--- title: Virtual Hackathon Can Boost Your Engineering Recruitment Process description: In July, we launched a virtual hackathon as part of our engineering recruitment process. Read all about how we did it and the benefits here. image: https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/Virtual%20Hackathon%20Can%20Boost%20Your%20Engineering%20Recruitment.jpg --- [![Logo_SignatureLogo_07202021.jpg](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/Logo_SignatureLogo_07202021.jpg.png)](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/) - [Companies](https://www.virtualinternships.com/companies/) - [Host an Intern](https://www.virtualinternships.com/companies/) - [How It Works](https://www.virtualinternships.com/companies/how-it-works) - [FAQs](https://www.virtualinternships.com/companies/faqs) - [Educators](https://www.virtualinternships.com/#) - [Universities](https://www.virtualinternships.com/universities/) - [Governments](https://www.virtualinternships.com/governments/) - [Affiliates](https://www.virtualinternships.com/#) - [Interns](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns) - [Apply for Internships](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns/) - [How It Works](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns/how-it-works) - [Career Fields](https://www.virtualinternships.com/virtualinternships/career-fields/) - [Experiences](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns/experience) - [FAQs](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns/faqs) - Resources - [Blog](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/) - [About Us](https://www.virtualinternships.com/#) - [Our Mission](https://www.virtualinternships.com/our-mission/) - [Our Team](https://www.virtualinternships.com/our-team/) - [Join Us](https://www.virtualinternships.com/join-us/) - [Press](https://www.virtualinternships.com/press/) - [Contact Us](https://www.virtualinternships.com/contact-us/) [Companies](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/tag/companies) # How a Virtual Hackathon Can Boost Your Engineering Recruitment Process [Grace Homer](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/author/grace-homer) Jul 10, 2022 --- In July, we hosted a global virtual hackathon to champion our next generation of talent in tech!  The goal behind running the virtual hackathon was to adopt a unique way of finding candidates to expand our engineering team. The event was specifically targeted at those who are familiar with UI/UC and react technologies for front-end development.  Don’t worry, this article is less about tech jargon and more about why this is a very beneficial recruitment drive that innovative companies should consider. Stay with us!   ## What is a Hackathon? If you work or have worked within the tech industry before, you’ll likely be familiar with the term but you may still be wondering what exactly a hackathon entails.  Hackathons are events that bring together anyone from budding students to seasoned professionals, all with a common interest in programming, tech, and engineering, to collaborate for a short period of time on a project.  Hackathons have risen in popularity over recent years, and it’s easy to see why. They are exciting, usually take place over a 24-hour period, have great prizes, and are a chance to meet people from all walks of life as well as build your skills.    ## How is a Virtual Hackathon Different? The major difference is that these people are bought together online, within a community, rather than in-person. With the tech industry as advanced as it is nowadays, virtual hackathons are becoming increasingly more popular than in-person hackathons.    ## How Virtual Internships’ Hackathon Worked We set our hackathon date for 4th July and gave participants up midnight on 3rd July to register to join. We invited tech enthusiasts from all over the world to join. All they needed to have was a keen interest in UI/UX and react technologies for front-end development. Skill level, qualifications, location, education, and background were not part of the criteria.  With 78 participants registered to take part, we launched our hackathon event.   ### Round 1 The first round consisted of a multiple-choice and timed quiz on React and Javascript fundamentals. **Participants who successfully completed round 1:** 27   ### Round 2 The second round was an activity-based task where participants had 72 hours to solve a technical problem.  **Participants who successfully completed round 2:** 1 – our lucky winner!   ### Our Hackathon Winner – Francis Kilkex Over the course of this four-day event, we thoroughly enjoyed interacting with tech enthusiasts from all over the world and bringing them together to network, build skills, and advance their careers.  