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Our mission is to make interviews fair, predictive, and enjoyable.
What developer candidates need to know about the Karat interview.
Technical Interviewing
Karat’s global community of Interview Engineers conduct technical interviews, using consistent questions that drive recommendations you can trust.
Hiring the right technical talent starts with a live technical interview. Karat fits at the top of the hiring funnel and helps companies meet hiring goals even in the most competitive markets. Unlike a code test, Karat technical interviews are conducted as a 60-minute technical assessment with an Interview Engineer.
Before interviews begin, Karat works with your engineering team to select the right questions and interview formats for the role. They also work together to identify your company’s hiring bar and the key competencies for success on the job.
Why do live interviews increase hiring yield?
“Karat has allowed us to free up thousands of hours in engineering time that was used in technical phone screens while still matching our hiring bar.” John Egan Head of Growth Engineering, Pinterest
“Karat has allowed us to free up thousands of hours in engineering time that was used in technical phone screens while still matching our hiring bar.”
Interview Engineers are experienced developers who have made interviewing their job. They are equipped with interview questions, interviewing best practices, IDE, and scoring rubrics specific for each role and its seniority.
Interview Engineers must complete and pass a structured onboarding program to begin interviewing. They receive ongoing mentorship to qualify to conduct interviews with new questions and to keep their soft skills sharp.
Meet Karat Interview Engineer Helin Shiah
Interview Engineers are part of a select group that has a minimum of three years developer experience and have completed our formal onboarding program.
Launch
New Interview Engineers are supported by a mentor. They learn the Karat code of conduct, interview delivery guidelines, and their first interview question.
Preparation
Interview Engineers continue to work with a mentor as they practice delivering their first interview question, receive performance feedback, and learn how to improve their interviewing skills.
Apprentice
Apprentice Interview Engineers will conduct interviews with early career candidates. Mentors continue to provide feedback, soft skills are refined, and new questions are mastered.
Interviewing
Interview Engineers master a large library of questions and conduct more advanced interviews including project discussions.
Questions are developed using a thorough research and development process, informed by experts in their fields and tested for reliable outcomes with real developers. Each technical interview includes three problem-solving questions that include knowledge questions, tailored to each company’s hiring bar, seniority, and role.
Junior and mid-career candidates being assessed with coding exercises can code in 26 different languages.
Interview formats are designed to assess specific technical competencies for candidates at all levels of seniority. To do this, each interview is segmented into questions that allow the candidate to demonstrate a specific approach. Karat crafts questions, formats, and scoring rubrics based upon the role and hiring bar.
What do Karat technical interviews measure?
Questions selected, formats used, and scoring rubrics are tested by Karat and selected based upon the role and hiring bar.
Within a 60-minute interview
Start
End
Project discussion (10-min.) Communication and soft skills
Coding exercise (45-min.) Aligned to the role during job analysis. Two to three questions of escalating difficulty, measuring fundamental coding skills and specializations. E.g. algorithms, data structure choice, or complex business logic.
Coding exercise (30-min.) Basic or advanced
Knowledge (20-min.) Aligned to the role during job analysis. May include Back-end systems, systems design, testing, algorithms and time complexity, ML survey knowledge, math and statistics.
Advanced knowledge (30-min.) Aligned to the role during job analysis.
Business logic complexity (30-min.) Relevant to use case and industry. E.g. Finance, healthcare, cybersecurity.
Or code and architecture review (30-min.) Aligned to the role during job analysis.
Interview formats and questions are designed to reduce false positives and false negatives, improving hiring outcomes for each role. Karat’s research and development team regularly adds to our library of questions, allowing us to support technical interviewing for common roles and those that are highly specialized, like Machine Learning Engineers and Data Scientists.