynote speech by Janardhan Santhanam, VP and Global Head of Talent Development at TCS. The session explored the importance of adaptability, continuous learning, and talent empowerment in today’s dynamic landscape. He also discussed the growing importance of AI in everyday work, and how each AI needs trust and inclusive design. 

Following that, an insightful panel discussion titled “The Future of Work: AI and Human Collaboration”  took place. The esteemed panelists included Ramkumar Narayan, Vice President of Technology and Managing Director at VMWare; Kailash Nadh, Chief Technology Officer at Zerodha; and Harishankaran K, Chief Technology Officer at HackerRank. The discussion delved into the intricate relationship between AI tools and human engagement in bolstering productivity and streamlining coding tasks. Emphasis was placed on the indispensable role of human input despite the increasing role of AI.

The panelists also explored the significance of reskilling individuals to effectively utilize AI tools, and highlighted the importance of fostering meaningful dialogues. The conversation touched upon the practices of larger corporations adopting AI-powered assessments, juxtaposed with smaller entities that adhere to conventional interview methods.

Post the keynote session, the award ceremony commenced, the winners of which are:

Excellence in Talent Acquisition

Platinum Winner:  IBM

Gold Winner – Akamai 

Emerging Talent Accelerator

Platinum Winner: Cashfree

Gold Winner: Toshiba

Innovators in Lateral Tech Hiring

Platinum Winner: Goldman Sachs

Gold Winner: Cisco

The Developers’ Choice Award

Platinum Winner: Amazon

Gold Winner: NVIDIA

The Early Careers Transformation Award

Platinum Winner: Atlassian

Gold Winner: Adobe

Gold Winner: Akamai

Innovators Hall of Fame

Platinum Winner: TCS

Gold Winner: HCL

How HackerRank Is Helping the Talent Acquisition community

HackerRank, just like our customers, is driven to create exceptional, inclusive, and safe candidate experiences. Our products enable talent leaders to attract, evaluate, hire, and upskill technical talent from all over the world, and here’s what some of our customers said about us at the event:

“Thank you HackerRank team for enabling us to hire the best talent. I think this is where quality meets quantity.”

Arshad Khan, HR Head, IBM

“Thank you HackerRank for being a great partner, you’ve helped us go beyond the traditional universities too – we’ve scaled our university hiring from 0 to 200 and we’ve also grown Atlassian from 0 to 2000 in the last 5 years with HackerRank”

Arun Viswanathan, Head Of Engineering – IT Operations R&D, Atlassian 

“It’s been an amazing experience working with HackerRank, it’s been 5 years now, we used to have a hiring ratio of 20:1 when we started, but now it’s 5:1. We also worked on our recent hackathon, thank you for driving the podcast and making our leaders feel very comfortable”

Vartika Shrivastava, Talent Acquisition India Lead – Engineering, Cisco

The HackerRank Innovator Awards 2023 was a remarkable testament to the power of unity within the tech and talent community. As the event unfolded, it became evident that this gathering was about fostering a vibrant exchange of ideas, experiences, aspirations, and recognizing excellence.

Furthermore, the tech and talent leaders enjoyed great conversations, posed for pictures, and had a great time.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the event and the posts that followed:

The post Recognizing Excellence: A Closer Look at the HackerRank Innovator Awards 2023 appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

In our most recent webinar, How HackerRank is Leading AI-Powered Hiring, Principal Product Manager Ankit Arya and Senior Director of Product Marketing Danielle Bechtel gave customers a first look at new and upcoming products that let companies bring AI into their hiring process—on their own terms.

While there’s no substitute for watching the webinar on demand, here’s a taste of what went down:

3 developments in HackerRank AI

1 – AI-Powered Plagiarism Detection is live

HackerRank’s industry-first AI-powered plagiarism detection system is live and available to all HackerRank customers. By analyzing dozens of unique signals, our new plagiarism detection model detects suspicious activity with far greater reliability and fewer false positives than industry standard methods, like MOSS code similarity. 

