My name is Jaclyn Ling and I'm the co-founder/CEO of Hatchways (https://hatchways.io). We make it easier to get your first job.
More specifically, we help talented engineers who may not shine in traditional recruitment processes (resume + multiple interview processes) get opportunities to prove themselves on the job. We do this by using a practical skill-based assessment as a proxy for the resume, and then matching them to startups for paid internships, as a way to reduce full-time interview processes.
As a new grad without relevant work experience, or as a career shifter without a relevant degree, getting a first job is very painful. You spend months preparing for interviews that don’t reflect the job, you send hundreds of resumes out that go unanswered, and when you actually get interviews, getting through five rounds successfully is like a lottery.
I’ve been interested in this problem for a long time because of my own early struggles trying to get a job. I graduated from a foreign university (Canada), had a subpar GPA, and I don’t perform well in high-pressured style interviews. Somehow, I networked my way into getting interviews at all my “dream” companies. But I got rejected at every one of them and to this day, I’ve never gotten a job I’ve interviewed for. It deeply affected my confidence.
However, since then I was fortunate enough to start and exit a startup. We built a fashion app that made personal outfit recommendations based on your likes, which eventually evolved into a chatbot that provided recommendations to hundreds of thousands of teens. We got acquired, and when I was working for the company that acquired us, I finally realized that the interviews I'd failed at hadn’t reflected my ability to do well on the job.
Mainstream hiring processes are biased towards those who went to great schools, had high GPAs, are native-English speaking, have worked at brand name companies, are extroverts and great networkers, etc. But there are so many talented people who don't fit that profile. We're excited to work on ways of hiring that give them a better chance.
Our practical skill-based assessments simulate tasks they’d actually be doing on the job (e.g. project-based work). Engineers on our end review the job seeker’s code to pick up signals that are important for on-the-job such as: ability to follow a spec, code quality and how quickly the task is completed. An employer pays 90% of the cost only when a full-time hire is made, so ensuring that candidates have job-ready skills is crucial for us. We've found that it works to give people the opportunity to prove themselves on the job: 80% of our internships have resulted in full-time employment immediately after.
So far, we have helped talented engineers get software jobs who would have otherwise been overlooked: baristas and Uber drivers turned engineers, candidates with no local experience (from Turkey, India, Russia, Ethiopia, Brazil etc.), and those with non-CS degrees (linguistics, philosophy, economics, MBA’s, dentistry, mechanical engineering etc.)
I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas about how we can improve this system and how we can best help talented people who shine once they get a chance to prove themselves. We would love to hear your personal experiences in this space too. Thank you!
I've worked on my own personal projects for 10 years, always looking for new challenges. I've dropped out of college after 2 years since it was crystal clear to me that I learned much more when working on my own stuff. I would learn new things in college, but at a much slower pace. I guess it was useful to learn calculus...
Anyway. Financially I never needed a fully paying job, so I could spend all my time doing my own research. From web security to docker to bsd to aws/gcp, I've managed to gather a lot of personal experience on many tools. Similarly, I went from PHP to Erlang to Haskell and back. For a brief period I even managed my own team!
But now, 10 years later, I just started looking for my first job and boy, do I realize my resume is empty! I have some code on github but none of my projects are famous or noteworthy. So far, most jobs I've applied for said I'm not qualified, and I don't blame them if all they looked at was my CV.
To solve this I'm working on (yet another) project, a distributed KV storage with built-in MQ capabilities, automatic clustering and transparent sharding, eventual consistency through the use of operation-based crdts, written in my favorite language for distributed systems (Elixir). Hopefully I can use it to get a job, but I think proving one's experience and knowledge should be easier.
Interestingly, if I had gotten a job when I dropped out (~6 years ago), I would probably be a specialist/senior engineer on some specific tool, but I wouldn't have the range of experience I do today.
Sorry if I digress, just wanted to share my non-traditional "case" (to be fair, you asked for it!)
Unfortunately, this industry tends to believe that implementing something like a R*-Tree or a Van-Embe-Boas Tree in less than 10 mins is an indicator of being qualified for a CRUD application-level job. If I were hiring right now, I would preferably take on more candidates that have open-source contributions over leetcoders because with open-source, you can obviously code, use version control, do code reviews and as a bonus, you can show your work at a meetup / conference. Leetcode/Hackerrank/Codility doesn't allow you to showcase your optimal solutions and even if you attempt to, you risk breaching their plagiarism rules. So those platforms don't allow you to showcase those soft skills.
