Published Apps

Android Certification

• Associate Android Developer (Google)

• Android Certified Application Developer (Android ATC)

Assess Android Developer

HackerEarth’s talent assessment platform allows companies to use online coding tests to automate their tech screening process.

With a library of more than 20,000 questions, technical leads, and even non-tech recruiters can conduct tests on a large scale to grade developers for virtually any technical role.

With 32+ languages supported, Recruit auto-assesses the submissions of each developer instantly, based on defined parameters like logical correctness, time-efficiency, memory-efficiency and code quality.

Recruiters can then analyze each applicant’s performance with the detailed reporting and analytics features within Recruit.

With our proctoring measures and plagiarism detection techniques, you can be sure about the originality of each submission.

Amazon, Walmart Labs, Apple, General Electric, and Intuit are some of the companies that use Recruit. Recruit’s applications range from assessment for highly specific Lateral Hiring to mass assessment during Campus Hiring.

Recruit is also used by companies for internal assessment of the technical team ensuring that employees constantly sharpen their skills to take on any new challenges.

Hackerearth is one of the few platforms that can assess an Android developer’s skills. It has a huge database of Android questions spanning various difficulty levels.

It is also possible to create a database of your own questions. Hackerearth Recruit has an inbuilt Android emulator which can be run on any recent web browser.

This can be used to simulate and assess an application code directly from the browser.

How HackerEarth can be used to evaluate an Android Developer:

Evaluating Android questions

You can evaluate Android problems in the following ways:

• Using Recruit’s built-in Android emulator
• By downloading the APK file and using the application on your Android mobile

Evaluation of Android questions

• A candidate takes approximately 3 hours to build an application, i.e., solve an Android question.
• In Recruit, the deliverables that you receive from candidates who attempt Android questions are evaluated manually and not automatically.

Why manual evaluation?

The deliverable of an Android problem is an APK file. Candidates are given a problem statement using which they must design and implement an application.

Since the approach used by candidates to build an application may vary, a single auto-evaluation system cannot be created.

Evaluation Summary

Post-assessment, HackerEarth Recruit publishes a detailed report.

The candidate’s information, performance evaluation with a number of questions attempted, the time is taken, and the total score achieved for a set of problems are shared.

Based on the report, the best candidate can be invited for further rounds.

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“More than 36% of university graduates and 68% of lateral hires do not join a company even after getting an appointment letter.”

With the economy growing appreciably and over 2 million job positions opening up every year, sometimes an employer forgets that candidates, especially great ones, have more than one exciting offer up their sleeve.Sometimes when a candidate has done well in all rounds of interviews, seems to be “exactly right” for the position and is a good cultural fit, hiring him or her is a no-brainer.

Then, the candidate turns down your offer. So, why do candidates turn down job offers? How can the offer to joining ratio be improved?

Here is what Promedica’s James Saelzer comments in response to an article on LinkedIn:

Two experiences stand out to me as reasons why I left a company’s application site without completing an application. One was asking for more information than I was prepared to provide with an initial contact. In short, I do NOT want to leave my social security number on their server until we’re better acquainted.

The other reason is the inability to save my application to pick up later on, especially when the application asks for obscure information that is not immediately available. If at that point I cannot save the application, allow me to get the requested information, and resume at that point my opinion of the employer is seriously impaired. This is a place that apparently cannot or will not think through the processes they employ before putting them into practice.

Let’s look at a few possible reasons why candidates backtrack after accepting an offer.

7 ways recruiters can increase the offer to joining ratio

1. Candidate compensation and benefits

Often when a candidate says “I have a better offer,” it usually refers to a better salary being offered by another company. Compensation-benefits issue is considered one of the most common reasons for not honoring their acceptance of an offer. The reasons can vary from better offers to poor negotiation tactics. With great talent comes a great paycheque (although not necessarily). But that doesn’t mean you need to go after every candidate with an unheard-of salary.

