HackerRank debuts tool for developer job candidate analysis

HackerRank for Work, a service that helps businesses send assessment tests to developer job candidates, is today launching the Test Health Dashboard, a machine learning-enhanced tool that helps organizations identify ways to improve their developer recruitment and testing processes.

The Test Health Dashboard will allow business managers and recruiters to evaluate both the performance of job candidates and the strength of the coding assessment given to them.

Tests can be made to fit the skills a company needs and evaluated based on skills associated with job titles such as data scientists, software engineers, and system administrator.

Developers looking to build or test their skills have already taken more than 8 million tests or challenges, providing hundreds of millions of data points.

Above: HackerRank for Work Test Health Dashboard

Test Health Dashboard will supply a comparison to the historical performance of candidates at an individual company, as well as at other organizations.

“Basically, we’ll be able to benchmark all of our customers’ performance against each other. So you can actually see how you’re performing relative to your cohort,”  HackerRank director of customer success Blane Shields told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

Metrics like test participation levels and score distribution are taken into account as part of the review process in the Test Health Dashboard. Candidate feedback is also baked into the process for businesses interested in finding out how they’re perceived by developers.

Poor test participation, for example, could indicate need for improvement in a company’s recruiting process or the need for a more relevant developer test.

Data shared in the dashboard may offer comparisons between organizations of varying sizes, but it will focus on fundamental metrics surrounding sound testing practices, HackerRank VP of data science Sofus Macskássy told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

“Different companies, based on where they are, might have a different quality of candidates that come to them, but the score distribution should look healthy. You still want to be able to filter out the good versus bad candidates for you, and that’s going to be true regardless of the size of the company and the quality of the developers that come through your door,” he said.

The Test Health Dashboard launch follows the release of the Tech Talent Matrix. Another AI-powered tool from HackerRank, it lets companies assess their tests for developers but does not provide feedback on how to improve a test or how to create assessments for specific job titles and duties.

HackerRank isn’t the only startup interested in using artificial intelligence to evaluate the developers’ performance. Andela, a company that connects top African programmers with fast-growing U.S. startups, told VentureBeat earlier this month that it plans to use $100 million it recently raised to make AI-powered tools to assess candidates and match them with companies.