Meetcolab — A must use platform for interviewers

It’s been around 8 months since I started conducting interviews in my current organization and I have taken around 70 of them. Initially, I was using Google Docs since my existing peers were also using the same, but it was very painful and challenging for me.

Therefore, I began exploring free alternative mediums and tried each one of them, and finally concluded Meetcolab as the most ideal interviewing platform. It provides a complete set of exquisite and fascinating features that inspired me to highlight the same in this blog.

Challenges faced by me when taking interviews on Google Docs:

1. No central repository of question bank since interviews are conducted independently, which becomes burdensome for a new interviewer to get onboarded.
2. Code readability is strenuous for both candidate and interviewer due to incorrect formatting and page breaks.
3. Google Docs does not suffice System Design rounds as well as LLD rounds. Also, there is no room for executing and testing written code, if required.
4. There can be instances when access is not revoked for the candidate once an interview is concluded. The candidate may change the solution thereafter, hence an interviewer needs to recollect the complete experience until the feedback is submitted.
5. A separate Google Doc has to be maintained and saved in the drive for each candidate to be referred to unless the feedback for that corresponding candidate is submitted.

Meetcolab: A platform to conduct interviews with an advanced collaborative editor and whiteboard designed to deliver a great candidate and interviewer experience.

Exquisite features supported by Meetcolab

• Custom Interview-Types along with questions: One can create own custom Interview-Types (like problem-solving, high-level-design, low-level-design) and map parameters against which the candidate will be judged based on the added interview type.

Custom Interview-Types based on the requirements.

• Mapping interviewers based on Interview-Types: Against, each interview type, one can create their own team of interview panelists which supports access control features too. Thus whoever is added for a particular Interview-Type will have access to all existing questions which will make their onboarding process very smooth and effortless.

Team management for specific Interview-Types

• Capturing complete details of an interview question: Along with the problem statement, one can add other details associated with that problem, that can be referred to by other interviewers while presenting the corresponding problem to the candidate. One can also add key insights correlated with that question, that will further help in enhancing the screening process.

Problem details that will help the new interviewer to refer to.

All possible solutions for the problem.

Keynotes to be taken care of during an interview with the candidate.

• Codepair environment: The interviewer can present a question from the dropdown list of interview questions which will be visible to the candidate. The environment supports almost all everyday used programming language along with the in-built feature of compiling and executing the code. The codepair environment shows if a candidate is online on the tab and there are options to capture timelines of the entire interview (the candidate came up with the solution, the candidate completed writing the code).
• Whiteboard Environment: An ultimate platform for supporting system-design interviews as well as brainstorming discussions and approaches. It supports all basic but necessary features like shapes, and arrows that form the core of such design interviews.

The interactive feature of CodePair with code replay.

• Post-interview experience: There is an option to save the code or freeze the design in both codepair and whiteboard environments respectively, which ensures that no updates can happen after concluding the interview. After ending an interview, a feedback sheet appears which contains the problems asked along with the solution written by the candidate. One can write detailed feedback and give ratings accordingly. The feedback can then be shared within the organization for the further screening process.

Detailed feedback of the candidate.

Interview details in the feedback sheet.

Here is a sample feedback form for reference.

When someone asks my preferred interviewing platform

Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture.