TECHNICAL INTERVIEWING
Predictive and consistent live technical interviews
Karat’s global community of Interview Engineers conduct technical interviews, using consistent questions that drive recommendations you can trust.
Live technical interviews
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.
“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
Interview Engineers: Experts in technical interviewing
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.
Interview Engineer onboarding program
Interview Engineers are part of a select group that has a minimum of three years developer experience and have completed our formal onboarding program.
New Interview Engineers are supported by a mentor. They learn the Karat code of conduct, interview delivery guidelines, and their first interview question.
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 Interview Engineers will conduct interviews with early career candidates. Mentors continue to provide feedback, soft skills are refined, and new questions are mastered.
Interview Engineers master a large library of questions and conduct more advanced interviews including project discussions.
Technical interviews, engineered for success
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.
Technical interview formats for all experience levels
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.
Interview formats
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
Communication and soft skills
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.
Communication and soft skills
Basic or advanced
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.
Communication and soft skills
Aligned to the role during job analysis.
Relevant to use case and industry. E.g. Finance, healthcare, cybersecurity.
Aligned to the role during job analysis.
Interview and hire engineers for any role
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.