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Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

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Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#31

Post by uhoh-itsmaciek »

napsterbr wrote: post #18

I seriously hope you folks succeed. All the luck to you! Here's my non-traditional story: 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... Anyw…

Are there any meetups in your area that are relevant to your tech interests? That might be a good way to connect to the community in person and get your foot in the door.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#32

Post by why_only_15 »

koopuluri wrote: post #9

Hey Jaclyn, glad to hear you're tackling this space - one that I'm passionate about. Congrats on the launch! "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 a…

FWIW I got my first job through Triplebyte when I was 19 just out of high school with nothing on my resume but two internships, so it can still be extremely useful for new engineers.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#33

Post by phantom_oracle »

I don't mean to be critical of the other startups coming out of YC 2019, but some of the problems they are solving are so niche that they don't even register beyond metropolitan cities like San Francisco.

This is a difficult problem to solve because we've heard 100s of times about how hiring is broken.

The problem also scales beyond software engineering jobs because shitty hiring processes exist across most industries.

I hope you guys succeed, just so that you can show the world that hiring doesn't need to be the shitty (and sometimes elitist) process it has become.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#34

Post by 0az »

This is wonderful. Hopefully, I won't need to engage in as many of the obligatory endless internship applications.

Here's a some papercuts I found: some of the longer input field labels flow into the input text on my Moto G5 ("Explain a barrier...", etc.) as do some longer placeholders, and the save notification banners close fits neatly under the chat button. In addition, it took me a moment to parse the education section of skills: it isn't immediately obvious what a current student should put in the fields. It should also be possible to save filled fields in profile despite not filling out all mandatory fields.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#36

Post by quickthrower2 »

I love this idea. I struggled to get my first job because there seemed to be a "people skills" craze at the time which meant that my coding skills were being less valued by companies. I felt like I was interviewing to be an actor in some of them. So I like the idea of perfecting interviewing to select on what is really required.

1. How do you compare to Codility which also does the same kind of thing?

2. How do you convince companies to take on interns?

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#37

Post by jaclynmling »

ghiculescu wrote: post #35

Looks great. Signed up as an employer. I couldn’t see it on the site on mobile, but is there any info on pricing or locations covered? (I’m in Chicago) (And bu signed up I mean I followed the “contact us” CTA)

Thanks for signing up! We're still working on the dashboard side for employers so I'll be contacting you shortly to set up a meeting to share more.

High level-- we're trying to appeal to startups so our fees are much more accessible than traditional agency/recruiting fees!

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#38

Post by jaclynmling »

koopuluri wrote: post #23
jaclynmling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, thank you for sharing your cousin's story. 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…

> Do you have any suggestions on how to best reach these types of candidates? 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 (…

Great ideas-- never thought about virtual career fairs, but that sounds very interesting.

You're definitely right that undervalued AND entry-level candidates is a hard sell most of the time-- but more employers need to start giving out work experience rather than just expecting 2-3 years+ work experience. So hopefully we can find more unique ways to help solve this "experience gap" problem as we grow.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#39

Post by jaclynmling »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #33

I don't mean to be critical of the other startups coming out of YC 2019, but some of the problems they are solving are so niche that they don't even register beyond metropolitan cities like San Francisco. This is a difficult problem to solve because we've heard 100s of times about how hiring is broken. The problem also scales beyond software engineering jobs because shitty hiring processes exist across most industrie…

Thank you for this.

It's a very difficult problem to solve because many employers are stuck in their own ways and going to go to big /enterprise companies and telling them they can't look at resumes if they work with us is usually an easy no for them. But we're hoping that if more and more startups work with us and if we can prove that this model is more effective for growing tech startups than hopefully, the big guys will latch on too.

Re: Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews

#40

Post by jaclynmling »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #36

I love this idea. I struggled to get my first job because there seemed to be a "people skills" craze at the time which meant that my coding skills were being less valued by companies. I felt like I was interviewing to be an actor in some of them. So I like the idea of perfecting interviewing to select on what is really required. 1. How do you compare to Codility which also does the same kind of thing? 2. How do you c…

Great questions.

1. Codility (to my knowledge) skews more short coding challenges, whereas ours are more practical project-based assessments. We're trying to assess "can you build" versus testing computer science concepts 2. A few things have worked for us. One big thing is to position our candidates as fully capable of receiving full-time offers, but that if they move quicker (via one interview then an internship offer) you can sign with them quicker than they would finish up their full-time interviews, or else they may miss out on great talent. The other, is this "try before you buy" mentality around lowering the risk for full-time hiring. They already do it with students, why can't they do it with non-students?

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