Google Meet is showing up in more tech interviews in 2026. Workspace-first companies, mid-market engineering teams, and education-adjacent employers all run their loops on it. The platform is browser-based, tab-scoped by default, and never sees outside the surface a candidate chooses to share. This guide explains exactly what it does and doesn't see, and how a modern desktop overlay setup pairs with it.
HackerRank is still the volume leader in first-round technical screens for 2026 tech hiring. A browser-sandboxed coding environment that logs every keystroke, paste event, and tab-focus change inside its own tab. This guide covers what it tests, the boundary of what it can and cannot detect, and how a modern desktop setup pairs with a HackerRank session without leaking into the screen-share.
Hatchways is a project-based assessment and portfolio platform aimed at early-career developers: bootcamp grads, recent CS grads, and junior engineers funneled through Springboard's hiring partner network since the 2022 acquisition. Assessments take hours to days, not minutes, and the artifact reviewers see is a deployed app plus commit history plus an optional video walkthrough.
HireVue is the category-leading async video interview platform. Candidates record answers solo, on the clock, and a combined AI-plus-human review layer scores the recording days later. For 2026 tech jobseekers, the format is different enough from live interviews to need its own playbook. This guide is that playbook.
Zoom is the most-deployed video meeting software in US tech hiring. It is the default from one-person startups to Fortune 100 engineering orgs. It is general-purpose meeting software, not an anti-cheating platform. This guide covers what Zoom sees during a tech interview, the screen-share modes hiring teams use, the OS-level boundary the platform cannot cross, and how a modern desktop interview assistant pairs with the standard Zoom tech-interview flow.
An AI interviewer is software that conducts, scores, or screens a job interview without a human in the room. Usually through asynchronous video, an algorithmic scoring rubric, or a chatbot-style screening flow. This guide covers what AI interviewers actually measure in 2026, which categories of companies use them, the difference between AI-screening and AI-graded and AI-only interviews, and how to beat the algorithm honestly when there is no human on the other side of the camera.
CodeInterview.io is a browser-based collaborative live-coding platform. Think of it as a lighter-footprint alternative to CoderPad with an integrated video call, per-keystroke replay, and a drawing whiteboard. Smaller market share than CoderPad but shows up at a meaningful slice of YC startups and mid-market tech teams in 2026. This is what CodeInterview.io tracks, how its all-in-one workflow compares to CoderPad, and how a modern desktop AI setup pairs with it without showing up in the screen-share.
CoderPad is the default live-coding environment for human-led technical interviews in 2026. Used by YC startups, FAANG-tier teams, and most of the tech mid-market. The pad records every keystroke, every paste event, every language switch, and offers an interviewer scrub-back feature most candidates never realize exists. This is what CoderPad tracks, how the live session compares to async assessments, and how a modern desktop AI setup pairs with it without showing up in the screen-share.
The CodeSignal General Coding Assessment is a 70-minute, four-task timed test scored on a 600 to 850 scale, used as a filter by Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Robinhood, Brex, and a growing list of tech and finance employers. This guide breaks down what it tests, how it scores, what it tracks during your session, and how a modern desktop setup pairs with it without showing up in proctored recordings.
Codility is the dominant algorithmic-assessment platform across European tech hiring. Heavy in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Nordics, and Poland where the company was founded. It scores candidates on both correctness and time complexity, runs 60-to-120-minute timed tests, and ships three products: Tests, CodeCheck, and CodeLive. This guide is what 2026 candidates need to know.
Karat is technical-interview-as-a-service. Karat-employed engineers run the technical loop for the hiring company in Karat's own recorded video and coding environment. The dynamic is different from an in-house interview: the interviewer is a contractor, not a future teammate, the rubric is fixed, the session is recorded for asynchronous review, and the hiring team's engineers watch the playback a day later. This guide is the practical map of how that loop works in 2026 and how a modern desktop setup runs alongside it.
LeetCode Assessments is the enterprise tier of the LeetCode platform: a separate product from the public site candidates know from grinding problems. Companies pay LeetCode to build custom timed assessments that draw from the 3,000-problem public catalog plus optional private variations, and the catalog asymmetry is the whole story for prep.
Microsoft Teams is the default interview surface at any company running Office 365: Fortune 500, finance, healthcare, government tech, legacy enterprise. The recording-and-transcript reality changes the threat model versus Zoom, but the OS-level boundary that protects a modern desktop AI setup is the same. This is the candidate-side guide to running a Teams interview in 2026.
There are roughly two dozen assessment platforms tech jobseekers will hit during a 2026 job search: coding rounds on HackerRank or CodeSignal, async video on HireVue, live coding on CoderPad, video interviews on Zoom or Teams. This guide maps every platform, what each one tests, and how candidates use a modern desktop setup to keep their AI assistant out of the screen-share.
Replit-for-hiring is the full-IDE take-home format. The candidate gets a forked Repl, hours or days to ship a working project, and a commit history the reviewer will scrutinize line-by-line. This guide breaks down what Replit captures, what it doesn't, and how a desktop AI setup pairs with the multi-day window.
Spark Hire is a mid-market async video interview platform used by 6,000+ employers across tech, healthcare, retail, and education. Candidates record video answers to pre-recorded prompts within configurable time budgets, and hiring teams review the recordings asynchronously. Lighter on AI scoring than HireVue, heavier on human review.
VidCruiter is a Canadian-founded hybrid interview platform that combines pre-recorded async video questions with scheduled live video interviews and skill testing in a single multi-step flow. Tech jobseekers encounter it most often in IT, devops, security-ops, and tech-adjacent roles, and the prep that works for HireVue or Zoom alone misses the platform's quirks.
Cisco Webex is still the default video platform across legacy enterprise hiring: large banks, insurance carriers, government IT, healthcare systems, and Fortune 500 employers running a Cisco stack. This is the 2026 guide to what Webex captures during a tech interview, what its AI Assistant transcribes, where its OS-level boundary sits, and how candidates set up around it.