Show what you can do. Skip the resume screen.
How to do a Provn challenge
A challenge is a small piece of real work from a real company. Do it, record a short video about how you thought it through, and get detailed feedback on every part. Score 80 or higher and hiring managers see you first.
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Data challenge
One number by Thursday
The program lead needs a single figure for her meeting, and an email she can forward.
- findings.md
- analysis.xlsx
- email-draft.md
Recommendation: report 1,284 active members.
Challenge quick facts
- 1–2 hrs
- Typical time to finish. Most people split it across two sittings.
- 48 hrs
- To get detailed feedback on every part of your work.
- 80+
- The score that puts you on the Draft Board, where employers hire from directly.
- Free
- Read any challenge without an account. Sign up free to submit.
What it is
Three steps, at your own pace
Do the work
You get a real scenario: a broken feature, a plan that's slipping, a dataset someone needs by Thursday. You deliver something: code, a brief, an analysis, a prototype. Use any tools you use at work, including AI.
Record a short video
Three to ten minutes, phone or laptop camera. Explain what you did and why. Tell us about one moment you disagreed with what the AI gave you. No editing, no polish.
Get your feedback
Written feedback on each part of your work: what landed and what to improve. Measured against a rubric you can read before you start, then checked by a person. You also get a score out of 100. Use the feedback to revise and resubmit.
Why bother
A resume can't show your work.
Hiring managers can't tell AI-written resumes from real ones anymore. So they've stopped trusting them. A challenge gives them something they can trust.
They see your actual work
Not a bullet point that says you can do it. The thing itself.
They hear how you think
Your video is the first interview. Hiring managers tell us they feel like they already know you before the call.
You get feedback, not silence
Every submission gets a score and notes on what would raise it. Most job applications end in nothing. This one ends in a scorecard.
One company. 231 applicants. 10 interviews. 10 days. No phone screens.
Brilliant Earth, hiring an AI Product Manager on Provn. Read how Alex got the job →
How to score 80+
Five things the best submissions do
We read the feedback on every submission that scored above 85 and compared it to the ones that landed in the 50s and 60s. The difference isn't talent. It's these five habits.
Say your answer first
Put your recommendation in the first two sentences of your write-up and the first 30 seconds of your video. Then explain. Don't make the reader hunt for it.
Make it checkable
If you say the tests pass, we'll run them. If you give a number, show where it came from. If you built something, let us click it. Nothing should require taking your word for it.
Tell us one time the AI was wrong
Every challenge asks for this, and it's the single biggest thing that separates high scores from middle ones. Pick one real moment: what the AI gave you, what was wrong with it, what you did instead. "I asked it to be more detailed" doesn't count.
Say what you didn't do, and why
You can't do everything in two hours. Good submissions name what they left out and tie it to a reason that matters to the person in the scenario. "Ran out of time" is a weak reason. "This would have put real money at risk" is a strong one.
Be honest about the rough edges
Tell us what's demo-quality, what you didn't test, what's still broken. We'll find it anyway, and we score higher when you found it first.
What costs the most points
- A missing file. Check the list of what to submit before you hit the button.
- A video that doesn't answer the AI question, or stops before it gets there.
- A write-up that says one thing and a demo that shows another.
- Describing how you'd find the answer instead of giving one.
What doesn't cost anything
- Using AI heavily. We score how you used it, not whether.
- Ums, pauses, accents, restarting a sentence. Your video isn't graded on delivery.
- Taking two or three days. Nobody's timing you.
- A plain-looking write-up. Substance beats formatting every time.
Using AI
Use it. Tell us how. Catch it when it's wrong.
We expect you to use AI. In your write-up, include a short log of three times you used it: what you asked, what it gave you, what you kept or changed. That's it.
What a good AI log looks like
- Asked
- "Write a rule that caps the discount at 15% for carts under 12 minutes old."
- Got
- A rule that read fine and had a sensible name.
- Did
- Wrote a test case for a 12-minute-old cart. The rule let a free upgrade through. Rewrote it so the cap lives in code, not in the prompt.
Adapted from a real submission that scored 94.
Your video
Talk through your decisions. Show the real thing.
The video is up to a quarter of your score. It's the one part AI can't do for you, which is exactly why hiring managers trust it. Here's a structure that works.
Start
Your answer in one sentence
What you built or recommended, and the main reason why.
Middle
Show it working, then show it failing
Walk through the real thing. Include the case that goes wrong and what happens.
Then
The AI moment
One specific time the AI gave you something that wasn't good enough, and what you did about it.
End
What you'd do next
What's still rough, and what you'd fix first with more time.
Three rules
- Stay inside the length the challenge asks for. Going long reads as not knowing what matters.
- Be you, on camera. No AI avatars, no synthetic voice. Those get a zero for the video.
- Don't read your write-up aloud. Talk about why you made the choices, not what's on the screen.
Upload as MP4 or MOV, straight to Provn. No links to other sites.
Real examples
What a great answer looked like
Three real challenges from 2026, and what the top-scoring person did on each. Notice none of them did more work. They made one good decision and explained it clearly.
Engineering
Fix a loyalty-points bug under load
The ask: Members were getting more points than they had. Find out why and fix it.
What scored 94: Found a second bug the company hadn't noticed. Wrote a test that proved both. Explained on video how the AI's own test had missed it, and why.
Data
One number by Thursday
The ask: A messy spreadsheet, a program lead who needs a single figure for a meeting, and an email she can forward.
What scored 97: Got the number right. Opened the email with it. Added one line: "Please don't quote that column." Caught the AI trying to drop rows that were real people.
Executive Assistant
Three tricky requests in a week
The ask: No files. Just you on camera, walking through a confidential document request, a scheduling clash, and a brief due by morning.
What scored 94: Knew the difference between "my call" and "the CEO's call" without being asked. Held the line on the document and offered an alternative in the same breath.
Before you submit
Five things to check
Most people who score in the 60s lost their points right here, not in the work.
- Every file the challenge asked for is uploaded, each as its own file.
- Your write-up has the AI log: three times you used it, what you got, what you did.
- Your video answers the AI question with one specific moment.
- Your video and your write-up tell the same story.
- Your first paragraph says what you recommend.
Common questions
Still wondering?
How long does it take?
Practice challenges in the Proving Ground take 20 to 40 minutes plus a short video. Challenges for a specific job take one to four hours. You can split it across days.
Does using AI hurt my score?
No. Using it badly does. Not saying you used it costs 10 points. Handing in AI output you didn't read costs 15. Using it well and showing your work scores higher than not using it at all.
What if I score under 80?
You get feedback on each part and you can revise and resubmit. 75 and up moves you forward. 80 and up puts you on the Draft Board, where employers browse directly.
Who sees my work?
Employers only see your submission inside a hiring process they're running, or on the Draft Board if you score 80+. Your video is never graded on accent, pace, or how you look.
I'm not an engineer. Is this for me?
Yes. There are challenges for product managers, designers, analysts, program managers, operations, sales, and executive assistants. Same five habits, every role.
Start with a 20-minute challenge.
Pick a role. Read the rubric. Do the work. Record the video. That's the whole thing.