

Ask HN: Hacker Fair Stories and Feedback - bluehat

Hey, lots of people went to Hacker Fair yesterday at Hacker Dojo. We're going to do a proper postmortem after things settle out a bit and you've had a few interviews with the people you met at the fair, but I'm starting this to look for  very basic gut feedback on the fair process before the details become blurry with time.<p>We already decided we're going to have the candidates put down a $20 deposit on their spot at the fair next time. They can have it back if they inform us they aren't coming with 48 hours warning or if they check into the fair. This is so we have a better grip on candidate attendance. Last time we stopped accepting candidates because we thought they were full, only to see some of the candidates that had taken their slots not show up.<p>Does anybody have any feedback on that idea? Does anybody see other problems? Does anybody have any other suggestions? Does anybody have an awesome story? Did any candidates wind up finding interviews with places they would not have known to look for a job of a certain type?
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mattyb
I attended as a candidate.

I think the deposit is a great idea. If you have a better handle on how many
candidates will be there, space can be allocated much more efficiently. I was
surprised to see how little space I was supposed to get, and even more
surprised when I was the only candidate (out of 6) at my table.

A deposit also helps you accept more candidates, which decreases the load on
those of us that show up. I saw two companies that I _really_ wanted to speak
with (Mozilla and Yammer) seemingly lose interest because my line was too
long. By the time I had a spare moment, they were gone. I might apply through
normal channels, but I might not.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

-Make the name tags for recruiters and candidates different colors, if you can do so without completely losing legibility.

-Tell the candidates about the technical/non-technical dots (I may have missed the memo; if so, no worries). Either way, this was a great idea.

-Tell Garrett to get some sleep!

Personally, I had a blast. I came from Long Island, NY for the event, and it
was more than worth it. I got swamped with interest and I'm literally sitting
here juggling interview requests as I type this. I originally planned to leave
Sunday morning (silly me), but my stay has been extended until late this week.

For future candidates:

-If the recruiter gives you something that doesn't have their name on it (like a printed job posting), get their contact information and write it down. You will never remember it later, and you want to be able to refer to that individual in your future correspondence.

-Preparation is pretty crucial. My experience was much less stressful because I worked on my stuff (poster, projects and their elevator pitches) for tens of hours. To that end...

-Do not stay up late the previous night hacking on your project. I know of one candidate who didn't attend because she stayed up all night working on a demo, and was then too tired to show up. The fair itself is actually draining; you stand up for hours on end and talk constantly. You don't want to start the day tired. I got an absurd amount of sleep (10+ hours) and was still beat by dinner.

-Test your demos beforehand on the laptop/server(s) that you plan to use.

-Print lots of resumés _before_ you get to the fair. I printed 32 (power of 2, hee hee) and had to tell about 10 people that I ran out. Printer availability at the Dojo is spotty. Also, put your GitHub URL on your resumé. Not sure why I forgot to do this. My (printed) resumé is in Markdown, and this earned me brownie points. Also print it on heavier (but not too heavy) paper, too. 24lb. maybe? I'll stop rambling about resumés now, they're boring.

-Make a cool poster. I had a neat poster, and it ended up being a conversation starter. The posters exist so recruiters can size you up while you're talking to someone else. Why not make a good first impression?

-Brush up on your knowledge before the fair itself, as you may have a technical interview (or two, or ten) _that day._

-If you're coming from out of town, find Katy on Airbnb. She is awesome.

For future recruiters:

-Do not walk up to candidates and ask them to describe themselves without first introducing yourself and your organization. I did a lot of unnecessary talking...

This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, so I'll probably turn this
into a blog post once the dust settles.

Bottom line, you guys did a hell of a job! I can't thank you enough. Consider
me a permanent future volunteer.

~~~
bluehat
Name tags for candidates were orange, and the recruiters were in blue
(volunteers were red and press was purple). Apparently the stripes were too
subtle, we'll crank it up next time.

------
nbm
I attended as a recruiter, and beyond specific candidates I was interested in
talking to not pitching up, it went very well.

I really appreciated the effort that particular candidates put into their
"booth" (mattyb, for example) and their demo/pitch. It makes it much easier
for recruiters whose day jobs aren't recruiting to start a conversation,
assists memory of the candidate, and also says good things about their
attitude.

General advice for candidates (would be nice if this was communicated to the
candidates on the web site, and sent out via email a few days before the
event):

CV/résumé: Have one - one page, preferably. On that, put your candidate number
(and maybe a short description of your pitch/demo) - it saves the recruiters
time trying to match that up with whatever notes they took before and during
the event against the candidate number. Link to your github/ohloh/HN or other
places the recruiters can find out about how good you are.

Meet the candidates description: Make sure you're on it. Make sure you have
useful information in it. When you're faced with a bunch of candidates and the
description is all you can go on, you will prioritise the candidates to ensure
you speak to the right people, and you might entirely rule out talking to
candidates based on that description. You don't want to short-sell yourself.

Demo/pitch/booth: The demo/pitch/booth is there to help initiate a
conversation, so please have something prepared for people like me who don't
initiate conversations with total strangers often. Try show your ingenuity and
attitude by making yourself stand out so that recruiters are more likely to
remember you.

Some theories for the organisers:

I think it might be quite cool to mix the format up a bit by scheduling time
where each candidate broadcasts something about themselves to the assembled
group. So, with 60-ish candidates, we could have 4 breaks during the day of 15
minutes (lunch/beverage breaks) where each candidate gets 1 minute to talk
about their project (strictly supervised for time). That provides another
opportunity for the candidate to attract the interest of recruiters.

I spent a lot of time waiting for candidates to finish talking to other
recruiters. Coming up with a mechanism to reduce this would be great. Maybe a
part of the schedule later in the day where the candidate indicates that
they're interested in speaking with a company that they haven't spoken to yet?

Things I will try to remember next time:

As a recruiter, I should have a page with job postings and contact details
(and instructions to remember to mention the candidate number) to give out to
each interesting candidate, and highlight the job postings that I think they
would be well-suited for.

I spent a lot of time waiting for candidates to finish talking to other
recruiters, so I should have some way to leave the candidate with my details
so they can find me when they have a free moment.

My memory is really really bad. I should write down more, and make sure to
make the name-candidate number connection for every person I talked to.

------
daniel-cussen
I went as a candidate showing off my Lisp project. Because I didn't know
exactly what to expect (to be fair, nobody did because it's so new) I gauged
the reactions to the vibes I got from company recruiters, and printed out more
résumés and visual material on the spot. There was a lot of room for
improvement on the visual side of things; very few candidates made posters or
good visuals, so hacking the fair might be as easy as putting more effort into
this.

