You know that continuous assessment practices are important, but you’re not quite sure down which road to take. Where do you start? There are many online tools and platforms touting their amazing features and great usability. The abundance of options can be positively overwhelming. Where do you turn? I’ve put together a list of the best coding assessment tools out there based on my experience as a developer and as a teacher . You will also find a selection of free code assessment online tool at the end .
You came here because you want to learn about coding practice tools. You don’t want to read through dozens of articles before finding the essential information. We will not disappoint you. Here is a collection of tools that can help you improve your programming skills and move the right direction in the field of code assessment.
Coderbyte
Coderbyte, my company, is newer and more modern than other technical assessment platforms that were built for stodgy IT teams at sterile corporations. Your stakeholders will notice that other platforms have outdated and confusing user experiences that haven’t been updated since their last venture capital financing.
Coderbyte offers capabilities designed for today’s modern, diverse, and dynamic technical job-seekers who want to work for forward-thinking employers like you.
Pros
- It’s cost-effective: Coderbyte is also the only platform that offers unlimited admins (recruiters/hiring managers), assessments, and candidates on any subscription plan. The starter plan begins at $99/month and the most expensive plan is just $249/month.
- Coderbyte takes plagiarism very seriously and has the industry’s only code editor with a built-in capability for candidates to search Google. This feature not only gives candidates a wonderful assessment experience, it also enables you to better understand how candidates think and code, and to detect plagiarism more comprehensively than any other platform in the market. Our candidate reports show you when and how frequently candidates leave the tab, how frequently and legitimately candidates use the Google search, and all copying and pasting.
- Coderbyte offers advanced customizability and 1,000+ integrations including Greenhouse, Workable, BreezyHR, Zoho Recruit, Bamboo HR, and Recruitee. Soon, we will also offer integrations with Workday and Taleo.
Cons
- Coderbyte does not currently offer SSO or direct API access (API access is available through Zapier).
Recommended for
- Tech-forward organizations that are interviewing at scale or intermittently, and are comfortable operating a self-service tool.
- Organizations that want to optimize the candidate experience to increase their hiring rates and decrease the number of candidates that drop out of the interview process.
CodeSubmit
Founded: 2019
Free trial: Yes
CodeSubmit is the most flexible and candidate-friendly solution for administering and evaluating coding assignments and technical interviews on the market today. Built to replace later stage in-person interviews like whiteboarding and live-programming, CodeSubmit allows you to identify great candidates using real tasks in the form of a take-home assignment.
Everything about the platform is designed to provide strong signals and insights into your candidate’s real skill set while maintaining the best candidate experience possible.
CodeSubmit is the only platform that allows you to test candidates’ framework knowledge, and the CodeSubmit library currently includes over 50 of the most popular languages, frameworks and technologies used by frontend, backend and mobile teams worldwide.
Who is it for?
- Small businesses and startups who want to consistently attract and hire the best developers while providing an excellent candidate experience.
- Large teams and enterprises who are ready to adopt remote and asynchronous processes in lieu of whiteboarding or live-coding while ensuring that they always identify the best candidates in their talent pool.
Pros
- Lets you create coding assignments specific to each open position. Every assignment contains evaluation criteria related to the work your engineers face in their day-to-day. All assessments are fully customizable to your engineering team’s stack. You can also upload your own coding assignment.
- Supports 50+ languages and frameworks. (This makes CodeSubmit one of the most comprehensive tools.)
- Offers real-time updates as your candidates progress through the CodeSubmit journey. Be on top of your hiring game without leaving your existing tools.
- Helps you effectively detect plagiarism and quickly filter out misuse.
- Focuses on the candidate experience to help you attract the best talent and build your employer brand.
- Flexible monthly and annual pricing for small and large teams alike.
Cons
- CodeSubmit specializes in remote and asynchronous take-home projects to replace in-person technical interviews. While their library does include shorter automated screening tests (CodeSubmit Bytes), it may not be the best tool for high-vollumn early-stage candidate screening.
CodinGame
What’s CodinGame?
CodinGame is a tech-oriented company, and works with talented developers and the organizations looking to hire them.
Over 2 million fans of code from around the world sharpen their coding skills, for free, by playing games and solving puzzles on CodinGame’s developer platform.
Companies looking to hire and retain skilled programmers (Nasdaq, Carrefour, Dassault Systèmes, EA, etc.) turn to CodinGame for Work to uncover hidden gems, streamline their recruitment process, and delight their technical teams.
