Best practices for getting sponsors for your hackathon

alexeymk.com

35 pointsAlexeyMK3 comments

Liked this post and certainly agree with the advice.

If anyone's planning a hackathon in Seattle, we'd love to contribute/sponsor and possibly even host (if it's after-hours or on a weekend). Just drop me a line - rand at seomoz dot org

Are resumes collected at a hackathon worth that much to a recruiter? It's an honest question, I'm trying to find some good devs and haven't tried this approach yet. I always assumed that the majority of people attending the hackathons are either employed in job they love (startup) or aren't looking (their own startup). I know they are the best and brightest to hire, but does anyone have any feedback on if this works?

I'm not sure whether it would work in general, but at a university hackathon, making the event a way to 'prove yourself to recruiters' helped us get a good turn-out.

We didn't collect resumes during the hackathon (and in general, we didn't permit any 'company pitches'), but about a week or two afterwards we sent out an email saying "if you'd be interested in working at any of our sponsors (http://pennapps.com/our-sponsors/), send us your resume and we'll forward it on." This lead to (both times we've done this) about 50% resume turnout.

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