Plagiarism is an important topic for recruiters looking to fill technical roles. When narrowing a large candidate pool, a CodeVue interview can help evaluate how proficient candidates are in writing and editing code. But if candidates are plagiarizing their solutions, either by having someone else take the interview for them or by copying their answers from the internet, recruiters and hiring teams may waste time interviewing unqualified candidates.
Plagiarism in the programming world is not a straightforward topic because it is commonplace for developers to find snippets of code on the web and make modifications to suit the problem they are trying to solve. However a company defines plagiarism, CodeVue provides multiple tools that can help recruiting teams and hiring managers detect it. Identifying cheaters in the screening process ensures that even recruiters who cannot code, can still effectively identify high-quality candidates.
Setting Up the Interview to Deter Plagiarism
HireVue has several tools to help prevent plagiarism. Best practices to consider are:
Question Randomization
In a CodeVue interview there is an option to randomize the challenges shown to each candidate. Recruiters can choose a number of different challenges, and each candidate who takes the interview will be given a random challenge from the predetermined pool. Asking each candidate to solve a different coding challenge decreases the likelihood that a candidate will post their answer on the internet for future candidates to use in solving their own coding challenge.
Custom Challenges
When a custom CodeVue challenge is created, it is specific to an individual organization. This makes it more difficult for candidates to find the exact challenge solution on the internet because it has only been solved by the small number of candidates who are applying to the specific role at the same organization.
Special Instructions
Special instructions can be given to the candidate during their CodeVue interview to help evaluators understand the process used to reach the solution. These instructions can include things like asking the candidate to build the code within the HireVue platform or discouraging copying and pasting. The paste function within the HireVue platform can be disabled during the CodeVue challenge, and the playback tool can be used to see if a candidate deviated from the instructions provided.
Detecting Plagiarism
Despite using CodeVue best practices to set up interviews, plagiarism may still occur. Evaluators can utilize the features in CodeVue to detect it.
Follow-Up Video Questions
When creating a CodeVue interview, it is a best practice to include video questions after candidates have completed the coding challenge. This is a great opportunity to ask the candidate how they arrived at the solution they provided or how they would change it based on scenarios provided in the follow-up question. Recruiters can use these questions to help identify candidates who may have provided a correct response, but don’t understand the coding principles behind the solution.
Code Similarity Score
HireVue provides a Code Similarity score for every CodeVue interview. A candidate’s solution is compared to other candidates’ solutions to the same challenge in the same language, across HireVue’s database of all submitted solutions.
Candidate solutions are given one of three scores. A Code Similarity score of Extremely Similar means the candidate’s code closely resembles other solutions. A score of Extremely Unique means the candidate’s code doesn’t resemble other solutions submitted, and a Code Similarity score of Expected Range means the code may be similar to other solutions, but still contains unique components.
While code similarity is an indicator of plagiarism, it should not be used as a definitive determination of it. For example some simple coding challenges have a limited number of ways to solve the problem. In these cases, it would be expected to see a lot of extremely similar solutions even if none of the candidates plagiarized their answer. Code similarity, coupled with other tools like follow-up questions and the Code Editor Playback are the best way to understand if cheating has occurred.
Code Editor Playback
With the Code Editor Playback, hiring managers can play back the candidate’s challenge submission to see how they developed their solution. The Playback Timeline marks certain types of activity, like pasting code (along with the number of characters pasted), navigating away from the challenge, running tests, and periods of inactivity, so evaluators can quickly jump to those points of interest in the interview. These tools are available to help evaluators understand if the solution has been plagiarized. The combination of functionality makes it easy for a recruiter who does not understand code to flag suspicious activity and disposition the candidate or escalate to the technical team for further review.
Best Practices
Using the best practices outlined above to deter and detect plagiarism will identify most inauthentic activity, but if an otherwise promising candidate is still in question, a Live Coding session or onsite interview can be scheduled to probe deeper. In this follow-up session, interviewers can ask questions about specific blocks of code or walk through their solution. An in-person interview is also a great opportunity to ask follow-up questions to ensure the candidate understands the code they submitted.
The tools within CodeVue not only deter cheating, but also help detect plagiarism when it happens. These tools can be valuable to recruiters to help them screen unqualified candidates early in the process before they are passed on to technical teams.