2 – AI is about to make hiring teams’ lives easier

Several upcoming platform features promise to make hiring teams’ lives a bit easier. For example, AI will soon be able to review candidate code quality across several metrics such as efficiency and modularity, and provide a rationale for its analysis. AI will also be able to help members of the interview team provide more accurate interview summaries faster, using transcripts to build a first draft that can be refined before submission. 

3 – AI is coming to the assessment experience

HackerRank customers are fairly divided on AI’s role in assessments. Some want—or need—to keep AI at arm’s length. Others want to use it, and want to see how their candidates use it. To allow companies to embrace AI on their own terms, we’re building AI assistance into the assessment experience. Furthermore, the AI assistance will be highly customizable, from limited AI that can onboard a candidate to a codebase, to fully open AI that can engage in pair programming and code generation. 

At the end of the discussion, we held a live Q&A to chat through questions from the audience. Here are five of the top questions we heard—and how we’re thinking about them in response. 

Top 5 questions from hiring teams

The following responses are from the perspective of Ankit Arya, our principal product manager. His answers have been edited for length and clarity. 

1 – Is ChatGPT ready for primetime code complexity?

Base ChatGPT, the GPT-3.5 Turbo model, is not as good for programming. But GPT-4, Bard, and Anthropic’s models are getting to a place where they’re real coding helpers as you’re building software. 

Teams still need human creativity and developers who understand code, but AI can help take care of some of the more tedious tasks. For example, if you wrote a piece of a function and you want it to do error handling, you can have ChatGPT manage that for you. Of course you still need to review it, because you’re ultimately responsible for deploying it in production. But it can be a great assistant and enhance productivity.

2 – Can you talk more about plagiarism detection and 93% reliability? How do you check false positives? How do you even get that information? And has any other third party validated these claims?

The system has been in limited availability and we’ve run thousands of tests to make sure the system is performing at the level that we’re claiming. We’re also looking at feedback  from customers who’ve been using this product, and that feedback’s been really amazing. So that’s really where we are coming from when we define that internal benchmark. 

We’ve also been audited by an external third party, because it does come under the purview of the NYC law. We’ve gone through the audit process, so the system is ready for you to use. 

3 – HackerRank’s plagiarism detection system will get better over time because it’s built on AI. Can you talk more about that?

These systems are built with training data. Imagine when you’re a kid. How do you learn things? Someone shows you an image of an apple and tells you it’s an apple. Teachers give you a lot of examples and a label, and you start building associations, so you can recognize an apple.

This is how AI models learn, as well. Only they’re not as good at it as humans. We just need to see a thing one or two times, and we’ve got it. I could show you any apple, and you’ll identify it with very high accuracy. AI systems need a lot more data. So in this case, they would need a lot more images to make an accurate, reliable prediction. 

When we say the system gets better over time, this is what we mean. The more customers use it, the more feedback they provide, the more training data the system can ingest, further increasing its accuracy.

4 – Lots of people are interested in the interview assistant. What does that look like in the long term? Is this something you see integrating into an ATS?

Yes. Over the long term, we want to get to where the interview assistant does most of the work, and where we’re delivering it to you in your ATS. We don’t want AI making decisions, so imagine this more like AI doing 80-90% of the work for you, compiling the summary that you’d have to spend an hour doing. Now you would be spending 10 minutes reviewing it, making any changes, and then submitting it. 

But we absolutely imagine the system becoming way more integrated into the workflow than it is now, depending on what ATS you’re using.

5 – How does AI in advanced plagiarism handle copy/paste? Are there any plans to disable that functionality altogether?

No, there are no plans to disable copy/paste. I don’t think that’s something we’d ever want to do. To bring a little more clarity, you can’t copy questions. So when you talk about copy/paste, it’s really in the editor window. We provide a proctoring feature that’s essentially copy/paste tracking. And just because someone pasted, doesn’t mean they plagiarized. It’s just one of the signals the model considers. 

