The General Coding Assessment, or GCA, is CodeSignal's standard coding test, and many companies use it as their first technical screen. Because results can be shared, it works a little like a standardised exam: one strong attempt can be reused for several applications. That makes it worth taking seriously, and worth taking well rested.
The format
- Four coding questions in 70 minutes, unless the company has changed the time.
- Any order. You can tackle the questions in whatever order you like.
- Submit as often as you want. Your best submission for each question counts.
- CodeSignal's editor only, in any of 45 programming languages.
- A large question pool: CodeSignal says it has more than 628,000 variations, so memorising past questions doesn't work.
The GCA is one of CodeSignal's "Certified Assessments", a name that replaced "Frameworks" in April 2026.
The rules
- Web search for syntax only. Looking up how a function works is fine; looking up solutions is not.
- No AI help of any kind.
- Identity checks. Setup takes a photo of your face and of your ID.
- Proctoring, since May 2026, if the employer turns it on.
Cohesyve
Practise this before it counts
Run the same kind of AI job simulation employers use and get a scored report on where you stand. 5 free assessments a month, no card required.
How it's scored
You get a single score from 200 to 600. CodeSignal now mostly calls it the "Assessment Score", though some of its pages still say "Coding Score". It replaced an older 300 to 850 scale in 2023, so ignore guides that quote 850s.
Alongside the score, CodeSignal reports skill areas (Basic Coding, Data Manipulation, Ease of Implementation and Problem-Solving) on a scale from "Developing" to "Expert". CodeSignal says those labels aren't meant for hiring decisions. Since May 2026, employers also get an AI-written summary of your results.
There is no published pass mark. Each company decides what score it wants.
Sharing results, retakes and cooldowns
- Sharing: you can share an existing GCA result with other companies instead of taking it again.
- Retakes only by invitation: you can retake the GCA only when a company sends you a new invitation, and not during a cooldown period. CodeSignal's own example implies a limit of three attempts in 180 days and two in any 30 days.
- Lower is lower: if you retake and score worse, the company that invited you sees the lower score.
- Freshness: each company decides how old a score it will accept.
How to prepare
Practise the format, not just algorithms. Four questions in 70 minutes is about 17 minutes each on average, and they aren't equally hard, so budget your time rather than splitting it evenly. Practise reading a problem, writing a working solution, then improving it.
Get the easy points first. Because you can answer in any order and your best submission counts, make sure the simpler questions are fully correct before spending a long time on the hardest one.
Test edge cases. Empty inputs, single elements, duplicates and large values are where solutions that pass the examples fail the hidden tests.
Know your language's standard library. You can search for syntax, but every lookup costs time. Be fluent with strings, lists or arrays, dictionaries or hash maps, sorting and basic iteration.
Pick your moment. Since a lower retake replaces your result for that company, and cooldowns limit how often you can try, sit it when you're fresh and have 70 uninterrupted minutes.
Where Cohesyve fits
Many teams follow a coding screen with work closer to the job: debugging someone else's code, reviewing a pull request, explaining a trade-off. Cohesyve, which publishes this guide, runs practice job simulations for that kind of stage, with a report on where you lost marks. It isn't a CodeSignal practice test and doesn't use CodeSignal's questions.
Sources
Checked 2 October 2026.