The concept of traditional tech recruitment events for startups (one where startup booths are surrounded with crowds of people) is not working! matchNhack aims to address the issue of impersonal tech meets. Last week, I had the chance to meet up with Errol Lim, one of the organizers of matchNhack. In that brief lunch meeting, I’ve been convinced that events like matchNhack are the pioneers for future tech recruitment meet-ups.
Photo: The trio behind matchNhack: Errol Lim, Tan Kuan Yan and Chinab Chugh.
matchNhack comprises of matching and hacking. The matching provides startups and developers the chance to engage in uninterrupted interaction sessions of 15 minutes each to build synergy between them. The hacking that follows empower this synergy further by getting the developers to work with startups. By doing this, developers can understand more about startups and facilitate possibile recruitment. Instead of throwing tests at developers to see if they are competent, work with them for a few hours to see if they fit the working culture!
Sebastian: What is it that you missed at other events that made you want to start up Matchnhack?
Errol: The concept of traditional tech recruitment events for startups (one where startup booths are surrounded with crowds of people) has been so ingrained into most people as an effective events-managing way that it was difficult to decide whether it was missing anything at all.
Based on empirical research that we have done through attending startup related events in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin and London; we found the two major “misses”, which we would like to address through matchNhack.
Firstly, job seekers face the problem of going through a very impersonal recruitment process. One that involves no-replies, and which is absent of face-to-face interaction. This contributes to the issue of job seekers sometimes facing the problem of having a mismatch of interest and passion in the startup that they are employed in.
Secondly, there is a general lack of people who possess the required specific technical expertise for startup companies, which tells us that something is truly missing in this equation. Furthermore, from our conversations with multiple startups, we found out that one of the biggest problems faced by startups is a conflict of culture which could compromise productivity and damage future dealings.
Sebastian: How can you attract the best tech people to your event? What are the best ways to communicate your business ideas to get tech people excited?
Errol: Albert Einstein once said that the act of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. We attract people who do not want to be rendered ‘insane’ by starting to put some changes to the old recruitment concept!
We believe that focused and uninterrupted interaction will help prospective employer and employee make smart choices. The key is ‘focus’. This is because having a focused event provides relevancy in meetups. You talk to people who matter. Moreover, the uninterrupted sessions allow for thorough communication that would build a synergy between people.
A way we attract tech people and startups to participate with us is through empathy because most of them understand the problems that we are trying to solve. We communicate our business ideas through various offline and online means. The best way of communication we feel is personally through face-to-face interaction. This trumps digital solutions because of the numerous social cues that are exhibited in personal physical meetups. We do this by getting involved with the local startup culture as much as we can. I think I speak for my team of 3 when I say that we are very fortunate to have met so many brilliant people from the startup scene here who have not only encouraged us, but also supported us and assisted as.
Photo: From Startup Weekend Copenhagen
matchNhack comprises of matching and hacking. The matching provides startups and developers the chance to engage in uninterrupted interaction sessions of 15 minutes each to build synergy between them. The hacking that follows empower this synergy further by getting the developers to work with startups. By doing this, developers can understand more about startups and increase the possibility of recruitment. Instead of throwing tests at developers to see if they are competent, work with them for a few hours to see if they fit your working culture!
Ultimately, we aim to establish offline matching events which will focus on matching startups to interested techies with the support of our online matching tools.This concept of combining both offline and online job services in a focused manner is very rare in the market.
matchNhack website: http://stockholm.matchnhack.com/
SOINK event link: http://soink.se/ai1ec_event/matchnhack/