For example, someone might be solving a program question, but forgot how to insert a key in a Python dictionary. Simple, basic things just become signals into the model. What we’re really looking for are large patterns of cheating behavior. Is the full solution being pasted in? Or large chunks of code? So whether copy/paste triggers a plagiarism flag depends on the context of how much was copy/pasted and what was copy/pasted. 

Get the full story

These questions only scratch the surface. Be sure to watch the full webinar to take in the full Q&A session and get more context around HackerRank’s new and upcoming AI products.

And if you want to be among the first to gain access to our future AI releases, be sure to sign up for the HackerRank AI waitlist at hackerrank.com/ai.

The post All Things AI: Here’s What You Missed From the HackerRank AI Webinar appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

What does ChatGPT mean for tech hiring? How well can conversational AI code? And will ChatGPT cause the end of civilization as we know it?

Those pressing questions were on everyone’s mind during HackerRank’s recent live AMA with our machine learning team.

After demystifying ChatGPT, HackerRank machine learning experts Ankit Arya and Mohamed Eldawy answered attendees’ questions on all things ChatGPT and conversational AI. Here are their seven most pressing questions about AI, answered.

But first — a note on ChatGPT

On a basic level, ChatGPT is an example of a large language model. A large language model is a computer system trained on huge data sets and built with a high number of parameters. This extends the system’s text capabilities beyond traditional AI and enables it to respond to prompts with minimal or no training data.

The goal of ChatGPT’s developer, OpenAI, was to create a machine learning system which can carry a natural conversation. In practice, ChatGPT functions like a search engine or content creation system, synthesizing billions of data points into custom responses. 

Your Top 7 Questions About ChatGPT

#1. Will ChatGPT Cause the End of Civilization as We Know it?

While we fielded many tactical questions about the growth of AI, a surprising number of attendees had more dire thoughts on their mind. 

On one end, there were questions about whether or not ChatGPT could replace developers, or if machines will replace all human jobs. On the other end were questions about whether robots would rebel against their programming and oppress humans in a dystopian future from the likes of science fiction.

We’re happy to report that ChatGPT isn’t poised to bring about the end of civilization as we know it. That said, the release of ChatGPT was a pivotal moment for AI, and the field is poised to transform human society.

The growth of AI has raised countless existential questions. What will be the purpose of humans in an automated world? Will we do the impossible and create sentient machines? Will our own creations become a threat of the likes from science fiction? Or will we use AI to create a future of abundance?

Right now, these questions are of course unanswerable, and maybe a bit sensational. But we can confidently say there’s no reason to worry about ChatGPT ending the world.

#2. How Well Can ChatGPT Actually Code?

As a coding tool, ChatGPT excels at certain types of technical problems—but also has its limitations. 

ChatGPT has probably seen almost all known algorithms. But ChatGPT isn’t just able to answer these algorithm questions correctly. It’s also able to write new implementations of those algorithms, answer freeform questions, and explain its work.

As a result, ChatGPT can answer the following question types with reasonable accuracy:

• Well-known algorithms: It’s safe to assume that ChatGPT has seen and is able to answer all publicly available coding problems on platforms such as LeetCode and StackOverflow. If the algorithm appears in online forums or practice websites, ChatGPT will likely answer it correctly.
• Minor variations of problems. ChatGPT does well on variations that tend to add to the solution rather than change it in any substantial way. The system can, for example, easily reverse the order of an array of numbers.
• Multiple choice questions. When presented with a question and multiple potential answers, ChatGPT can usually identify the correct answer.

While ChatGPT outputs human-like sentences, and it’s easy to mistake its output as being powered by true intelligence, ChatGPT does have shortcomings. 

ChatGPT seems intelligent, but is still far from human-level intelligence. Industry publications have described ChatGPT as confidently wrong, exhibiting a tone of confidence in its answers, regardless of whether those answers are accurate. 

