If you took part in an interview panel around this time in 2019, the set up might have looked a bit different.
If the interview took place at the office, the first interviewer probably met the candidate in your corporate lobby. Once that interview was done, the interviewer might’ve either provided a signal or left to notify the next interviewer while the candidate waited in the room.
Today, interview “lobbies” take a different form. In many cases, the corporate lobby, interview conference room, and smooth transitions during the interview have been replaced by web conferencing purgatory, multiple interview links, and unnecessary interruptions.
These elements dramatically affect the interview experience for all participants.
In an effort to make the interview process as seamless as possible for both sides, we recently introduced a series of new features that address these challenges.
Avoid confusion with a single interview link
First and foremost, the candidate and interviewer use the same link to access the interview. Interviewers and candidates no longer have to deal with the confusion and frustration of managing multiple independent interview sessions.
Start your interviews on the right foot with the Candidate Lobby
Instead of staring at a spinning wheel within their web conferencing application, HackerRank candidates first enter a virtual waiting room before entering the interview.
The Candidate Lobby indicates the status of all participants invited to the interview and provides the candidate an opportunity to branch out into a practice session.
Interviewers are automatically notified when candidates enter the lobby and candidates enter the interview once the interviewer permits them. In addition, candidates are automatically moved back to the lobby when all the interviewers leave the interview.
This not only creates a better experience for the candidate but enables the interviewer to apply any last-minute adjustments in private before initiating the interview.
Create seamless transitions with the Interviewer Lobby
A similar lobby is available for members of the interview panel. This feature eliminates the disruption and potential bias introduced when one interviewer prematurely joins a prior interview session. It enables interviewers to evaluate the status of the interview without disrupting it and join when ready.
Leave Interview
With HackerRank, each interviewer in a panel now has the opportunity to simply leave or to end the interview entirely just as they would in an onsite experience.
This further facilitates a clean handoff from one interviewer to the next and lowers the possibility of an interviewer accidentally concludes the entire interview before the next interview session.
Elevate your interview experience today
Every HackerRank customer can take advantage of these new features simply by checking ‘Enable Virtual Lobby’ in the Interview settings page. Once enabled, the Virtual Lobby features will apply to all subsequent interviews scheduled within HackerRank.
The combination of these features will transform a disorganized set of individual interview sessions into a single, contiguous interview experience that your candidates will love.
Not a HackerRank customer? No problem. Click the banner below to start interviewing with HackerRank's Virtual Lobby.
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As a product manager at HackerRank, Raghav Gopalakrishnan is committed to creating great interview experiences for candidates and interviewers alike. Overseeing both CodePair* and developer experience, Raghav leverages his background in engineering to empower customers to create more effective, candidate-friendly technical interviews. He’s passionate about building intuitive and impactful products.