Before you begin

This document is for users with Admin, Interview, or Recruiter permissions who are interested in creating a custom CodeCollab interview experience.

Custom CodeCollab allows team to host organization-specific live coding interviews within Byteboard’s all-in-one hiring platform. Organizations are able to pre-load candidate and interviewer instructions and language specific interview files.

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Prefer a video tutorial? Watch here.

Creating a custom CodeCollab interview, with a question pre-loaded

To create a custom CodeCollab interview log into your account and visit https://client.byteboard.dev/assessments/codecollab.

Select Add Assessment and insert an Assessment Name.

Assessment names are not externalized to candidates. You should select a name that will help to easily identify this assessment to recruiters and interviewers.

Next you will be prompted to add the following information within the Write section: Interviewer Instructions and Candidate Instructions

Interviewer instructions

Interviewer instructions will be visible to interviewers in the Byteboard platform before and during the interview. Within the Write section, please include the following in your Interviewer instructions:

Interview agenda and format

Example interview format

Suggested interview format:

Opening

Introductions: Introduce yourself and explain the purpose of the live coding session.

Interview Layout: Share the timing for each section of the interview

Share Expectations: Set up your candidate for success by clearly stating expectations.

Mention that you’ll observe their thought process, communication, and coding skills.

Ask them to explain their thought process out loud as they analyze the problem and devise a solution.

Coding Session

Present each problem statement clearly and concisely. Provide any necessary context or constraints and ask if the candidate has any questions or needs clarification.

Ask the candidate how they plan to tackle the problem.

Encourage the candidate to discuss edge cases, potential pitfalls, and any assumptions.

Observe their coding style, readability, and problem-solving skills.

Once the solution is complete (or time is up), discuss the overall approach, design decisions, and tradeoffs.

Closing

Ask the candidate if they have any questions.

Thank them for their time and participation.

Questions interviewers should ask candidates during the interview

Suggested followup questions and prompts

Criteria and a rubric for evaluation candidate performance

Candidate instructions

Candidate instructions will only be visible to the candidate after the interview has started. Within the Write section, please include a detailed description of the interview questions you’d like the candidate to work through during the live interview and leave out language-specific instructions or information.

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Tip: The Byteboard assessment editor interface allows you to easily preview the Markdown instructions as you add them by switching to the Preview tab.

Once the Interviewer Instructions and Candidate Instructions are uploaded select CREATE ASSESSMENT.

Language configuration

Once the assessment has been created, select the CONIFIGURE LANGUAGES button to configure languages in which the custom interview will be available and any relevant code files

Custom interviews can be configured in any of the languages CodeCollab supports (see more at Languages and frameworks). To enable an assessment in a given language:

Click the Configure Languages button

Add a check box to the left of each language in which the custom CodeCollab interview will be available to activate

(Optional) If you’d like to provide custom starter code for a language, select the upload button and select a zip file with the code you’d like to be pre-loaded in the CodeCollab live coding environment when the interview starts.

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If you’re providing custom starter code, please upload a separate zip file for each language. Any language-specific interview instructions should be in a README file in the zip file alongside the code files. If no files are uploaded for a language, the assessment will automatically be configured with all the base files necessary to run code.

Interview setup

To set up a CodeCollab interview using a custom assessment, first navigate to the CodeCollab tab of the Candidate page. Under Interview Type you will see a Custom section where all of your active custom interviews will appear.

After you’ve selected the custom interview you’d like to use for the interview, the Language dropdown will populate with the languages for which that custom assessment is enabled.

You are now ready to start the interview! The interviewers will see the interviewer instructions on the candidate’s CodeCollab page and the candidate will see the candidate-facing interview instructions in their interview hub. If you uploaded custom files all CodeCollab session participants will have access to them in the shared editor after the interview has started.