Hackathons, a new way of attracting talent

Technology is now an essential component of our daily lives. It is no secret that a large number of companies worldwide have been making significant investments in order to digitize their processes, products or services and thus offer greater innovation in them.

All this has led to an increase in the demand for technological profiles related to the data field by companies, organizations and institutions at an international level. However, in the current labour market this type of profile is not as abundant as the demand. This situation has also been exacerbated by the current health pandemic.

Hackathons: a new formula for attracting quality talent

One of the mechanisms that is gaining popularity to try to increase the recruitment of talent within the technological field are hackathons. These are data-related competitions or challenges whose main objective is to find solutions to real problems.

Hackathons offer the possibility for participants to test their knowledge and for companies to recruit talent for their teams. In fact, these challenges offer some advantages for companies looking to recruit new professionals by allowing them to:

• Observe how participants work
• Interact with them in a more relaxed environment
• Shorten selection process times

Some examples of company-driven hackathons

This mechanism is already used by companies around the world, even for several years. In Spain we find some examples such as the ‘Súper Hackathon BBVA’, whose objective was to find the best young engineering talent, while offering participants the opportunity to learn how to work within a large bank. Another example is the ‘KPMG Talent Hackathon’, whose challenge allowed the company to position itself as an employer brand among STEM students.

Also noteworthy is the ‘Hackathon FACSA Castellón’, an event that is held annually and whose objective is to seek the development of qualified talent, entrepreneurship and the promotion of a technological ecosystem that turns Castellón into a benchmark for innovation. In addition, this challenge symbolizes the collaboration between all the driving companies (Nayar Systems, Cuatroochenta, IoTsens and Eventscase) that support the initiative of the Association of Technology Companies of Castellón, Xarxatec. Among other advantages, this hackathon offers participants the possibility of accessing a job bank, allowing companies to attract talent, as well as promoting collaboration and teamwork.

Popular Internet hackathon platforms to recruit new professionals

These processes do not always have to be face-to-face. On the Internet we can find numerous platforms that offer coding challenges that put companies looking to attract talent in contact with users interested in showing their skills to technology companies and thus get a job opportunity. These tools allow companies of various sizes to have the opportunity to organize this type of competition, and broaden the geographic spectrum of the search, making it easier for candidates from different locations to compete on equal terms.

Here are some examples of these platforms:

Kaggle

Kaggle is one of the best-known platforms among developers. Focused mainly on learning through play (a technique known as gamification), it also offers companies a space for attracting talent. Some of the companies that have taken advantage of its benefits are Banco Santander, Facebook or Yelp.

You have more information in this previous article about Kaggle, where the gamification platforms DrivenData, Devpost, Innocentive and CrowdAnalytix.

HackerRank

It offers challenges for both home users who want to practice their coding skills and prepare for job interviews, as well as organizations looking to identify and hire new developers. Users of this platform can use Python, Java, JavaScript, PHP, C++ or SQL to solve the challenges presented from the instructions provided.

To learn more about this platform, in this article published by The House of Codes you can consult the top 50 challenges found in HackerRank.

Coderbyte

This application is dedicated to helping people solve problems at an industrial level. Like the previous platform, it offers a section for developers to prepare technically for future job interviews, and another one dedicated to companies that want to interview, evaluate and select candidates.

One of the main advantages of Coderbyte is that it presents challenges adapted to the needs of the main brands with which it collaborates, such as Google, HBO or PWC, among others.

CodinGame

Can you imagine being able to get a job through a gaming environment? This platform offers developers the possibility to solve programming challenges through a gamified experience. CodinGame features high-level algorithms and coders that offer solutions to both novice and expert developers.

In addition, it has a dedicated area exclusively for companies wishing to find the best developers thanks to its online coding tests.

Codewars

This platform allows developers to improve their skills through small coding exercises called 'katas'. One of its most outstanding qualities is the large number of languages available through which it allows challenges to be performed.

Qualified is Codewars' partner platform dedicated to organizations wishing to recruit new talent through its platform. Thanks to it, companies can benefit from its technical skills assessments to find professionals that fit their needs.

HackerEarth

This well-known platform not only presents coding challenges, but also hackathons and various kinds of competitions. Did you know that many of the challenges found on this platform can be asked in any job interview related to this field? This is because one of the services offered by HackerEarth is the proposal of recruitment solutions to top-tier technology companies.

In short, more and more companies, organizations and platforms are showing interest in participating and creating this type of challenge to achieve two main objectives: to attract talent and to increase the training and knowledge of their users.

It is also worth mentioning the European Hackathon Manager project, a tool for organising and coordinating this type of event. This tool has recently been tested by Aragón Open Data.

This has been just a small selection of platforms, but if you know of more platforms that may be of interest to our community, do not hesitate to write to us at dinamizacion@datos.gob.es.

Content prepared by the datos.gob.es team.