Ensure that the candidate has been offered compensation commensurate with his experience and profile. Avoid useless or disrespectful negotiations, starting low or increasing it by a paltry sum of 5 or 10k.Skimping pennies is also not advisable. Negotiating to the last cent is a bad idea because it reflects poorly on the company.Judge candidates appropriately before you make an offer and then offer an increment if they are unhappy with the initial number, based on their replies.

2. Clear job description

One of the biggest reasons people turn down an offer is because they don’t have clarity about their KRAs and the company culture.From the outset, ensure communication is really clear; whether it’s the salary or the JD, do not exaggerate or sketch a murky picture.

Companies with great onboarding programs often let candidates get in touch with their reporting managers, or assign them, buddies.Such steps ensure that candidates have access to the people they would be working with. This eventually helps them get a better idea about the culture and what their job really entails.

3. Right timing

The more I read, the more I realize that rolling out a job offer is more about doing it at the right time than about the compensation, especially for candidates who have been headhunted.Offering a position too quickly and being pushy can put off a candidate. Similarly, delaying an offer too much can often mislead the candidate, letting them believe that the employer is no longer interested.

A better solution can be this: Ask the candidates how much time they would need to mull over the offer. Ask them what they think about the nitty gritty of the offer and if they believe they’d be a good fit in the company. If they take too long, send them an email; ask candidates if everything’s fine and connect them with someone from the teams they’ve been hired for.

4. Streamline your screening

Assessing and skills testing typically take more than 8 days in most companies. This is tiresomely long when the recruitment team is trying to reduce drop-offs. Using appropriate recruitment tools such as (HackerEarth Assessments) can help assess candidates in an unbiased, quick, and accurate manner.

Also, when using online interviews, pre-interview skill tests, and tailored assessment approaches, there is a lot of saving in terms of effort, cost, and time while sending the right message across. The right recruitment tools indicate a progressive hiring policy, valuing candidates based on skill alone.

Conduct accurate coding assessments with HackerEarth and reduce your time to hire. Find out more.

5. Regular update to candidates

Regular updates help candidates in the pipeline remain interested in the company. Acknowledging emails and sharing updates tell potential hires that the company cares. Even drop-offs are unlikely to leave with a less-than-rosy view, entertaining the possibility of considering another offer in the future.

Remember that unexpected delays reflect badly on company culture. Use pre-boarding software to schedule automated and personalized updates for every potential hire.

6. Communication

Currently, poor communication is the biggest pain point according to most applicants. With most of the hiring activities now being done online, the personal touch has been lost. Every update must be communicated to the candidate. Pre-boarding software similar to shared above helps recruiters share accurate results with a candidate, giving them clarity about what’s going on.

Ask for feedback post-interview, listen to candidates’ experiences, and try to improve on what was labeled unsatisfactory. Ensure that questions like “Is there any possible reason you might decline the offer?” or “Are you fine with relocation?” are asked at the right time.

7. Candidate engagement

Keeping selected candidates engaged is crucial to avoid applicant drop-offs. Most candidates could be serving their notice period. Inviting them to meet the team could help them understand the company culture better. Here are some brilliant ideas on to-dos before an employee’s first day at work.

Companies can invite applicants to participate in tech activities like hackathons and events over the weekend, where interesting problems are shared among peers and applicants to develop something new and innovative.Such activities not only bridge the gap between candidates and their peers but also help companies come up with new solutions to existing problems.

Typically, these are internal employee engagement initiatives; but you can make up new ways of leveraging the events. Drop-offs have been a serious issue for HR in the past few decades. With more and more options available, applicants seem to be less committed and loyal than their more experienced peers.

(Read – 3 ways to respond to professional ghosting)

Deliver a delightful candidate experience during screening candidates. Find out more.

Need help? Let our team know

HackerEarth has helped over 4000 companies, including several Fortune 500 companies, assess and retain excellent tech talent. Get in touch with us to learn more.

What is campus recruitment?

