Digital Hackathons for Hiring Evaluate Talent through Competitive Challenges

One of the most resource-intensive aspects of increasing the size of an engineering team has always been recruitment. When we had a Test Engineer position and more than a hundred candidates to interview, the idea of making the individual calls and technical interviews was quite daunting.

That is when we resorted to TeamCraft, and it has changed the way we think about hiring technically altogether. The platform did it all, including screening and self-assessment tests, as well as organising a well-planned hackathon that placed all candidates in the same playing field. Our participation was minimal and yet the deliverable was exceptionally comprehensive.

It was also easy to identify the standout performers in terms of coding proficiency and familiarisation with the tools, approach to solving the problem, and time management, providing us with a holistic understanding of the current state of affairs that is often inaccessible to traditional interviews. What is more crucial is that the hackathon format allowed us to see each candidate a lot more closely than a traditional interview could ever do.

In terms of leadership, the effects were strong. We saved dozens of hours that would have been spent making, doing, and debriefing single technical assessments, what would have otherwise occupied weeks, maybe months, was packed into a fraction of the time. Having been in the industry over 13 years, I can tell that this has been one of the smarter investments we have made in our employment pipeline.