ChatGPT also lacks the ability to fact-check itself or conduct logical reasoning. It often incorrectly answers questions and can be tricked relatively easily. 

#3. How Should I Adapt My Hiring Content Strategy to ChatGPT?

Employers will need to develop a strong content strategy to test their current coding challenges and prioritize the questions, and question types, that are less susceptible to AI coding support. Fortunately, there are some actions you can take today to further secure the integrity of your coding tests. 

We recommend taking the following precautions: 

• Avoid easily solved multiple choice questions
• Remove questions that require only a few lines of code to solve
• Use proctoring tools and plagiarism detection systems
• Avoid simple prompts to solve for common or widely available algorithm variants
• Combine coding tests with virtual interviewing tools to add empirical data to the hiring process

#4. Is It Possible to Detect When Candidates Use ChatGPT?

In a world where humans and machines alike can write code, the ability to detect the use of AI-coding tools is invaluable. As such, employers increasingly turn to strategies and technologies that enable them to uphold the integrity of their technical assessments.

So, is it possible to detect when a candidate has received outside help from tools like ChatGPT?

Yes. With the right plagiarism detection system, you can track if a candidate has copied and pasted code from an external source. However, it isn’t possible to identify what source the code was obtained from.

So what kind of plagiarism detection will you need? An AI-enabled plagiarism detection system that feeds proctoring and user-generated signals into an advanced machine-learning algorithm to flag suspicious behavior during an assessment. 

The key behavioral signals to record include:

• Tab proctoring. Monitors if the candidate switches between tabs.
• Copy-paste tracking. Tracks if a candidate pastes copied code in the assessment.
• Image proctoring. Captures and records periodic snapshots of the candidate.
• Image analysis. Analyzes webcam photos for suspicious activity.

By understanding code iterations made by the candidate, models like HackerRank’s plagiarism detection system can identify if a candidate had external help, including from ChatGPT.

#5. Should Employers Test a Candidate’s Ability to Use ChatGPT?

The purpose of coding tests is to assess a candidate’s ability to perform the role. As developers continue integrating AI coding tools into their workflow, the ability to use those tools may become a vital skill to test for. 

In the near future, AI coding tools will become strong enough for developers to integrate them into their day-to-day workflow. This will allow developers to delegate grunt work to AI tools, freeing up time for creative work that requires human input. When that becomes a reality, then assessing the ability of candidates to use AI coding tools will likely be essential.

In the short term, that question becomes harder to answer. Developers are already using tools like ChatGPT in their day-to-day work. But it’s important to remember that  we are still in the early days of conversational AI, and many publicly available models are still prone to error. Whether or not you should start testing competency in these tools will vary on a case-by-case basis.

#6. What Technical Skills Will Still Be Important in an AI-Driven World?

If developers will soon start outsourcing work to AI coding tools, then what skills will still be essential for them to learn?

The ability to write high-quality, optimized, documented, understandable, and bug-free code remains essential. The tech industry is nowhere near outsourcing all coding to artificial intelligence. Debugging, in particular, will be vital, as AI tools can’t be trusted to write bug-free code. 

Human input is also necessary for the development of machine learning models, as evidenced by OpenAI’s recent hiring of an army of developers to train ChatGPT. The field of prompt engineering will grow in importance as humans test and expand the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Beyond coding, soft and abstract developer skills are invaluable. Creative problem solving and outside-the-box thinking are vital skills that machines aren’t capable of doing. (At least for now.) 

All of this could be a good thing for developers. With the tactical grunt work outsourced to AI, developers might be able to focus solely on the fun parts of coding and development.

#7. What’s Next for Artificial Intelligence?

In the short term, conversational AI will change the way we work. Developers are already using ChatGPT for a range of creative use cases.

But instead of replacing developers, technologies like ChatGPT will serve as tools to make them more productive. For example, coding tasks that took two hours might only take 15 minutes with the help of AI. But it’s difficult to predict how this surge in productivity will impact developer wages and employment rates.