Key features of a good campus recruitment strategy

• On-site visits and presentations: Companies often visit educational campuses to conduct informational sessions, workshops, and presentations. These events are designed to introduce the company to the student body, showcasing their culture, values, and the opportunities available.
• Recruitment drives: These are the core of campus recruitment, where companies conduct tests, interviews, and group discussions to evaluate candidates' abilities and fit for various roles.
• Internship offers: Many organizations use campus recruitment to offer internships to students. These internships can sometimes lead to full-time job offers upon graduation, depending on the student's performance and the company's hiring needs.
• Diversity in hiring: Campus recruitment allows companies to enhance diversity in their workforce. Students from different academic backgrounds, cultures, and regions bring a variety of perspectives and ideas to the company.
• Early identification of talent: By engaging with students before they graduate, companies can identify and secure talented individuals early in their career search, often leading to long-term employment and loyalty.

Why campus hiring in India is a great bet

Benefits of campus hiring strategy?

• Connecting early with aspiring young minds
• Building an online personality that can’t be faulted
• Re-designing time-worn pre-placement presentations
• Infusing creativity into existing hiring practices and performance-based exercises
• Using a smart sourcing/screening/interviewing approach through online tools*

Hire for the long term

This article has been updated on March 7th, 2023.

Anonymity might be the only way to guarantee a truly diverse workforce that organizations are striving to attract. A diverse labor force—diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, thinking style, and disability—means more creativity and innovation, a broad spectrum of perspectives on problem-solving, positive performance, lesser attrition, greater market share, and higher revenues.

In 2023, you can no longer put diversifying your workforce on the back burner; it has become a priority for employers if they want to attract and retain top-tier talent.

The new generations of potential candidates highly value workplace diversity. 40% of tech employers surveyed in Lever’s DEI Report say candidates are looking for more inclusive, diverse work cultures.

Recruiters seeking to level the playing field and prevent discrimination of all kinds need to step up their hiring game. Consequently, they are increasingly shifting to the “blind hiring” approach.

Read on to find out all about blind hiring, why it’s an effective way to cut down on hiring biases, and how technology can help you carry out blind hiring effectively.

What is blind hiring?

Hiding all personal information of a candidate including names, photos, addresses, education, hobbies, etc from the hiring manager is called blind hiring. This is done to ensure that a candidate is assessed and selected on ability and skills alone. Instead of being unconsciously biased by where they came from, their gender, or their pedigree.

For instance, let’s look at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s blind audition process in the 1950s. Claire Cain Miller’s article in the New York Times Magazine explores this idea in depth. Long story short, in the 1970s, the Boston Symphony Orchestra decided to test the results of blind auditions.

Back then, white men dominated orchestras. The judges had no idea who was auditioning as both male and female musicians, were asked to audition behind screens.

Once anonymity was embraced, the results were a lot fairer than before. Women musicians became more likely hires than men (between 25-46%). Now that’s a much more level playing field than before!

In the same vein, organizations have taken a leaf out of the Boston Symphony concept. They have integrated “blind elements” in various stages of their hiring process. Blind hiring techniques include blind resume screening, blind pre-employment testing, and blind interviewing.

If done correctly, this method can greatly reduce the effect of cognitive biases on hiring decisions.

How do tech recruiting tools help you make fairer hiring decisions

Recruiting software platforms like Blendoor and HackerEarth help you implement blind recruiting accurately. There are three options to help improve workforce diversity through this recruiting technique:

Blind screening

To minimize discriminatory recruiting barriers, remove information that reveals the candidate’s race, gender, age, names of schools, links to social media, hobbies, etc. This technique helps mitigate unconscious bias and “first impressions” that creep into hiring decisions.

Tools like Blendoor exclude revealing data from resumes and CVs like:

• Candidate’s name
• Candidate’s headshot
• Candidate’s education
• Candidate’s zip code/address
• Candidate’s hobbies or personal interests
• Candidate’s age and other biographical info

Blind pre-employment testing

Recruiters use pre-hiring screens such as cognitive aptitude tests, coding assessments, personality assessments, sample job tasks, or language proficiency tests to evaluate applicants depending on the job role.

Pre-employment testing is fair, saves you time and money, and gives you data that ensures you have made legally defensible hiring decisions. It allows candidates to showcase their talent in a controlled environment.

