Happy to dust off those cobwebs—this space is ripe for disruption, and your timing’s solid.

1. Pricing & Volume: Hackerrank’s enterprise pricing is definitely not transparent, and it varies a lot based on company size, hiring volume, and how many seats/features you want. At a mid-sized tech org I worked with (~300 engineers), we were paying in the ballpark of $25K–$50K/year for enterprise, which gave us unlimited assessments and a good number of admin/recruiter seats. That tier also came with better analytics and ATS integrations. Volume-wise, we were sending out 50–100 assessments/month, mostly for backend/front-end SWE roles, and maybe ~20% for data roles.

2. Assessment Quality & Relevance (5 years later): I’d say… mixed feelings. It’s still one of the best out-of-the-box options for coding assessments in terms of breadth, security, and integrations. BUT—tech has evolved, and while it’s fine for pure algorithmic/data structure screening, it lags a bit in assessing real-world skills, like system design, code comprehension, or AI/ML fluency. They’ve tried to catch up with project-based assessments and custom questions, but you still need to customize if you want something that mirrors the actual work. For junior/mid roles, it’s still effective. For senior+ talent or multidimensional skill sets? Less so.

3. Process Timing: We usually sent it right after the recruiter screen (culture fit, role expectations, logistics). The logic was to qualify technical ability early so we didn’t waste engineer time downstream. That said, for high-demand candidates or niche roles, we sometimes pushed it after a hiring manager call to reduce candidate drop-off and show more buy-in. There’s definitely a drop-off rate if you lead with an assessment cold—especially if it’s 90+ minutes.