Your experience alone tells me you are already qualified for senior roles that these companies are 'struggling' to fill.
Best of luck in your job search, and if there's anything that you think Hatchways can do to help please let us know.
While my contributions haven't been large in terms of LOC, nor have I added new features, I have identified, debugged and supplied patches for bugs.
I mean, I did this out of self interest, of course.
A defect in a certain DB lib on bulk copying with nulls would fail (uninitialized memory in the C portion of the lib). That took about 6 weeks of on again/off again attention. Debugging a C module in Python is a bit of a pain in the ass.
Fixing 64-bit compatibility in a Windows ODBC C++ wrapper was another. This was a pain because it required a line by line audit to make sure the correct types were used on every ODBC call.
A problem with some inline assembly using rtdsc as a highres timer reporting 200 years had elapsed in a few minutes. This took a long while to figure out and only stumbled into the cause of the bug. I was using the timer to measure socket timeouts. We were supposed to timeout after 30 seconds, but randomly, the timeout would trigger immediately. Stumbled into it because we were using the same timer to measure database queries. Found it odd that my logs were reporting queries were taking more than 200 years to complete, as I sat there reading the logs and seeing them complete.
Another was an issue of file handles being, no pun intended, mishandled on a .Net logging lib. I forget the details on this one. Dont think the file was being properly closed at exit?
Reported an issue with Boost DateTime overflowing on certain arithmetic situations. Coworker found the issue, but I narrowed down the issue, figured out a solution and reported upstream. Finding the wrong typeset in a template zoo like Boost is an arduous task.
I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, but my contributions haven't been much in the way of LOC. My contributions have been in the hours spent and expertise in finding the typically 1 or 2 lines that are wrong.
Having experience like that on a resume (and being able to talk knowledgeably about what you did and how you do it) do open doors. Having "found and fixed obscure bug" in a widely used OSS lib is nearly just as valuable as churning out lots of OSS code. Probably more noticeable if you fix bugs in an OSS project that lots of people/companies use, rather than churning out tons of lines in a project almost no one has heard of or uses (beyond the authors).
Edit: spelling
Addendum: providing bug fixes for 3rd party libs also demonstrates an ability to work with and understand code written by someone else, which is a valuable skill in of itself.
For the take-home portion of your assessment, consider paying the candidates for their time at an entry-level annualized salary. Many companies would balk at this idea because it is more expensive, but it demonstrates respect for the candidate.
Looking at the website, I don't see many details about what the assessment actually includes. I think it would help to be forthright about the structure of the assessment. Does Hatchways or the employer determine what the assignment is? How does one create a rubric for scoring a submission, and how is quality assurance conducted on the effectiveness of these rubrics?
I think it is only fair to tell candidates what area of expertise they are going to be tested on a week ahead of time, so they can prepare as they see fit. As for this bit: "ability to follow a spec, code quality and how quickly the task is completed" - it would make sense that different companies would place different weights on each of these factors, given that some of these parameters can often be at odds with each other.
Also - a particularly tricky area: how do you give feedback to candidates? Do you help them succeed? Is it enough that Hatchways gives the feedback, and not the employer to avoid lawsuits? Having done some take-homes in the past that were rejected, I received absolutely no feedback on what could have been done better or what was missing. Candidates who continually to struggle and don't pass any of the interviews aren't necessarily morons or inept - they just need someone to point them in the right direction.
Very much agree that candidates these days are not receiving candid feedback that they can action on after they interview with employers, and this is a whole other issue that needs to be solved.
"As a new grad without relevant work experience, or as a career shifter without a relevant degree, getting a first job is very painful" - Absolutely true.
I've spent a good chunk of the past few months mentoring a cousin to help him get his first job in Tech. He studied computer science, has a great GPA, can actually build stuff, but went to a not so well known college in California and didn't have any top tech company internships under his belt.
Very few companies responded to his applications (< 1% positive response) and he really had to hustle his way to get noticed (cold emails, milking his and my personal network for introductions to engineering managers, etc).
Companies like TripleByte seem to have shifted more towards the senior software engineer category, so I see tremendous value in targeting entry-level positions.
Questions: How do you plan to effectively source candidates that are able to pass your assessment? I think an interesting starting point would be to work with graduates of not well-known computer science programs. I think people generally under-estimate the difficulty of getting foot in the door at reputed Tech companies, when you didn't study at a top 10 CS program, and they would probably be the closest group, on average, to passing your technical assessment.
