Quick start guide:
Colare assessments

How Colare fits into your hiring process

Colare is the deeptech assessment platform built to evaluate the skills that drive frontier engineering: the work happening inside satellites, EV powertrains, robotic systems, embedded firmware, and the physical infrastructure of the future.

This work has historically been impossible to test for at scale. Traditional assessments measure textbook theory, not how an engineer reasons through a real trade-off, designs a circuit under constraints, or works through a CAD problem the way they would on the job. Colare changes that.

What are Colare assessments?

Colare assessments are simulation-based evaluations across mechanical, electrical, firmware, embedded roles and more. Candidates work through real-world case studies, engineering simulations, and trade-off analyses inside the same kinds of environments they'd work in on the job.

Each candidate is evaluated on two things:

Each assessment generates a set of competency-level scores tied to the role. The Colare Score sits alongside those breakdowns as one aggregated data point your team can use to inform hiring decisions. Assessments can also be fully configured to use your team's own questions when the role calls for it.

What is the candidate experience?

After receiving an assessment invitation, the candidate completes the entire process in their browser, with no installs and no setup beyond enabling permissions. Colare requests access to the candidate's screen, webcam, and microphone for proctoring before the assessment begins.

Once permissions are granted, the candidate enters the Colare assessment environment. The timer starts, and they have access to everything they need to complete the work, including question prompts in several formats, from multiple choice to long answer and project work, and a workspace to test and iterate on their answers.

For more on what candidates see and experience during an assessment, see our candidate preparation guide.

Invite candidates to an assessment

The Tests section of the Colare dashboard is where you manage every assessment for your company. From there, select the role-specific assessment you intend to send.

Send assessment invitations

Use the + Add candidate option from the assessment page. Each invitation needs the candidate's email (name is optional) and is sent directly from within Colare. You can also bulk upload a list of candidates with a CSV file. Colare also connects to your ATS (Ashby, Greenhouse, and 100+ other systems), so you can send and track invitations from there. See the ATS integrations guide.

Customize assessment configuration

On the page for a given assessment, you can customize:

You can also customize the questions included within an assessment. For more, see how to customize assessment questions.

What happens after a candidate is invited?

The candidate receives your email invitation to take the assigned Colare assessment, and they have until the invitation expires to start it. Assessments are usually completed in one sitting, though that can change by assessment type. For example, take-home assessments let candidates close and reopen the test within the time limit you set. The limit starts counting when they first click Start and the assessment submits automatically when it runs out.

View, interpret, and share results

After a candidate submits an assessment, your hiring team can review their performance directly inside the Colare dashboard. The dashboard surfaces each candidate's performance, with competency-level breakdowns visible at a glance.

Any candidate's report can be shared with stakeholders through a link that needs no Colare login. For a full tour of the views, see Understanding Colare's dashboard.

Understanding the Colare Score

Every Colare assessment generates a detailed performance report breaking down how each candidate performed across the competencies the role requires: Stress Analysis, Thermal Testing, CAD modeling, and more. The report gives your team a granular view of where each candidate is strongest and where the gaps are.

The Colare Score sits alongside the detailed report as a single, weighted data point. Use the score as your quick read on a candidate, and use the report to dig into the competencies that matter most for the role. For how to set a passing threshold and read scores against it, see the cut score guide.

What is process flow?

Most assessments tell you whether a candidate got the right answer. Colare tells you how they got there. Process flow is the journey toward an answer: the variables a candidate considered, the constraints they balanced, and the trade-offs they reasoned through along the way.

Strong technical knowledge is table stakes for an engineering role. Process flow is what separates a good engineer from a great one. The engineers who become invaluable are the ones whose reasoning translates across domains, teams, and projects, and that kind of judgment shows up in how they think, not in what they already know.

See reports and replays

Click into a candidate's name from the dashboard to open their score report. The report includes their Colare Score and their competency breakdowns. Any flags raised during the assessment appear on the same report, in a separate Integrity Issues card.

From the report, you can click into individual question results to access replays. Replays show the candidate's keystrokes, navigation, and decision-making in real time or sped up. Replays are available for every candidate. They are a proctoring tool, a way for hiring teams to verify what happened at any moment of the assessment.

What does proctoring entail?

Colare requires webcam, microphone, and screen sharing access for the duration of the assessment. The candidate's camera and screen are monitored to ensure the assessment is taken fairly and that the candidate completing it is the same person being considered for the role.

Colare's integrity system flags suspicious activity (navigating to outside browsers, copying questions out of the environment, or using unauthorized third-party assistance) for your hiring team to review. For the full picture of what is monitored and how flags are reviewed, see Colare's proctoring system.

What you're achieving with Colare

You're giving deeptech engineers the first real way to show what they can actually do, and giving your team the first real signal to hire on. The disciplines Colare assesses for have been judged through resumes, take-homes, and gut feel for too long.

Your next best engineer shouldn't be passed on because they hadn't spent hours optimizing for resumes or interview polish. With Colare, your hiring decisions are grounded in how candidates actually work through engineering problems, the same way they will on the job.

Questions or issues?