In the long term, the potential of AI is harder to anticipate. The forms these technologies will take are limited only by our imagination. Some experts believe AI is poised to usher in the next era of human civilization. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has compared the advancement of AI to the discovery of fire and electricity. Even the next evolution of humanity is in the works. 

Embracing Artificial Intelligence

As exciting as the launch of ChatGPT has been, conversational AI with its capabilities are only the beginning. While it’s hard to predict the future, one thing is certain: AI technology is in a nascent state and will continue to grow at a rapid rate.

Here at HackerRank, we welcome this new wave of technological transformation and are already working on innovative ideas that imagine a future of programming in an AI-driven world. Indeed, AI’s potential to transform the world is limitless. In 50 years, we might look back on the rise of conversational AI as the moment that changed everything.

The post HackerRank’s Machine Learning Team Answers Your Top 7 Questions About ChatGPT appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

With even bigger goals on the horizon, we’re taking a look back at the incredible year that was 2021. Take a look at what we achieved and the momentous milestones we reached, all thanks to our team, our customers, and our community.

Here’s a sneak peek at what the last year looked like for us:

• 3,350,000+ members joined our community
• 285,000+ people certified their skills on HackerRank
• Python was our developer community’s favorite language
• Launched an industry report about the state of tech hiring 
• 34,000+ applications were placed in our Virtual Career Fair
• 29,000+ viewers tuned into HackerRankTV
• 187 HackerRankers joined the family

2021, you’ve been kind to us. 2022 — we’re revving our engines!

The post HackerRank 2021 Rewind appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

The post HackerRank’s Virtual Career Fair is Back appeared first on HackerRank Blog.

We hosted our second annual HackerRank.main() virtual event yesterday, and boy did we pack a lot into this hour and 45-minute event!

From discussing the transformation of Sir Isaac Newton to reflecting deep within the “belly of the whale,” our event kicked off with a special keynote from best-selling author and organizational psychologist, Nick Tasler. He talked about what goes into making important decisions, how to consult the “anti-you” before making those decisions, and how the COVID pandemic can be a catalyst for unleashing your inner innovator. 

We also revealed the top findings from our first state-of-the-industry HackerRank Innovator Report which surveyed 1,000+ people from almost 900 companies of all sizes to determine where they fall on the Hiring Maturity Model. 

Watch the virtual event on-demand or keep reading for highlights & takeaways.

Nick Tasler Keynote: Unleash Your Inner Innovator

We kicked off the virtual event with a special keynote from Nick Tasler on how to unleash your inner innovator one decision at a time. 

Here are some key takeaways from his talk:

1. Change ignites innovation

Modern neuroscience shows that strange and unexpected changes in our external environment act like an alarm clock that wakes up creative superpowers in our brain that most of us didn't even know we had. It’s in these times of change and adaptation that we really see our true creative potential. 

Nick shares the story of how Isaac Newton became one of the greatest scientists in human civilization. Back in 1665, when the plague epidemic was sweeping across Europe, Newton saw an apple fall from a tree. And just like that, the idea that would eventually become the theory of gravity is born. Newton also, during that same year of quarantine, invented calculus and revolutionized the telescope. 

“Change is hard. Only in the same way that raising kids or running a marathon is hard. The fact that change requires effort does not negate the fact that most people who commit to doing it eventually succeed.”

2. Decisions eliminate distractions

People tend to talk about decisions in terms of what it is they’re going to do. They decided to pursue this priority, hire that person, marry this person, take this job, and they always talk about what it is that they decided to do. 

“Making a decision is really much less about what we decide to do and much more about all the other big ideas and priorities that we decided to cut, kill, tweak, deprioritize, put on the backburner for a later date so that we can focus all of our creative energy, all of our innovative juices on the thing we really want to make an impact on.”