In my conversations with fast-growing companies in the Bay, I got the sense that the demand for senior software engineers far outstrips demand for entry-level / internship positions. Have you noticed the same trend, and as a result are you working mostly with already established larger companies?
Congrats again. Always happy to see more people tackle this problem. We need to create a more accessible, meritocratic pathway to work in Tech.
I think you're definitely right that a great place to target are programs outside of top 10 CS programs. I do believe we could bring the biggest benefit to these new grads. Do you have any suggestions on how to best reach these types of candidates?
We have also seen similar sentiment toward senior software engineers. I think something we've also noticed though is that there is such a demand for talent, that we've actually been able to convince employers to hire high potential candidates with no experience even though they were initially looking for a candidate with 2-3 years of experience.
Today, we actually focus on startups that have a challenge hiring themselves (i.e. because they lack large budgets and/or brand name), and so hiring "undervalued" talent is actually a great way for them to attract and hire talent!
Perhaps a combination of creating high quality content hyper targeted towards this audience to help them identify companies to work at, prepare for interviews and how to apply & reaching out to programming student organizations, and CS administrations at these schools to set up workshops, etc. Attending career fairs could also be fruitful (or even better, setting up great virtual career fairs for these schools)
College administrators are incentivized to work with you - the more of their students get placed at companies, the more valuable their program becomes in the eyes of future students. E.g. my college used to heavily market av. starting salary and % students placed at graduation.
> so hiring "undervalued" talent is actually a great way for them to attract and hire talent!
This is interesting. I buy that startups without a recruiting brand want to hire undervalued candidates, but I'm skeptical of their demand to hire undervalued AND entry-level candidates / interns, given their stage where they likely need more execution power with less time spent on mentorship / ramping up. Curious to see how targeting this segment pans out in the long-term, but I'm sure with effective sourcing and screening, you can shift the company segment if need be.
I wish you all the best with Hatchways 'jaclynmling .
One question: Do you help employers pick an appropriate salary that is not abusive but reflects the candidates lack of experience? I ask because I myself hired a career transitioner and I had no idea what a fair wage was to pay her, and neither did she. We eventually settled on a number that worked for me and her, but I still have no idea if it's fair.
Would you expand your program to include those experienced in the industry who don't (or won't) perform well in traditional tech interviews?
We are proud that we did this and is now part of our company culture. The internship program is core to our people ops and everyone in the company participates.
We call it the ROCKS program - https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks/
Today our success rate is 100% placement - either at RedCarpet or other startups in India. From what i hear, our internship program is now used as signalling by others (without depending on college name branding)
Joke : we internally describe the ROCKS program as "its like Lambda School, except people get paid to learn and get a job". Feel free to steal that ;)
Great website and mission. Wishing you all the best too!
I graduated out of UC Riverside, with a degree in Accounting, and if any of you are Asian-American in California, you'd know it's infamous nickname: University of Chinese Rejects. I'm willing to bet that my GPA was even lower than yours Jaclyn.
I managed to finagle my way into a UX/UI position at a major consulting firm and before that STRUGGLED to get nearly anybody to take me seriously. There's a lot of parallels to draw with Design to Engineering, most employers there are already making hiring decisions based on portfolio and aptitude, rather than grades. But still, the same platitudes of: great undergrad/masters, brand name companies, extroverts, etc all ring true. You're often focused on gaming the interview process and saying the right things, rather than being assessed as a measurement of your actual work output.
Anyway, the only way I got noticed was doing what you guys are offering as a much more legitimized service. I had to create major projects for myself that would demonstrate I had some literacy in how work would actually be done in the field, cold email + network with a bunch of companies just to get a foot in the door, create a portfolio without any help.
I think I'm one of the few that got extremely lucky in the end, but it really warms my heart that you guys are providing a service that really formalizes the career shifting process. I'll be rooting for your guys' success.
Question -- is there the possibility of an income-share model here? i.e. Hatchways does due diligence in initial assessment + matching and even pays for the candidate's internship at the company, and makes money only when the candidate gets a full-time offer as a pre-agreed upon percentage of the candidate's salary (for the first N months say).
We have in the past been able to receive government funding for some candidates that proved really positive for both candidates (received opportunities that they may otherwise not have had) and employers (to take more chances)