HireVue Rolls Out CodeVue to Improve Technical Recruiting

For many companies, hiring talented technical people is time-consuming and confusing, and that’s what HireVue wants to fix, said Scot Sessions, HireVue marketing director. The company, which does video and digital interviewing, recently expanded its offerings with the launch of CodeVue.

“We’re pushing the envelope in staying far ahead of what we think recruiters and managers are looking for,” he said.

Companies are stuck doing white board interviews for programming positions, Sessions said, which take a lot of time and energy and make comparisons between candidates difficult. So HireVue started thinking about ways to get through technical applicants in a way that allowed for skill testing and autoscoring.

Searching for a platform like that led HireVue to acquire CodeEval in August 2012, and Sessions said they’ve incorporated CodeEval’s code into HireVue’s digital interview platform with some improvements along the way.

CodeVue lets job candidates take an online test and interview at any time of day. Then the recruiter or hiring manager can look at responses at their own convenience, and can see all of one candidate’s answers or compare candidates on the same questions.

Sessions said CodeVue can digitally test candidates in 13 programming languages and can be adjusted for difficulty level. One of the challenges in the past with digital interviews was the difficulty in knowing whether the candidate was qualified or simply found the right answer online. However, by using HireVue’s existing platform, interviewers can set up code tests to be videotaped or have video questions after the code test in which candidates must explain their response, Sessions said. CodeVue allows for video, multiple choice, essay and coding questions.

Rather than holding 30 white board interviews and only having three people to show for all that time, Sessions said recruiters can quickly screen people and share the top candidates with a hiring manager.

Sessions said CodeVue has garnered “overwhelmingly positive” feedback so far. “The initial reception has been, ‘Wow, I don’t have to sit through a white board interview anymore.’”

The company has plans to use the strengths of CodeVue to set up other automated scoring questions that could evaluate candidates on expertise in things like PowerPoint, Adobe Creative Suite or even the set up of a surgical room.