Everybody wins: developers hone their skills and land their dream jobs, companies expand and strengthen their tech teams. How? Thanks to an innovative sourcing tool, reliable online technical tests and addictive game-based hackathons.
CodinGame Assessment is CodinGame’s online solution to assess candidates’ technical skills.
Known for its ease of use, CodinGame Assessment simplifies skill assessment. In fact, it takes less than 3 minutes to set up a relevant test campaign!
Although CodinGame’s tech recruitment solutions make tech hiring simple, the technology behind their product features is remarkably complex and innovative. In particular, their comparative score system, gamified coding exercises and code playback.
CodinGame’s main advantages
- Real-life, game-based programming problems that provide for great candidate experience
- Reliable comparative scoring to shortlist candidates according to their coding skills
- Advanced code playback technology
- Prebuilt, role-based tests
Who uses CodinGame?
CodinGame is suitable for companies of all sizes, from various industries.
Larger companies with recurring tech recruitment needs tend to go for an unlimited Enterprise plan. A dedicated CodinGame account manager helps them level up their hiring process and get the most out of the platform – according to the companies qualitative and quantitative recruitment goals.
Smaller companies or companies with occasional hiring needs generally choose a flexible monthly subscription.
How much does CodinGame cost?
HackerRank
HackerRank is a leading technical screening platform, backed by leading growth and venture firms. They target the Fortune 2000 with a robust and customizable platform for technical teams to recruit and hire for roles such as data science, DevOps, front-end developers, and more. They offer online coding assessments, real-time code-pair sessions, and take-home projects.
Pros
- Multiple ways to assess a candidate’s skills via take-home projects, online assessments, and code-pair sessions.
- Advanced customization for integrations, branding, security, and all enterprise needs.
- Advanced plagiarism detection, however, many candidates may choose not to take the assessment because of it.
Cons
- Enterprise plan, which allows you to invite multiple admins and more candidates to your assessments per month, requires a large up-front cost of at least $60k/year (although you can often get a discount).
- Many employers exploit the ability to customize their own challenges and have created a negative perception for assessments on HackerRank. Countless developers have noted this (here and here), and it’s common to see a significant drop-off in the number of candidates invited to a HackerRank assessment compared to the number that actually complete the assessment. The good news is that if you have the resources to purchase HackerRank, you can probably also afford to source additional candidates needed to offset the drop-off.
Recommended for
- HackerRank is great for multinational organizations in regulated industries that require and can afford compliance, heavy-duty security, and extensive on-boarding.
Devskiller
Founded: 2013
Free trial: Yes
Devskiller is a tech sourcing, skill mapping, and screening tool based on the company’s RealLifeTesting™ methodology. With the tool, you can both interview and screen candidates. Devskiller makes it easy to customize tasks and you also get access to an API.
Who is it for?
- Companies with technical hiring teams that need to customize features instead of relying on done-for-you tools.
Pros
- A great tool for hands-on recruiters who want to access all the features they need in one tool and want the possibility to custom-build their own features.
Cons
- The tool isn’t ideal for less technical hiring teams or teams that want a solution that is simpler to manage.
- For teams that need less customization, pricing is on the higher end (monthly rates start at $399, billed annually)
Codility
What’s Codility?
Codility is another technical recruitment platform that enables a company to evaluate accurately and efficiently the technical capabilities of applicants.
The platform supports multiple coding languages, varying difficulty levels of real-life work scenarios, and a library of coding tasks.
Codility helps organizations of different sizes to automate and speed up their tech hiring process. The software platform allows organizations to search for candidates, test and score them, and interview qualified candidates online.
Codility is on a mission to help organizations attract, screen, review, and engage talented programmers.
Codility’s main advantages
- Robust testing methodologies
- Detects plagiarism
- Suitable for all technical roles
- Reduces unconscious bias
Who uses Codility?
Codility is designed for organizations seeking highly qualified candidates to fill specific technical roles within their organizations.
How much does Codility cost?
Codility doesn’t communicate their pricing publicly.
Conclusion:
Coding Assessment – you’ve probably heard about it. As a developer, you most likely perform it. However, the practice is not nearly as common as you might think. It was reported that more than 32% of organizations do not assess their employees’ coding skills on a regular basis.
Coding assessment tools can evaluate various factors about programming aptitude. However, it is important to remember that these tools are not perfect. It is important to understand this truth about these assessment tools so that you do not limit yourself by its assessment.