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Getting Started with CoderPad

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This document introduces you to CoderPad and shows you how to run live technical interviews or take-home project assessments.

CoderPad account

If your company has a CoderPad account, ask your administrator for an invite and instructions on how to login.

If your company does not have a CoderPad account, register here.

For paid plans, visit our Pricing page and click ‘Buy Now’.

What’s a pad?

A pad is a session where the candidate and interviewer write and run code – either during a live collaborative interview or a take-home project.

A pad is like development software for programmers, or an IDE. You write code in the left-hand pane, run code with the ‘Run’ button, and view output in the right-hand pane.

CoderPad allows interviewers to run and debug code with candidates in over 30 languages, many with attached libraries and packages. Customizable settings include autocomplete, auto-close brackets, light theme, and Vim mode. 

Live interview features

  • Drawing mode: Use the virtual whiteboard to add a visual element to any interview. 
  • Audio/video call: Interact with candidates through CoderPad’s built-in audio/video calling.
  • View participants: Each person’s name shows in the interview pad, and colored cursors make following along easy.
  • Internal interviewer notes: Take notes during an interview from within the pad itself – hidden from external candidates.
  • Focus time: Give your candidates 5 minutes of quiet time to gather their thoughts before working on a solution. 

Take-home project features

  • Automated test cases: Use visible, or invisible, test cases to see whether the code passes or fails.
  • Configurable time limit: Set your pad to automatically submit after either 30, 60, 90, 120, or 180 minutes. Alternatively, set no time limit.

Question Bank

Recruiters can use CoderPad’s Question Bank to create and store questions for each technical role.

  1. Share lists of interview questions with your team.
  2. Allow individual interviewers to manage their own list of questions.
  3. Create questions specific to live interviews or take-home projects.
  4. Assign multiple questions to candidates as they progress through the hiring process.
  5. Use Example Questions as inspiration for your own questions.
The Question Bank with three tabs. One that shows your organization's questions, one that shows you only your questions, and finally CoderPad example questions

Set up a live interview or take-home project

Use a new pad for each interview or assessment.

Live interview pads

You can set up a pad for a live interview by either:

  1. Clicking the ‘Create Pad’ button on “Pads List” and adding questions to it from your Question Bank.
The "Create Pad" button is in the top right corner of
  1. Creating a live pad directly from a question in the Question Bank.

Each question in the question bank should have a button to create a pad like "Create a Live Pad"

When the pad is ready, send an invite to the candidate by clicking the button in the bottom left corner.

When you press the "invite" button at the end of the document, it will bring up a popup and allow you to sent an email, a temporary link, or a permanent link

Take-home project interview pads

You can set up a pad for take-home projects by:

  1. Clicking the ‘Create Take-Home’ button from your question bank.
Take homes in the question bank will have the button called "Create Take-Home"
  1. Selecting a time limit for the candidate.
The options for time limit include: No limit, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 90 minutes, 2 hours, and 3 hours
  1. Adding pad names. Each pad name represents a separate interview that uses the same pad. Use as many as you like.
We can input as many pad names as we want, delaminated by newline
  1. The “View Take-Home Pads” page displays the generated pad links.
Once generated, the pads will show in a table that contain the title and link to the take-home
  1. You will receive an email once your take-home project pads have been created.
The email you'll receive will have the header "Take-Home Pad Set ready to be used"

End live interview or submit take-home project

  • The candidate loses access to the pad when the interview ends or they submit the pad.

Ending a live interview

Click the ‘End Interview’ button on the lower right hand corner.

  • Ending an interview enables Playback Mode.
The "end interview" button is the last one present within a pad as the interviewer

Ending a take-home project

To submit a take-home project, the candidate clicks the ‘Submit Take-Home’ button in the lower right-hand corner.

  • This enables Playback Mode for the interviewer.
The "submit take-home" button is the last one present within a pad as a candidate in a take-home

Debrief and view playback

Recruiters and interviewers can start the technical assessment debrief when the interview is over or the candidate submits the pad. Use CoderPad to review the interview with your team, replay how a candidate reached a solution, and more.

  • CoderPad saves every keystroke. You can replay the entire session, keystroke by keystroke.
We have a playback scrobber along with a speed toggle button
  • View the user’s program output throughout the interview and gain insight into their thinking process.

We can see that this candidate ran into issues with the final two tests about halfway through the interview
  • View the results of take-home project test cases.
All of the visible and hidden test cases pass for this candidate!
  • For reviewing drawings, CoderPad saves the final snapshot from Drawing Mode if you used it in a live interview.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or concerns about how things work in CoderPad, feel free to email us at support@coderpad.io – we’re happy to help!

Table of Contents

  1. Getting Started with CoderPad for Interviewers
  2. Getting Started with CoderPad for Interview Coordinators & Recruiters
  3. Getting Started With CoderPad for Candidates
  4. Getting Started with CoderPad for Teams