Entirely automated. The entire process was throwing up red flags to me.

I received an email from a "person" expressing their interest in me within a day of applying. It included all of the basic information you would expect from a recruiter, as well as a notice that I would be receiving another email from HackerRank to do a code challenge. Nothing out of the ordinary yet.

I responded to the email with my gratitude, some information about me, and a few questions. I never received a reply.

I then proceeded to complete the HackerRank challenge (which I partially failed but fixed after the time limit, with the intention of at least offering a better solution afterwards if they were interested) and received an email from a generic, non-monitored Palantir HR account stating they were no longer considering me.

After the whole process, I'm fairly certain that the original response I received was from an automated system pretending to be a real person. It also automatically rejects any applicants who can't complete the challenge fully.

I didn't speak to a single person, nor did I "accept" their request for me to take the HackerRank challenge (it reached my inbox at the same time as the original response). I imagine it would be a cakewalk to scan resumes for key buzzwords and auto-reply to certain applicants with this first step. Not a bad way to simply churn through tons of applicants, but the lack of transparency is frightening.

Generic single question HackerRank challenge.

Search "Palantir HackerRank" to find a list of them or possible implementations.