Wise Guy once said, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.”
These days, teach a man or a woman how to create a program and you could have your hands on your next hire. In 2012, about 16,000 computer science graduates hit the job market — a number that’s jumped about 29% from the previous year and has been steadily increasing since 2007.
One of tech recruitment’s biggest secrets to success is the hackathon, and if you’re not already scouting for great talent at these work-hard-play-hard events, you’re probably missing out on a huge bulk of computer science masterminds who’d make excellent additions to your team.
Not convinced? Read on.
Hackathons give you first-hand access to candidates.
While many seasoned professionals have the sharpened skill and developed work experience sought after by many companies, nothing compares to fresh talent with insights and knowledge on new and upcoming trends, and the ability to be trained into your organization’s desired skillsets. PennApps is the first and one of the largest hackathons in the nation that’s completely run by students. This February TechCrunch article states,
“[At the time, student Dave Fontenot] had heard that the organizers were paying students to attend from other schools, and so he worked to recruit his fellow Michigan friends to join him, eventually convincing around 25 of them to trek to Philadelphia. The environment and atmosphere were rousing. 'We came back and half the people switched their majors to CS,' Fontenot recalls.”
The piece sheds light on two key factor of these hackathons: They’re a good place to source untouched talent. They’re an even better place to influence proficient, potential hackers into homing in on their unexplored prowess.
Hackathons provide candidates a venue to demonstrate their talents and skills.
The beauty of the hackathon lies in its absence of a solid structure. In its purest form, hackathons give programmers and engineers a chance to create anything they want. Unlike a job interview, there isn’t an outspoken pressure to succeed. Instead, participants are in a “free-for-all” state of production, which can actually give you genuine insight to their thought and work process. Their motivation to succeed is partnered with a competitive spirit, standard, and deadline that they’ve determined independently. Attending a hackathon allows recruiters to view potential candidates in their natural state, experiencing challenges, trials, and errors, and doing what they love. After all, it’s not like anyone forced them to be there.
Hackathons showcase what a candidate would be like on the job…
Companies like Facebook and Google use hackathons as a way to present the company’s technical problems, and for attendees to show off their strategies in building a solution. In some cases, candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters work together in teams in an environment that encourages constructing and creating. Just as an employee inevitably comes across a momentary slip-up, hackathons speed up the process with the expectation that the candidate will be able to counter the mistake tenfold.
...and not.
Hackathons aren’t all business. Aside from the actual hacking that goes on, attendees also get a chance to interact with company engineers and recruiters at dinners, happy hour events, and dance parties. Facebook even implements ice skating and kayaking into their hackathon schedules to lighten the mood and get an idea of how candidates interact with each other to gauge culture fit.
Hackathons are also an opportune chance to make your company look good.
Some companies host different types of hackathons, either for recruiting or branding. As a branding affair, hackathons can encourage students to get excited about programming, have a good time, and spread the word with their network by promoting the company’s next event. Successful branding hackathons infuse culture, persona, and the authenticity of a company’s people. Get hackers hyped up for your company’s next big thing, even if it isn’t a hackathon, and you’ve already started building your fan (and candidate) base.
The surging demand for engineering talent has helped trigger bootcamps and hackathons for developers, designers, and engineers — events that are synonymous with premier recruiting opportunities to meet your next teammate. By making the most of hackathon attendees in their native domain, you can avoid oversaturated talent pools and zero in on ideal qualified candidates.
