This month’s hackathon was another demonstration of Eightfold’s culture of innovation, with 47 teams of employees spanning multiple continents, participation from customers through our new community site, and 75+ ideas bubbling up.
How these hackathons work: Employees and customers come with ideas to improve Eightfold’s platform. We then divide up into small groups, with each spending several days hacking away, mocking up their solution. Five days later, each group presents their mock-up, with a total of more than four hours of live demos.
A panel of judges votes, with categories that include “most impactful,” “most popular” (as voted by Eightfold employees), “most innovative,” and “Ship It!”(for ideas that we can implement right away). Winners receive a place on the new Hackathon Wall of Fame at our headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and a set of rewards points to spend online on a gift card or merchandise.
A quick sprint
In this latest hackathon, employees and customers suggested ideas related to the interview feedback feature; onboarding; the Eightfold mobile app; language translations; and several dozen more across the Eightfold Talent Intelligence Platform.
The hackathon isn’t just for engineers. We have different skillsets and expertise that help development move quickly: product design, solutions engineers, marketers, even our chief economist and others provide input that shapes the outcome.
One participant in the event was Ranjith Nori, who started at Eightfold in May as a member of the technical staff (engineering). “I was pleasantly surprised by how many cool, innovative projects we’ve built in a span of just 2-4 days,” Nori says. “The passion with which the teams worked on the project is so visible in the final presentations.”
Manan Bordia, a new engineer at Eightfold, says he was “super lucky to get this opportunity within one month of joining Eightfold. Hackathons are probably the best way to know your skills and weaknesses in a short amount of time.”
A community event
Customers have been involved in our hackathons before. But, this time around was a first in that the new community site was used to gather and discuss our customers’ ideas. Our customers came up with some great ones to improve both the candidate experience as well as communication between hiring managers and recruiters.
“Participating in a hackathon with a vendor was a new experience,” says Matt Philipps, a talent technology leader for one of the customers who participated. “In the past all of our hackathons have been internal. It was a great way to give feedback and see if an enhancement can be done.”
Photo by Fahim Muntashir on Unsplash