| Disclaimer : Developer at HackerRank, however I do not know details about how Furlong was hired, so I can not go into that. Also this is not an official response, but a personal one. So I think the source of misunderstanding is that we have multiple rankings on HackerRank. The leaderboard Mr. William Ross became #1 was in the practice leaderboard for the Java Domain[1], which is based on practice problems, and which is intended to get people upto speed with Java. This is our global leaderboard sections [2] : http://i.imgur.com/2rkgwmg.png We make the distinction of Contest based leaderboard which are based on your performance in contests, and practice leaderboard, which is the one Mr. Ross got on to. This is based on contests and the forums during contests are monitored for answers and solutions, and this is what would be considered really hard to get on to, and I know the #1 there, uwi is amazing. Our regular domains available at our domains page[3] are meant as a learning tool, where you can rise up as you solve problems, and yes the solutions are all available in many places. However since this is a practice area we do not do many of the things done in contests like restrict forums, look if solution is available online, run plagiarism(code similarity) matches etc, and generally we encourage people helping out in forums, although yes we should keep a watch on direct solutions appearing in forums. This is not intended to be a competition. While I do not know how Furlong was hired, I can tell you the common ways that people do get hired. 1. Companies conduct contest or sponsor HackerRank conducted contests. 2. Candidates apply via HackerRank jobs[4] which again has a HackerRank test that follows. 3. Candidates practice on HackerRank after which they may be approached by companies seeing their positions, but generally this involves a HackerRank test as the first round. 4. Common test for a LinkedIn placements (currently in India alone) 5. The regular HackerRank test companies send across. [1]: https://www.hackerrank.com/leaderboard/java/practice/level/1... [2]: https://www.hackerrank.com/leaderboard [3]: https://www.hackerrank.com/domains [4]: https://www.hackerrank.com/jobs/all |