There could be dozens of priorities that you want to focus on this year. However, the trouble with having five primary directions is that it’s roughly four too many if you actually want to get somewhere. 

Nick suggests one of the simplest ways to accelerate your innovation is by deciding, out of all the possible priorities, what big ideas to focus on. What is going to be the number one, focus for the coming six months, nine months, the rest of 2021? What is going to your decision pulse?

3. Consult the anti-you

We make an average of 70 decisions every single day. And if you're a leader, that number jumps up to 110 to 115 decisions on average every single day. Nick shared his final tip in decision-making which is: consult the anti-you. 

“After you've checked your pulse, but before you actually make a decision, check in with somebody who's not you. Somebody who's not bringing your emotions, biases, and prejudices into the situation and can give you that fresh outside perspective, a new frame of reference.”

Having a fresh perspective might illuminate ideas or risks you might not have thought of before. So next time you consider switching internet providers—or buying that RV—run it by someone who has your best interests at heart. 

4. Reflect in the belly of the whale

Nick concludes his keynote by telling us to reflect on where our mind is at as things start returning to normal. Is it fixated on returning to the way things used to be before the pandemic before this onslaught of change happened in all our lives or is it focused on using this opportunity to become the person you are called to be?

He references the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. When God calls down to Jonah to help lead his people to salvation, he decides to ignore this request and escape on a boat. Jonah gets swallowed up by a whale and spends three days and nights in the belly of the whale, reflecting on who he is. After a few days of self-reflection, the whale spits Jonah out onto the shore where Jonah finally decides to go be the innovator he was called to be. 

“Jonah and the whale is the origin story for every superhero you've ever known. That’s because there, in the belly of the whale, is where ordinary people suddenly discover that they have extraordinary capabilities.”

“You have spent the last 12 months inside the belly of the whale. And you're about to get spit out stronger, faster, wiser, smarter than you've ever been before. And that means that right now you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go be the innovator you know you're capable of being.”

The 2021 Innovator Report Results

We launched our first state-of-the-industry report based on the responses from 1,000+ global tech recruiting leaders and hiring managers from some of the most innovative companies in the world. Our CEO, Vivek Ravisankar, and CMO, Jennifer Stagnaro shared the results of the report. 

The HackerRank Hiring Maturity Model highlights opportunities for companies to create more sophisticated hiring processes to compete for top talent while ensuring a world-class experience for candidates and interviewers alike. 

This model is emblematic of how incremental process changes can impact hiring in any organization, big or small. While there is not a single “right” way to get started, identifying areas within your current process will help identify gaps and influence how organizations think about their hiring strategies. 

Let’s start with the anatomy of the model. It follows the 5 major stages of the hiring process, from PLAN, to SOURCE, to SCREEN, to INTERVIEW, to RANK.  And for each of these stages, an individual answers a series of questions, and they are provided a score for each phase, as well as an aggregate score. 

Overview of results:

1. Companies around the globe continue to adopt technology to support their technical hiring at an increasing rate, in support of their shift to support remote hiring.
2. Over 1,000 people from almost 900 companies of all sizes from 52 countries around the globe have taken the HackerRank Hiring Maturity assessment to date. 
3. Companies across almost every industry participated in the self-assessment. 
4. Types of companies that participated include software companies that build smart locks that are taking the rental housing market by storm, to companies that provide health insurance to Nigerians. 
5. On average, the individuals scored 2.8 on the 5 point scale, highlighting the fact that the industry is still young, and there’s plenty of room to mature. Compare that to the HackerRank Innovator Index of 4.2, which represents the top 10% of companies.

Tips for Hiring Like an Innovator

TIP #1: Eliminate Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Mo

Even the best innovators revert to making hiring decisions based on seemingly random criteria. Eliminate the Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Mo method of tech hiring by putting skills at the core of your D&I efforts to eliminate bias at every stage of the hiring process.

