Hackathons are becoming more popular year, and for good reason: this is a useful technical event from large companies for developers, analysts, and designers or marketers - it depends on the recruitment of the team. At this event, you will not only gain new experience, but also acquire useful contacts. The practice of offering an offer to winners is widespread. This is not common, but it does happen.

In September, Yuztech Group together with Moscow State University will hold the first hackathon and offer weekend. We are already preparing for the event and will soon share the news, but for now we want to share with you a podcast from the Design Tusovka and Yuztech community, in which the winning team will share the secrets of winning hackathons.

The guests of this issue are the "NoTryCatch" team, which won prizes at the "Digital Breakthrough" hackathons three times in a row. In this article, we will talk about how and where to find hackathons, why participate in them, and how to build teamwork.

What is a hackathon?

Hackathon (eng. hackathon - a word form from hack and marathon) is a competitive event with a limited amount of time and a limited technical task. From 100 to 300 people, or even more, can take part in a hackathon. The task is given from 24 to 48 hours, but usually the hackathon takes 1-3 days. The main goal of the hackathon is to create a new, fully functional product.

Hackathon is full of emotions

This is a competition at the intersection of work and hobby.

It is always your own growth and development, new acquaintances, getting out of your comfort zone and new emotions.

Every major company hosts a hackathon at least once a year. Finding it is quite simple: by typing “hackathon” into the search bar, you get a lot of landing pages from various companies with the names and dates of the hackathons. There are also specialized sites where there are lists of IT events. Major international hackathon organizers are also known, such as TechCrunch, eBay and Angel Hack.

Why do companies run hackathons? First of all, this is the development of the company's brand, and secondly, recruitment works well at these events: winners are often attracted to the company's staff. Guys who are interested in opening your case and getting new experience come to the hackathon.

Hackathons have many benefits: they help jump-start your career, teach you how to work in a team, inspire and allow you to gain new experience.

How to take part in a hackathon and find a team?

Usually, before participation, a preliminary selection of participants is carried out: for this, you need to submit an application and go through a simple registration procedure.

How to find a team? It does not matter if you came to the hackathon alone or with a team. You have a certain set of competencies that will be useful to the team, and you need to either find 5 people for your team or join another. The organizers provide an opportunity to find a team or a person in a team through chats on social networks.

In addition to developers, your team may include an analyst, a designer, a person familiar with a specialized area (fintech, for example), a marketer, a Devops engineer, etc.

Who should go to hackathons? In fact, both young professionals who have been in the IT field for a long time can take part in the hackathon. In addition to prize-winning things like merchandise from a company, a cash prize or an offer, specialists are looking for experience, a line in the portfolio, networking and disclosure of competencies. For more senior professionals, participation in a hackathon is an opportunity to get distracted, warm up and work on a new project outside of their main job. It's kind of like a weekend startup.

A little about how the hackathon works

Hackathon interaction takes place at checkpoints: there are 3 of them.

The case opens at 17-18 pm on Friday, and from 19 to 22 the first checkpoint takes place. Usually teams are given 15 minutes to communicate with an expert and 2-3 representatives from the key holder. At the first checkpoint, as a rule, you do not have time to implement anything, but only lay out the general structure and talk about the vision of the project. Experts give comments and note what they like and what they don't. After that, you begin the process of brainstorming, which takes all night. Someone may sleep, but it happens that the participants stay up all night developing a solution.

The second checkpoint is from 10 am to 1 pm on Saturday. At this time, you may already have the primary design and functionality ready, you begin to prepare a presentation and a text about the product. You already know who your target audience is and what pain your product solves, prepare CustDev and come with ready-made ideas.

And the third, final checkpoint is from 18 to 21-22 pm on Saturday. The main focus here is on the development process.

At 10 am on Sunday, the development process ends. From the 12th day, the defense of the project begins. Usually it takes from 5 to 7 minutes: during this time you need to have time to present the project and talk about the main advantages. The jury evaluates each project, and then the final rating is formed and the winner is determined.As you can see, participation in a hackathon provides a lot of advantages for both organizers and participants. This is a great opportunity to prove yourself, gain new experience, strengthen your HR brand, and attract new employees to the company. Hackathons increase interest in the IT field and contribute to its development.

Tell us, did you participate in hackathons? We will be interested if your participation experience and tell us how your hackathon went.

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