Of the 78 participants who took part, our winner was a 20-year-old, final-year college student from Nairobi, Francis Kilkex. Alongside cash prizes for winners and runners-up, we offered an exciting internship to our winner. Francis took the opportunity to do a three-month internship with our product and engineering team and we’re delighted to have him on board to expedite his growth in this industry. **Congrats, Francis!** ![infographic to announce our virtual hackathon winner](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Vi-hackathon-Winners-1.jpg?width=623&height=623&name=Vi-hackathon-Winners-1.jpg "virtual hackathon")   ## Benefits of Including a Hackathon in Your Engineering Recruitment Process As we outline at the start of this article, we wanted to put a spin on our [engineering hiring process](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/our-engineering-hiring-process) and trial this unique way of finding talent that may not have otherwise crossed our path.  We encourage other innovative companies looking to diversify [how they hire](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/how-we-hire-at-virtual-internships) to try a hackathon.  These are the top benefits we identified in hosting our hackathon: ### 1. Accessibility and Removing Recruitment Bias As long as you had a genuine interest in tech, we had no criteria for our hackathon. We simply wanted tech enthusiasts to bring their skills and unique way of thinking to the table and impress us!  We’re all about diversity and inclusion at Virtual Internships, as you’ll see in our [VI-P Guide](http://www.virtualinternships.com/careers), the open source guide on what it’s like to work here.  Running an event like this allowed us to present an opportunity to any person, anywhere in the world, based solely on their skills, and not their background, qualifications, or location.    ### 2. Cultural Alignment Everyone at Virtual Internships is encouraged to take a leap of faith, leave their comfort zone, and be challenged on a daily basis because that’s how we grow, learn, and develop.  This hackathon event evolved around encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone and approach problems in a different way. It’s highly likely that the person you end up hiring from this process will have a problem-solving mindset with a zest for taking on new challenges!   ### 3. Different Ways of Problem Solving The beauty of remote work is working with a global team with people from a variety of different cultures, lifestyles, and backgrounds.  As we said above, hackathons are based on problem-solving. But, the way in which you solve and approach a problem can be completely different depending on a variety of factors that have led you to be who you are.  This was one of the main things we were excited to see!   ## Check Out Our Open Roles Are you looking for a new role in an exciting EdTech scale-up on a mission to help young people pursue their dream global careers, [check out our open roles here!](http://www.virtualinternships.com/careers) Alternatively, if you’re a **student, graduate or career switcher** looking to gain global experience on a [**remote internship in the engineering**](https://www.virtualinternships.com/interns/career-fields/engineering-internships/) career field (or any of our other career fields, for that matter), [find out more here](https://www.virtualinternships.com/university-graduate-program)!   Read More: - [How to Hire at Virtual Internships](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/how-we-hire-at-virtual-internships) - [Explaining: Our Engineering Hiring Process at Virtual Internships](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/our-engineering-hiring-process) [![Visit Our Website](https://hubspot-no-cache-eu1-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/cta/default/26293027/9611f785-3893-434a-b13d-8e38e8d50dca.png)](https://hubspot-cta-redirect-eu1-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/cta/redirect/26293027/9611f785-3893-434a-b13d-8e38e8d50dca) [![Share on facebook](https://7528309.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528309/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-web-default-modules_hubspot/img/facebook-color.png?width=24&name=facebook-color.png)](https://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook) [![Share on linkedin](https://7528302.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528302/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-web-default-modules_hubspot/img/linkedin-color.png?width=24&name=linkedin-color.png)](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dlinkedin) [![Share on twitter](https://7528304.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528304/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-web-default-modules_hubspot/img/twitter-color.png?width=24&name=twitter-color.png)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dtwitter&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dtwitter&source=tweetbutton&text=) [![Share on pinterest](https://7528311.