Innovators and I/O Psychologists know that in order to truly build a diverse and inclusive tech team, a fair and valid process must be focused on skills. Ensuring technical skills that are required for the role are identified and assessed at each step, reduces unconscious bias, and establishes fairness for candidates regardless of age, race, or gender.

TIP #2:  Let Developers Show Their Authentic Selves

Create real-world skills assessments at the right stage of the screening process to attract, engage, and validate the best candidates.

Humans like to find common ground when meeting new people, including candidates who are applying for a job. When done right, the exchange is based on skills, allowing the candidate to demonstrate their abilities while learning about the new role. 

Let the candidates feel comfortable showing their true selves.

“Rather than worrying about how I look on camera, I would rather engage with a recruiter and hiring manager on what I know, and how I can deliver value to their company,” says Jennifer.

TIP #3: Label the Parts of the Glass

Is the glass half-full or half-empty? It all depends on your perspective.  

A lot of misconceptions around the hiring process occur when looking at it from a single perspective. For example, engineering hiring managers might say the hiring process is much more robust than if you ask someone from HR. Establish a task force with Talent Acquisition and Engineering leaders to create a common understanding, and a consistent, standardized process from the start. Make sure you document all of the parts in language that both sides understand.

TIP #4: Deliver an exceptional experience consistently

Developers and engineering managers report very different perspectives on their maturity in conducting tech interviews. Innovators eliminate the risks of inconsistency and ensure an exceptional candidate experience by standardizing common processes and tools across the entire interview team.

Tip #5: Leverage the HHMM to Identify and Close the Gaps

Maturity is in the eyes of the beholder. To help identify the gaps in your maturity, leverage the HackerRank Hiring Maturity Model to identify the best places to improve tech hiring across your entire organization. Have as many team members take a few minutes to do their own self-assessment. It’s free, easy, and can help pinpoint key focus areas to innovate your tech hiring, one step at a time.

 

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More than 6000 people, ranging from developers to hiring managers to HR professionals, registered for our annual HackerRank.main() virtual event yesterday—making HackerRank.main() 2020 the largest event we’ve ever hosted. 

The two-hour virtual event boasted discussions with thought leaders from ServiceNow, Salesforce, UBS, and Mathworks, and unveiled the fourth pillar within the Developer Skills Platform: Rank. 

This final pillar allows companies to benchmark candidates against millions of developers so hiring managers feel more confident when hiring remote technical talent—making the Developer Skills Platform a single source of truth for remote, end-to-end tech hiring.

Watch the virtual event on-demand here or keep reading for highlights & takeaways.

Keynote: Skills Mapping for Valid & Fair Tech Hiring

We kicked off the virtual event with a panel discussion led by Dr. Fred Rafilson, Chief I/O Psychologist at HackerRank, and Kesha Williams, Software Engineer and Karthik Gaekwad, Principal Engineer. Together, they discussed standardized skills and how to get the most out of your hiring process. 

Key Takeaways:

• Pull from your own experience when building a standardized skills rubric.
• When defining role requirements, work with the stakeholders to understand the expectations of what you might want the role to actually fill.
• Understanding the needs of the project helps you define the type of role you’re looking for.

The Developer Skills Platform in Action

The moment you’ve all been waiting for… the big reveal of the Developer Skills Platform! We unveiled how to optimize hiring in a remote with a demo of the Developer Skills Platform. 

What is the Developer Skills Platform? 

We’re glad you asked! The Developer Skills Platform is the first end-to-end solution for remote tech hiring. 

It provides a seamless experience for hiring managers and candidates so the remote interview process is easy, efficient, and effective. Remote work and hiring remote workers is the future of innovation for many companies and embracing an end-to-end solution for remote technical hiring will allow organizations to scale quickly and innovate faster while tapping into a more diverse talent pool. 