Say, you want to hire a Java developer. You have tons of resumes where one candidate looks as “attractive” as the next in terms of qualifications. You can easily conduct an automated coding challenge for programmers.

For example, a platform such as HackerEarth Assessments offers the option to mask the personally identifiable information (PII) of candidates to anonymize screening. Companies can create highly accurate coding assessments with minimal technical know-how by choosing from a rich library of 17,000+ questions across 900+ skills.

Also read: Tips to Identify and Remove Unintended Bias In the Assessment Process

Blind video interviewing

This is perhaps the most difficult to achieve in terms of anonymizing a candidate, recruiters use chats or written Q&A tests to hire. Additionally, there are tools that allow for blind interviews by obscuring the candidate’s identity and/or using voice masking technology.

Our intelligent coding interview platform, FaceCode supports your pursuit of truly unbiased tech recruitment. FaceCode allows you to mask any and all candidate PII at the flick of the switch, before or during a live coding interview as seen above.

How effective is blind hiring?

As the numbers show, hiding personal candidate information does have a positive impact on resume screening. The Boston Symphony experiment opened up more doors than before for women musicians and reduced gender bias.

Another study shows that candidates who change their first names to make it sound more “white” have a higher chance of being shortlisted for the next round than those who don’t.

So yes, blind hiring is effective—to an extent. It maximizes chances for a more diverse candidate pool to get through the initial screening process. But experts are divided on the efficacy of blind hiring to reduce the overall bias and promote objective evaluation of skills.

Most employers worldwide are focusing on bettering the diversity ratio at their workplaces. And blind hiring is one of the various strategies they are relying on to address issues such as discrimination, a homogenous workforce, and attrition.

Still, putting all your eggs in one basket and expecting it to solve your diversity hiring problems is simply not enough. You have to do so much more for moving the needle on your diversity initiatives.

Some additional ways for your organization to reduce recruiters’ bias include:

• Write gender-fluid tech job descriptions so that they attract candidates from minorities and underrepresented groups in tech
• Use blind hiring tools to hide personally identifiable information (PII) of candidates on job applications and résumés.
• Consider using blind recruiting software like HackerEarth that allows you to objectively assess developers with ease, solely based on their skills
• Evaluate candidates based on pre-defined scoring parameters and standard interview questions
• Ensure in having an interview panel that is diverse and brings multiple perspectives to the table
• Focus on building a company culture where inclusion is at the heart of everything you do
• Train employees/managers about the common hiring biases and how to lead inclusively

Take the first step to increasing diversity with blind hiring

Blind hiring may not be the “end all be all” for reducing discrimination in tech. But it is a great starting point for building a more inclusive workforce.

At least as a “first cut”, anonymous recruitment methods can positively impact hiring. They enable you to objectively screen and push the right applicants through the door. Blind recruiting can prevent you from missing out on qualified candidates.

Bias can occur at any and every stage of the recruiting cycle be it at the interview stage or the final decision-making stage. Then, companies can go about fixing errors due to flawed human judgment. Arrange DEI training sessions, create a diverse interview panel, and conduct workshops on unconscious bias.

Here are a few resources to help you meaningfully diversify your workforce and recruit unbiased –

1. For those looking to build a diverse engineering team – we have a free template for you to pick and choose from this list of diversity-focused interview questions so you can conduct the best interviews and make objective hiring choices
2. For those looking to bake blind pre-employment testing into their hiring – we performed an exercise to determine if there was any bias in HackerEarth Assessments against people from different ethnicities, races, and genders and if there was a disparate impact

How important is it to keep your employees engaged?

• A Glint study revealed that the regrettable attrition rate of disengaged employees is 12 times higher than highly engaged employees over the period of a year.
• According to Gallup, engaged employees outperform disengaged employees by 21 percent.
• A Hay Group study showed that highly engaged employees are 87 percent less likely to leave your company than disengaged employees.
• According to a Temkin Group study, 63% of highly engaged employees always try their hardest at work, compared with 42% of disengaged employees, resulting in better productivity.
• A Shandwick study reports that 33% of engaged employees share positive sentiments or comments about their employers without any encouragement.