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528311/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-web-default-modules_hubspot/img/pinterest-color.png?width=24&name=pinterest-color.png)](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dpinterest&media=) [![Share on email](https://7528311.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hub/7528311/hubfs/raw_assets/public/mV0_d-web-default-modules_hubspot/img/email-color.png?width=24&name=email-color.png)](mailto:?subject=Check+out+https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Demail&body=Check+out+https%3A%2F%2Fblog.virtualinternships.com%2Fhackathon-engineering-recruitment%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Demail) [Companies](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/tag/companies) ## Similar posts Life at Virtual Internships ### [Our Hiring Process at Virtual Internships](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/how-we-hire-at-virtual-internships) We value transparency, in fact, it’s one of our core values that you can read all about in this blog along with our exact hiring process. Grace Homer Jul 25, 2022 Events ### [NAFSA 2022: Meet Virtual Internships at the International Education Event of the Year!](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/nafsa-2022) The Virtual Internships team will be attending the NAFSA 2022. Find out what's changed since the last NAFS and the solutions we provide here. Virtual Internships May 4, 2022 Events ### [NAFSA22: Looking Back on a Great Week of Making Global Connections](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/look-back-on-nafsa22) After 3 years, Virtual Internships finally reunited at the NAFSA22 Conference. Read our reflection on highlighted event moments here. Grace Homer Jun 9, 2022 ![Vi](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/Landing%20Page/vi-lite.png) As featured on: ![BBC](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/BBC%20Logo.png) ![Business Leader](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/Business%20Leader%20Logo.png) ![EdTechX](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/EdTechX%20Logo.png) ![Forbes](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/Forbes%20Logo.png) ![Inside Higher Ed](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/Inside%20Higher%20Ed%20Logo.png) ![TechCrunch](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/TechCrunch%20Logo.png) ![The PIE](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/The%20PIE%20Logo.png) ![The Times](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/The%20Times%20Logo.png) ![Times Higher Education](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/footer-featured-logos/Times%20Higher%20Education%20Logo.png) - [Companies](https://www.virtualinternships.com/companies/) - [Educators](https://virtualinternships.com/universities/) - [Interns](https://virtualinternships.com/interns/) - [Our Mission](https://virtualinternships.com/our-mission/) - [Our Team](https://virtualinternships.com/our-team/) - [Join Us](https://virtualinternships.com/join-us/) - [Press](https://virtualinternships.com/press/) - [Blog](https://blog.virtualinternships.com/) - [Contact Us](https://virtualinternships.com/contact-us/) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/virtualintern/) - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/virtualinternships/) - [Twitter](https://twitter.com/onlineinterns) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtual-internships) - [Tiktok](https://www.tiktok.com/@virtualinternships) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/VirtualInternships) © 2024 Virtual Internships. All right reserved. - [Privacy Policy](https://www.virtualinternships.com/policies/privacy) - [Terms of Service](https://www.virtualinternships.com/policies) ![](https://px.ads.linkedin.com/collect/?pid=4951673&fmt=gif) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Grace Homer", "url" : "https://blog.virtualinternships.com/author/grace-homer" }, "dateModified" : "2024-01-29T03:39:37.462Z", "datePublished" : "2022-07-10T05:15:29.000Z", "headline" : "Virtual Hackathon Can Boost Your Engineering Recruitment Process", "image" : [ "https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/Virtual%20Hackathon%20Can%20Boost%20Your%20Engineering%20Recruitment.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hackathon-engineering-recruitment", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://blog.virtualinternships.com/hubfs/Logo_SignatureLogo_07202021.jpg.png" }, "name" : "Virtual Internships" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "Article", "articleBody" : "In July, we hosted a global virtual hackathon to champion our next generation of talent in tech!