The Developer Skills Platform is designed around the four core phases of the hiring process:

1. Plan: Define the skills required for the role that you are filling from the industry-standard skills directory detailing proficiency levels for 15 in-demand technical roles mapped to 75+ skills. Work with HackerRank engagement experts to clearly define a standard process to assess the necessary skills across each phase of the screen and interview process. 
2. Screen: Accelerate resume review and enable high-quality candidates to showcase their coding skills with assessments and real-world projects before the interview.
3. Interview: Conduct real-time, real-world technical interviews from anywhere.
4. Rank: Identify the best candidates based on assessing the right skills, not pedigree. Compare skills to other candidates for the position, as well as millions of developers worldwide. Continuously improve interviewers by comparing evaluations. Standardized process and scoring to ensure a fair evaluation.

“The launch of the Developer Skills platform is the culmination of a decade’s worth of experience. We started out as an assessment platform and as we’ve grown, we’ve continually iterated on our product to meet the needs of our 2000+ customers,” said Vivek Ravisankar, Co-Founder and CEO of HackerRank. 

“Now that the world has shifted to remote work, it’s imperative that companies embrace an end-to-end approach when hiring technical talent. The Developer Skills Platform allows companies to standardize and scale their hiring processes and is perfectly suited for our remote lives.” 

Tick Tock Talks: End-to-End Technical Hiring, Uncovering Best Practices in a Remote World

ServiceNow

First, we spoke with Nancy DeLeon, Global TA Director at ServiceNow. She discussed the importance of implementing diversity and inclusion efforts as well as how they successfully leveraged HackerRank in reducing the engineering resource needed to hire while ensuring the candidate skillset remained at a high bar.      

Key Takeaways: 

• “Treat people beautifully.” Have those tough conversations and host D&I trainings that ignite change not just within your teams, but outwardly across the community.
• Having an end-to-end platform improves the quality of the tests as well as the candidate experience.
• Hiring automation in high-volume areas helps you find the quality talent, reduce time to hire, and anticipate attrition in real time.
• Give candidates the tools they need to succeed. Invest in candidates who may not have passed the first time but who are interested in your brand by providing them with resources to improve and possibly get hired in the future. 

Mathworks

Next, we spoke with Vipresh Gangwhal, Engineering Development Group Manager at MathWorks, about how his team rapidly transitioned from nearly no one working remotely, to 100% remote hiring using HackerRank. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Having the right technology in place makes it easier to pivot in times of crisis.
• Automation makes it easy to adapt to the remote world—building human connections is the hard part.
• Build a diverse candidate pool and create an interview process that removes implicit biases.
• You need multiple data points to evaluate talent—the Screen is just one data point.
• From sourcing to interviewing, to starting the onboarding process, having the right expertise partnership in place fosters transparency so different teams can work with each other to hire the right candidate.

Salesforce

Then, we talked with Tim Ahern, Recruiting Leader of Engineering and Technology at Salesforce, about how he identified core competencies that map to what a successful candidate looks like, without implicit biases.

Key Takeaways: 

• Structure leads to alignment and consistencies that help scale your business and turn on a dime. (Salesforce pivoted to fully remote interviewing in 7 days.) 
• “Screen people in instead of screening people out.”
• Having buy-in from executives early on (like a HackerRank Advisory Board) helps push decisions and changes through the organization.

UBS

Lastly, we spoke with David O’Brien, Group Technology Workforce Management at UBS, about how standardizing skillsets helped his team easily pivot into remote hiring across the globe. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Understand what the technology can offer you, and rebuild and redefine the recruitment process from there.
• Standardizing skills globally leads to greater flexibility, higher quality, and a more diverse talent pool.
• Invest in a tech council. Having the technologist drive the content fosters greater appreciation for candidates.
• Don’t just discover new ways of processing candidates. Learn how to attract them to your organization.
• Reimagine the entire process—think beyond automating your current paper process.

See you in 2021!

We’re thrilled with the outcome of our first virtual HackerRank.main() event and already receiving requests to attend next year. If you’re interested in learning more about the Developer Skills Platform, click here. 

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