How can you improve employee engagement?

• Run internal contests to boost employee engagement. Intranet skill-based contests motivate employees to up their performance. Friendly competition, teamwork, and a promise of prizes can be a great draw. Asking for suggestions and acknowledging them to foster an innovative internal culture.

• Internal hackathons and gamified assessments can be the core of your employee engagement plan and can be tracked using employee engagement software. These create a buzz and spark interest.

• Identify talent within the organization using assessment tools and techniques while keeping employees engaged.

• For example, Recruit is a tool used by companies world over, such as Adobe and Wipro, to create internal programming challenges. It helps spot exceptional employees in and find solutions from the current workforce. Also, these coding competitions can build a talent pipeline for the future. Recruit comes with an exhaustive question library with over 18,000 questions in 32 programming languages across 51 major domains and inbuilt plagiarism checker. Any number of employees can take the test simultaneously. Submissions are checked for logical correctness, time efficiency, memory efficiency, and code-size limit; they are auto-evaluated instantaneously. Comprehensive test reports give you a complete picture.

• Tailor training programs for better business outcomes; do a skill gap analysis before you design your L&D agenda.

• Here’s a good read from McKinsey, and then another.

Java has continued to be a major force in enabling these technologies within these enterprises.

The problem arises when you want to hire a candidate who has proven Java developer skills.

How do you assess Java developer skills with accuracy when you have no clue how Java works or have never worked init?

If you want to hire a developer who knows Java but doesn’t know how to develop good quality code in a reasonable amount of time, then proceed with the Java APIs and programming tests.

If you want a decent developer, then forget about a paper-pen programming assessment and just talk to them about how they would go about building solutions and the tools they would use, and you’d better use an online assessment.

Ask them about frameworks they know of and what their strengths and weaknesses are as developers. (Read:How to hire a technical source)

Awareness of different IDEs, build tools, test tools, and documentation skills would also be worth querying. If you want quality software, it’s important that they know the “why” and the “how.”

Does a resume by itself represent the actual skills of a candidate? If not, then how can you screen the candidate?

I’ve seen people without degrees who could write incredible algorithms and could quote Knuth by heart.

How can you find the right Java developer skills for your organization?

In this post, I will discuss the best practices we follow while hiring and screening Java developersat HackerEarth.

But before I begin, here’s a little primer.

Why Java?

Java is the closest thing to a Lingua Franca (idiom meaning “Common Language”) in the IT industry. Everyone who has used it once is likely to stick with it.

Java is a computing platform used for portable codes for desktop and server environments. In simple terms, it helps develop an application and share it cross-platform.

It’s an object-oriented programming language which comes with the niche facility of a just-in-time compiler.

What do you need to know before you hire a Java Developer?

Since Java is so often used in every possible application in IT, it is essential to understand that learning it in college or getting basic certifications are hardly useful unless the recruitment is for a beginner’srole.

Java is changing almost every year and with new build and framework releases, hands-on experience in the latest or required libraries and framework should be the priority.

These libraries contain pre-written essential required functions; you can save time by not having to rewrite anything.

A candidate working on J2SE 5.0 released in 2004 may not be knowledgeableenoughto work in Java 8 released in 2014.

Before we begin discussing the Java developer online hiring process, it is essential to understand common terms used in Java hiring. Many of these terms are often used interchangeably, and I will be sharing only the important ones.

Check out this amazing glossary of all the Java terms here .

What is Java SE and Java EE?

It refers to Java Standard Edition used for development and deployment of codes for the desktop environment.

Java Enterprise Edition is built on top of Java SE. Java EE provides an API and runtime environment for developing and running a large-scale application.

What certification can you expect?

Most candidates today, who see themselves as skilled developers, are certified in Java. But what are the various Java certifications and what do they mean?

Oracle has 4 levels of Java certification that certify you in different levels of expertise.

The table below represents the four levels and the certification and associated skills.

* Only Oracle certified candidates are considered to be Java certified.

