HackerRank Chakra

Chakra interviews and tests candidates in one sitting, and a person decides

Every candidate gets the same interview, and every score has evidence

Who gets the most from Chakra

Screen sharing, outside providers and the bias audits

Chakra is priced per interview, and plans are paid a year ahead

Chakra is priced per interview attempt, with volume discounts. An attempt counts when a candidate begins a test or joins an interview session. Past your plan, HackerRank charges your payment method for each batch of 25 extra attempts.

On the enterprise plan, Chakra is part of an AI add-on package, for select customers only. Screen is HackerRank’s skills test product, with its own plans and yearly attempts.

Annual plans renew by themselves each year unless you cancel. The Master Subscription Agreement makes fees due a year ahead for each term. It also bars cancelling service orders except as it allows. The pricing terms let a customer cancel at any time. The cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle. Ask which one applies to your plan.

The Service Level Agreement only promises that HackerRank will try to keep the system up. If uptime in a month falls below 90%, you may end the contract on 30 days’ written notice.

For most claims, each side’s liability is capped at what was paid or payable in the prior 12 months. For a breach of HackerRank’s privacy and security duties, the cap is three times that.

When the contract ends, you have 30 days to extract your data. HackerRank deletes or returns all personal data, whichever you choose. If you do not choose within 30 days, it deletes the data under its retention policy.

Eight questions to ask HackerRank before you sign

1. What does one Chakra interview attempt cost at our volume, and does a Screen skills test attempt cost the same? Good answer: A written rate per attempt, with the volume tiers, on our order form.
2. Is Chakra in our plan or an extra, and are we eligible to buy it? Good answer: A named plan, a written price and a yes on eligibility.
3. Will you write into our contract that no customer or candidate data trains any AI, even combined and anonymous data? Good answer: Yes, one clause that covers both, for you and for your AI providers.
4. Is there a bias audit of Chakra’s interview scoring, and can we publish it? Good answer: A full report from an outside auditor, with figures for each group, that we can publish.
5. What does a candidate get if they refuse the screen sharing, the webcam or the AI? Good answer: A named alternative that does not count against the candidate.
6. Can we set the uptime promise, the notice period and the liability cap in our own order form? Good answer: Written terms for all three, with money back when uptime is missed.
7. How long do you keep our candidates’ recordings and transcripts, and can we set that in the order form? Good answer: A named time for each, written into the order form.
8. What do we receive when the contract ends, and in which formats? Good answer: Recordings, transcripts and reports in named file formats, inside a written time window.

Alternatives to HackerRank

If Chakra does not fit, look at CodeSignal, HeyMilo and Humanly, or buy nothing.

CodeSignal runs AI interviews for engineering and for other roles. It publishes its prices. Build costs $79 a month billed yearly. It includes 60 candidate sessions a year, paid for up front, with AI interviewers for product, design and engineering. Grow costs $479 a month billed yearly. It includes 420 sessions and adds AI interviewers for sales and marketing. Pro is custom. A session is used when a candidate starts an assessment or an interview. Extra sessions cost $20 each. CodeSignal checks identity by matching a government photo ID to the person on camera. It runs live phone interviews in more than 20 languages.

HeyMilo screens and interviews applicants by voice, video, text message and forms in more than 20 languages. It gives each interview a trust score for the likelihood of cheating. Recruiters make the final call. Humanly is built for hourly, frontline and high-volume hiring. It screens over chat, text message, email and voice, and it also sells an applicant tracking system.

Buying nothing is a real choice. If you fill only a few of these roles a year, your own interviewers can run the first round. Chakra then adds cost and the work of telling candidates how it watches them.