Cheating prevention in Interview

To reduce the instances of candidates cheating during your live Interviews, we recommend taking advantage of the following CoderPad features:

1. Multi-file projects

• Always use a multi-file project template instead of a single-file pad.
• LLMs perform much worse when they must reason across multiple interdependent files rather than a single script.

2. Question and session design

• Use multi-part or progressive problems that require explanation and iteration.
• Ask candidates to walk through their approach verbally or modify their own solution mid-way. LLM-generated answers often break under follow-up variation.

3. Video + audio

• Enable video and audio for live interviews to confirm the candidate is the one coding and to monitor engagement. Our video feature doesn’t allow for candidates to use any kind of backgrounds or background filters.
• This can be toggled in the pad settings when launching the session.

4. Environment awareness

• CoderPad will alert you if the candidate pastes code from an external source or leaves the IDE. This way, you can spot tab-switching or long “dead” pauses which sometimes indicate external tool use.
• For even more fidelity, ask the candidate to share screen if you suspect off-pad activity (optional but common in security-sensitive interviews).
• If you have our Interview Summary and Outline available, this will automatically take interview notes for you so that you can focus on the candidate and their work.

5. In-app AI usage

• Enable the AI Assist for candidates so that you have full visibility into the candidate’s AI usage.
• Let them know that you expect them to contain any AI usage to the AI Assist tab within the platform.

6. Candidate waiting room

• Use the candidate waiting room to prevent candidates from entering the pad before you are ready. This ensures they cannot access the environment early, pre-read instructions, explore the file structure, or begin preparing offline solutions before the interview officially starts.
• When you admit the candidate, you control exactly when the interview environment becomes visible to them.

7. End the interviews

• Use the “End Interview” action to immediately revoke the candidate’s editing access once the session is complete. This ensures they cannot return later to modify code, add comments, or overwrite something in playback.
• Ending the interview also finalizes the session timeline, making the playback fully reliable for post-interview review.

6. Playback

• Every pad records the full timeline of the session (edits, code runs, and cursor movements).
• Review the playback to view copy-pasting behavior, notifications that the candidate left the pad, or bursts of activity inconsistent with real typing speed.