HackerRank vs. HackerEarth: Choose the best tool to assess your candidate
While HackerRank is the best tool to assess the skills of beginners for programmers in the fintech niche, HackerEarth can help source experienced candidates.
Assessing a candidate's technical skills can be challenging, especially when you have a large pool of candidates. Tools like HackerRank and HackerEarth streamline the process so that only qualified candidates move to subsequent stages.
Between the two, which one should you use? Which tool works best for bulk hiring? How can they help hire experienced candidates?
In this article, we answer all the questions about selecting the right tool for candidate prescreening, its benefits, test proctoring, and our verdict on the best prescreening tool.
Yes, technical recruiters use HackerRank as a pre-assessment tool to filter out qualified candidates immediately. It does the initial screening just to gauge the candidate's technical skills. The hiring team further vets candidates on their skills through onsite tests, pair programming, or take-home projects.
For programmers who use HackerRank to improve their skills, they have a job seeker portal where they can reach companies who have posted their technical openings in HackerRank.
HackerRank is not free to use for recruiters who are looking to use it for pre-screening. It offers a 14-day free trial to help get the hang of the product. HackerRank’s source of revenue is the paid plans that recruiters can subscribe to manage the initial screening process.
For programmers looking to get better at coding, HackerRank is free to use.
Yes, many companies use HackerRank tests to set a minimum bar right at the start of the application to ensure that only qualified candidates proceed to the next stage. It is to avoid situations wherein a candidate with years of experience is unqualified at later stages of the interview where they can’t solve the simplest of problems, wasting the recruiters’ and the candidates’ time. It should ideally be developed by the technical team so that an average developer from the team can solve it in the given timeframe. Additionally, it provides an unbiased screening process, providing equal opportunity to everyone who has applied for the role.
However, experienced candidates have a slightly different opinion on writing HackerRank tests. Experienced programmers solve real-time problems and have lost touch with writing algorithms that fresh graduates are more familiar with.
Real-time programming needs time, research, and much learning that experienced developers are familiar with. They would find it unfair to quantify their capabilities based on simple coding puzzles that may not correctly assess their skills.
HackerRank allows tests proctoring and plagiarism checks to ensure that the candidate is not cheating. For proctoring, HackerRank requests access to your webcam before the test to record your activities and search for malpractices, if any.
In case of plagiarism checks, the submitted answer is checked against the answers submitted by other candidates, the source, changes in the variables, and so on.
HackerRank's paid plan starts at $25, providing only the interview kit and content library. The paid plan starts at $249/month when billed annually for their assessment tests and other features.
Yes. HackerRank integrates with a host of ATS, such as Freshteam, Greenhouse, Lever HR, and iCMS.
Yes, companies use HackerEarth as a prescreening tool while hiring developers. ATS, which integrates with HackerEarth, lets you send the assessment test immediately after the candidate applies for the role.
Like HackerRank, HackerEarth has a developer portal for developers to practice and hone their skills, participate in hackathons, apply for jobs, and so on.
HackerEarth has several anti-cheating mechanisms to help you find sincere, qualified aspirants. Some of them include preventing copying and pasting on the code editor. Additionally, they prevent copying the question and sharing it on the web. The system also compares the code written by two coders to detect plagiarism.
Companies can also allow the webcam to take candidate snapshots to know if additional people were present in the test environment or if the candidate was available throughout the test. In addition, you can enable the full-screen mode and prevent candidates from switching the mode, prevent tab switching, or restrict the IP address to ensure that candidates are taking the test from a single location.
HackerEarth is not free, but it offers a 14-day free trial. Like HackerRank, HackerEarth makes money by offering paid services to companies using HackerEarth for candidate prescreening.
HackerEarth’s developer portal is free to use for developers looking to hone their skills.
Yes. However, similar to HackerRank tests, there’s an ongoing discussion on using HackerEarth tests for experienced developers and if they are the right tools to measure the knowledge they have acquired over the years.
Yes. HackerEarth provides a team plan that starts at $150/year per user to help you train and fill the skills gap for your existing employees.
HackerEarth paid plan starts at $19/month billed annually, wherein you can face code interviews. Their startup plan starts at $119/month, billed annually.
Yes. Just like HackerRank, HackerEarth integrates with Freshteam, Workable, iCMS, and Greenhouse, to name a few.
|
Feature |
HackerRank |
HackerEarth |
|---|---|---|
|
Free Trial |
Yes |
Yes |
|
One time Set up fee |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Support |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Proctored tests |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Employee L&D |
No |
Yes |
|
Integration with ATS |
Yes |
Yes |
Verdict:
Both tools offer a community of developers who are learning and honing their coding skills, making it a great candidate sourcing avenue. Most companies run hackathons on both platforms to find quality candidates.
Would you like to see both in action?
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