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Anthem coding interview / online assessment: format, difficulty, and what actually matters

staff_steph · 5 replies

just went through the Anthem/Elevance online assessment and technical phone screen for a software engineer role (somewhere between mid-level and senior, they were a bit flexible on the level). writing this up because i had trouble finding recent info before i went in.

the online assessment came first. two coding problems, 90 minutes total. platform was HackerRank. problems were what i'd call solid mediums, one was array/string manipulation and the other involved trees. no trick questions, no insane edge cases that require knowing some obscure algorithm. if you're comfortable with LeetCode mediums you'll be fine. i think i scored around 85% and moved forward without any drama.

then the technical phone screen. one coding problem with a recruiter and then an engineer joining. the engineer asked the coding question live in a shared environment (coderpad). also medium difficulty. this one had a follow-up where they asked about time/space complexity and then asked me to optimize my initial solution. that follow-up is important. they were clearly evaluating whether you understand performance tradeoffs, not just whether you can produce code that runs.

some things that seemed to matter: talking through your approach before typing, even briefly catching edge cases yourself before they pointed them out knowing your complexity and being able to improve it not getting rattled when they asked clarifying questions mid-solve (this felt like part of the eval)

things that did not seem to matter: knowing specific java/python libraries by heart using any particular language (i used python, seems fine) having the most elegant solution vs. a correct, clear one

the question types lean toward general data structures: arrays, strings, graphs, trees. i didn't see any dynamic programming. didn't see anything healthcare-specific in the coding rounds, that stuff shows up in the system design.

overall the difficulty is calibrated for a working software engineer, not someone grinding 500 LeetCode problems. reasonable.

5 replies

frontend_fran

85% on the OA and you moved through. good to know they're not filtering on perfect scores. i always stress about the ones where i know i left something suboptimal.

bootcamp_bri

this is really encouraging. anthem is one i've been considering but i was nervous the process would be way more intense than i could handle right now. sounds like it's rigorous but fair?

jp_newgrad

honestly yes, fair is the right word. they're not trying to trick you. they want to see that you can write readable code and reason about it. the bar felt appropriate for the role rather than some abstract ceiling.

tired_recruiter

for what it's worth, anthem rolled out HackerRank pretty consistently across tech roles about a year ago. the OA scores aren't the only filter, they look at the whole picture, but consistently low scores do flag. OP's experience with a high-pass threshold sounds accurate.

mobile_mara

did they tell you what language to use or was it open? and were the problems shown all at once or one at a time?