List of common skills on which candidates are evaluated in a Java Developer hiring process

• OOP Concepts
  • Abstraction (Interface, Abstract Class, implements)
  • Encapsulation (access modifiers – public, private, protected, default)
  • Inheritance (extends, super)
  • Polymorphism (overloading, overriding)
• Core Java Concepts
  • Variables, Scope of Variables, Autoboxing/Unboxing, Constructors, Operators, Input, Output, Conditions, Loops, Methods, Arrays, Objects, String APIs)
• Advanced Concepts
  • Packages, Interfaces, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Exceptions
• Java Generics
• Collections/Data Structures
  • Lists, Maps, Arrays Lists, Sets
• Inner Classes
• Static – Keywords
• File Handling APIs
• Network APIs
• Garbage Collection
• Serialization
• JVM Architecture
• Frameworks
  • Spring, Hibernate
• Multi-Threading
  • (Synchronization, Thread, Runnable)
• Experience in web services (REST and/or SOAP)
• Build tools – e.g. Ant, Maven
• Lambda Expressions
• Streams
• J2EE, EJB, JSF

Irrespective of this detailed list, there is no definite fail-safe way or approach to judging a candidate on these parameters.

Assessing a Java developer skills

Screening is often considered tedious, time-consuming, and still frequently inefficient when you are trying to find the right candidate. You may source 500 or 1000 resumes for a job, but what is important is getting the most suitable candidate for the job.

Over a period, I’ve realized that any Java developer candidate can be screened based on the following two challenges:

• Simple algorithmic challenge
• Application development

Simple Algorithmic Challenge

Despite some really amazing sources available for more detailed testing, many firms still prefer using simple algorithmic challenges in assessing the job aspirants. (Read – How to remotely assess tech talent?)

Thecandidate is provided with one or many programming problems which have to be completed within the stipulated time. The solutions are usually judged based on test cases, time, and memory efficiency.

Each programming challenge taken by candidates is evaluated for its accurateness, time, and space complexity by the technical team.

Unlike automated scoring, human raters could bias test results in different ways.

Tools like HackerEarth – Recruit help you test candidates with minimumhuman intervention. (5 reasons you should use a talent assessment tool)

Recruit challenges candidates using questions from its extensive library while also providing flexibility to enter questions of the recruiter’s choice.

A candidate can be tested on various programming skills through multiple-choice questions, subjective questions, programming questions, golf questions (Problems which are solved in the least number of steps), and approximation questions.

The solution to these questions is automatically evaluated based on defined criteria.

A sample Golf problemstatement for assessment:

Application Development – Java Multiple File Project Challenges

Real-life problems do not come with a problem statement. Developers usually deal with problems of finding the right framework or editing a broken patch in a program while coding.

When it comes to hiring senior-level or experienced Java developers, it becomes verydifficult for recruiters, as well as candidates, to demonstrate their knowledge and skill througha simple programming challenge.

A full-fledged application challenge is used to test a candidate’s capability of developing a complete Java application. He or she has to apply theoretical knowledge and practical skills to get a complete application running.

The candidate must know enough about the framework and libraries to survive the screen test. The solution is then assessed manually using JUnit and by creating custom test cases.

HackerEarth Java Multi File Application helps you assess candidates on application-building skills. Similar to Algorithmic challenges, you can test candidates by using questions from the Recruit library or via a custom library.

The application feature helps a recruiter to check candidates’ know-how by requesting them to develop an application from scratch.

Or the recruiter can choose to partially share an application feature and ask them to complete the rest as part of the assessment.

Benefits of using a Java Multifile Project are the following:

• It can be used to test hands-on programming skills rather than just algorithmic coding knowledge.
• Candidates can actually relate the problems to real-life scenarios, which makes problem-solving interesting.
• JUnits help in testing the entire code flow and not just I/O. Output matching is flawed and can even be achieved through brute force. JUnits on the other hand, if written properly, can test the entire code flow of the candidate.

You may have realized while reading this lengthy article that the best approach to assess a Java developer is not via conventional approaches but vianew technologies foreffective assessment.

1. How to hire a data scientist
2. 5 must-have proctoring tips for a developer assessment platform
3. How to ensure your tech talent pool is poaching proof