Ask HN: Hacker Fair Stories and Feedback

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.

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.

Hey Matty! Thanks for the complete review, very helpful! We'll make sure to improve for the next one. Also thanks for the kind words.

... and yes, I finally got some sleep :)

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.

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.