\n\n

The goal behind running the virtual hackathon was to adopt a unique way of finding candidates to expand our engineering team. The event was specifically targeted at those who are familiar with UI/UC and react technologies for front-end development.

\n

Don’t worry, this article is less about tech jargon and more about why this is a very beneficial recruitment drive that innovative companies should consider. Stay with us!

\n

\n

What is a Hackathon?

\n

If you work or have worked within the tech industry before, you’ll likely be familiar with the term but you may still be wondering what exactly a hackathon entails.

\n

Hackathons are events that bring together anyone from budding students to seasoned professionals, all with a common interest in programming, tech, and engineering, to collaborate for a short period of time on a project.

\n

Hackathons have risen in popularity over recent years, and it’s easy to see why. They are exciting, usually take place over a 24-hour period, have great prizes, and are a chance to meet people from all walks of life as well as build your skills.

\n

\n

How is a Virtual Hackathon Different?

\n

The major difference is that these people are bought together online, within a community, rather than in-person. With the tech industry as advanced as it is nowadays, virtual hackathons are becoming increasingly more popular than in-person hackathons.

\n

\n

How Virtual Internships’ Hackathon Worked

\n

We set our hackathon date for 4th July and gave participants up midnight on 3rd July to register to join. We invited tech enthusiasts from all over the world to join. All they needed to have was a keen interest in UI/UX and react technologies for front-end development. Skill level, qualifications, location, education, and background were not part of the criteria.

\n

With 78 participants registered to take part, we launched our hackathon event.

\n

\n

Round 1

\n

The first round consisted of a multiple-choice and timed quiz on React and Javascript fundamentals.

\n

Participants who successfully completed round 1: 27

\n

\n

Round 2

\n

The second round was an activity-based task where participants had 72 hours to solve a technical problem.

\n

Participants who successfully completed round 2: 1 – our lucky winner!

\n

\n

Our Hackathon Winner – Francis Kilkex

\n

Over the course of this four-day event, we thoroughly enjoyed interacting with tech enthusiasts from all over the world and bringing them together to network, build skills, and advance their careers.

\n

Of the 78 participants who took part, our winner was a 20-year-old, final-year college student from Nairobi, Francis Kilkex.

\n

Alongside cash prizes for winners and runners-up, we offered an exciting internship to our winner. Francis took the opportunity to do a three-month internship with our product and engineering team and we’re delighted to have him on board to expedite his growth in this industry.

\n

Congrats, Francis!

\n

\"infographic

\n

\n

Benefits of Including a Hackathon in Your Engineering Recruitment Process

\n

As we outline at the start of this article, we wanted to put a spin on our engineering hiring process and trial this unique way of finding talent that may not have otherwise crossed our path.

\n

We encourage other innovative companies looking to diversify how they hire to try a hackathon.

\n

These are the top benefits we identified in hosting our hackathon:

\n

\n

1. Accessibility and Removing Recruitment Bias

\n

As long as you had a genuine interest in tech, we had no criteria for our hackathon. We simply wanted tech enthusiasts to bring their skills and unique way of thinking to the table and impress us!

\n

We’re all about diversity and inclusion at Virtual Internships, as you’ll see in our VI-P Guide, the open source guide on what it’s like to work here.

\n

Running an event like this allowed us to present an opportunity to any person, anywhere in the world, based solely on their skills, and not their background, qualifications, or location.

\n

\n

2. Cultural Alignment

\n

Everyone at Virtual Internships is encouraged to take a leap of faith, leave their comfort zone, and be challenged on a daily basis because that’s how we grow, learn, and develop.

\n

This hackathon event evolved around encouraging people to step out of their comfort zone and approach problems in a different way.

\n

It’s highly likely that the person you end up hiring from this process will have a problem-solving mindset with a zest for taking on new challenges!

\n

\n

3. Different Ways of Problem Solving

\n

The beauty of remote work is working with a global team with people from a variety of different cultures, lifestyles, and backgrounds.

\n

As we said above, hackathons are based on problem-solving. But, the way in which you solve and approach a problem can be completely different depending on a variety of factors that have led you to be who you are.

\n

This was one of the main things we were excited to see!

\n

\n

Check Out Our Open Roles

\n

Are you looking for a new role in an exciting EdTech scale-up on a mission to help young people pursue their dream global careers, check out our open roles here!

\n

Alternatively, if you’re a student, graduate or career switcher looking to gain global experience on a remote internship in the engineering career field (or any of our other career fields, for that matter), find out more here!

\n

\n

Read More:

\n