Stop banning AI from technical interviews. Here’s what to test instead.
If your engineering interview bans AI tools, you’re testing a version of the job that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the argument HackerRank co-founder and CEO Vivek Ravisankar makes, and it’s hard to disagree with.
The developer role has shifted toward orchestrating AI agents. Testing candidates in an AI-free environment tells you how well they recall syntax, not how they’ll actually perform once they’re hired.
The fairness objection doesn’t hold
The common pushback is that giving everyone the same AI tool flattens the differences between candidates. It doesn’t. Two engineers with the identical assistant available will still produce very different results. The differentiator has moved from typing code to directing, verifying, and reasoning about the output.
What you’re actually watching for
With AI present, you stop measuring recall and start measuring workflow. The revealing moments happen when the AI’s first suggestion isn’t quite right. Strong candidates notice the gap between what was produced and what the problem actually needs. They’ll catch an edge case the AI missed and either redirect the tool or fix it themselves. Weaker candidates accept output at face value because it looks plausible and compiles.
Ravisankar frames this as the difference between engineers who build with care and taste versus those who ship whatever the assistant returned. Correct code is the easy part now. What you’re scoring is whether the candidate understood why it was correct, or landed there by accident.
Three formats that work
- Debug-and-explain: Hand the candidate AI-generated code with a subtle bug. Ask them to find it using whatever tools they want. This tests verification skill directly.
- Multi-step build with a twist: Have them build toward a goal with AI assistance, then introduce a changed requirement halfway through. Watch how they redirect the tool.
- Approach comparison: Ask them to generate two different approaches with AI, then defend which one they’d actually ship and why. No single right answer to hide behind.
The Plan/Build/Review structure
HackerRank’s own framework maps to this directly. Plan surfaces the candidate’s thinking before any code gets written. Build lets them work with AI tools present. Review probes the reasoning behind what they built. The company’s AI interviewer, Chakra, runs the Review conversation live and consistently at a scale no engineering team could staff themselves.
The point isn’t to make interviews harder. It’s to make them accurate. If your team uses AI coding assistants every day, the interview should too.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
With over 14 years in tech, marketing, and AI, including my role as Head of SEO at CitizenShipper and co-founder of TaleBot at Intale AI, I’m dedicated to sharing genuine, useful product insights and tips.
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