Back to you, and the job you applied for in Market Segment 12.4, Applicant tracking systems (ATS) and recruitment marketing. A week later, an email arrives with a link to a 90-minute coding test. You solve two problems in your browser, against a timer, while your camera watches. If you pass, an engineer interviews you over video, in a shared code editor. You have probably met several of the products in this Market Segment already, from the candidate's side of the screen.
Somewhere between the application and the offer, every candidate is tested. This Market Segment is about the software of the test:
A software engineer takes a timed coding test and then an interview in a shared code editor, while everyone else takes a psychometric test and records video answers.
For a software engineera coding problem solved in a browser, then an interview in a shared code editor.
For everyone elsea personality and ability questionnaire, called a psychometric test, and a recorded video answer. Large employers use these to sort thousands of applicants before any person looks at them.
The buyers are employers' recruiting teams. Most of the companies here are in Bengaluru, and they serve technical hiring around the world. That is because Indian engineers largely invented the coding test, for a market that needed it first: hiring engineers in India at huge scale. The largest company here, HackerRank, was founded in Bengaluru. So were HackerEarth, Intervue, Talview and most of the rest.
The courses that prepare candidates for these tests are covered in Market Segment 42.5, Upskilling platforms and coding bootcamps (in Industry Vertical 42, Edtech).
Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.
This Market Segment runs in the order a candidate meets the tests, in three sub-segments:
The coding test: the timed coding problem, graded automatically.
The interview: the technical interview, moved online, and more and more often done by someone other than the employer.
The test of the person: psychometric tests and video interviews for everyone who is not an engineer.
The coding test
Coding assessments, proctoring, developer screening platforms
Back to your 90-minute coding test from the start of this Market Segment. The platform sets the problems, grades your code automatically, and watches for cheating. Watching a candidate during a test, through the camera and the screen, is called proctoring.
HackerRankfounded in Bengaluru in 2012, with engineers there, has the most job postings in this Market Segment. Most of the world's technical hiring now begins on its platform: the timed coding problem, the automatic grading, and the proctoring that watches for cheating. Since AI models arrived, it also detects answers that an AI model wrote.
HackerEarthalso founded in Bengaluru, sells the same kind of test. It also runs the hackathons and coding challenges that companies use to find engineers.
Coffeee.iowith engineers in Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai, sells a technical-recruitment platform with automated developer tests, for Indian companies.
Glider AIin Bengaluru, adds screening by conversation and an AI interviewer for the first round to its skill tests.
Xponentium Indiaa small Bengaluru company, sells proctoring and skill-test tools.
Geektrustwith engineers in Bengaluru, presents itself as a developer-hiring platform built around coding challenges.
The test the model can pass.
The coding test assumed that solving the problem proves the skill. That broke the day an AI model could solve the problem. Every company in this sub-segment is rebuilding around it, in one of three ways. Some detect the answers a model wrote. Some allow the model, and test what the candidate does with it. And some move the test into a live conversation that a model cannot rehearse. (More on AI that writes code in Market Segment 6.4, AI coding tools, in Industry Vertical 6, Devtools companies.)
Since an AI model can solve the coding problem, the companies here detect the answers a model wrote, allow the model and test what the candidate does with it, or move the test into a live conversation.
The interview
Technical interview platforms, interview as a service, interview intelligence
Back to you from the start of this Market Segment. You passed the coding test. Your first-round interview is on video, in a shared code editor. The engineer interviewing you may not work for the employer at all. Some companies now hand their first-round technical interviews to an outside company. This is called interview as a service.
Intervue.iofounded in Bengaluru, with engineers there, sells a technical-interview platform: a shared coding space, proctored video and a bank of questions. It also supplies the interviewers. So a company can hand its first-round technical interviews to engineers on Intervue's panel.
Karatwith engineers in Bengaluru, is the American original of that idea. Its network of interview engineers runs first-round interviews for large technology companies, and hands back a structured result.
HireHuncha small Bengaluru company, sells the same interview as a service, together with a skill-test platform.
JobTwinewith engineers in Bengaluru, presents itself as an interview-intelligence platform: software that records and analyses interviews.
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The test of the person
Psychometric assessments, video interviewing, remote proctoring
Now picture a friend of yours, applying to a bank's graduate trainee programme. There is no coding test. Instead, your friend answers a personality and ability questionnaire online, then records video answers to three questions. The companies in this sub-segment test everyone who is not an engineer.
SHLwith engineers in Delhi, is the oldest name in this Market Segment. For half a century, its personality and ability tests have sorted graduate applicants. It now sells them as a talent platform with video interviewing, and has a large delivery centre in Gurugram.
Talviewfounded in Bengaluru, with engineers there, sells the digital and video interview, and the psychometric tests behind it. It also sells remote proctoring, which watches an exam or a test through the candidate's camera. It sells this to employers, and to universities and the bodies that award professional certificates. (More on running universities in Market Segment 42.3, School and university management software, in Industry Vertical 42, Edtech.)
So between your application and your offer, software set your coding test, watched you take it, and ran your first interview. For your friend applying to the bank, software measured personality and recorded video answers instead.