What happens when productivity, talent and innovation come together, bounded under a time limit?
Answer is “Hackathon”. The word seems all exciting by itself. It means ‘hacking’ and ‘marathon’ combined. And the fun part is, by ‘hacking’, we don’t actually mean performing illegal activities, but to construct a useful piece of software that enhances productivity.
So, did we achieve it this time?
Yes, this time as well. Every year we conduct Hackathon at Naukri where our entire technology team participates in it. This year we conducted our 3rd Hackathon for non-stop 24 hours in 24th of July. More than 150 people participated in the event to solve some of the biggest and important technology and business problems for Naukri.com
Preparations for the event started almost a month back where we meticulously planned every small detail of the event. People from various teams volunteered to help plan the event. We started with the Hackathon 3.0 logo, poster and T-Shirt designs. It was fun brainstorming about the theme, designs, logistics and even food.
We believe that apart from work, there must be some activities which make people produce something different from mainstream, and, icing on the cake, what if such activities are total fun to carry out?
So, our motto at any Hackathon is to have fun, non stop work and adding value to our business. With this goal in our mind, we finalized the day and invited participants from our entire 200+ strong technology team.
The response we got this time was amazing. More than 150 people volunteered for the event with their ideas and projects to be implemented on the event day. The scene was remarkable. Wherever we saw, there were people dressed in the T-Shirts made for this event and one could feel the excitement of Hackathon. To the organizers, the scene was more than comforting. And the participants, they could feel the Hackathon spirit in the air.
There were exciting cash prizes to be won and people were required to form teams of 1-4 members. There were some ground rules related to code submissions, timelines etc.
Some people participated alone in the event, this shows the enthusiasm the participants have regarding this event.
We put event posters in our offices well in advance, so that people were aware about the event and a sense of excitement could be felt.
On the D-day we put a projector in common area displaying the 24 hour countdown timer. At sharp 10 AM, hackathon was formally started and immediately people got into action.
There were brainstorming sessions, minds at work, serious thoughts given to various problems. People organized themselves into groups for discussions and advice. All the bean bags and space in meeting rooms was grabbed in a fraction of minute.
There were teams solving data mining problems, search problems, scalability challenges as well a building new and cool tools for better user engagement and growth. Through out the day, floor was buzzing with activity, excitement and energy. Managers were seen talking to various team members about their projects, work progress and any challenges they were facing. It seemed that Countdown timer was running faster than usual.
The best part was that people were seen talking to other team members and seeing their projects, and advising them as well. People helped the members of other teams as the event progressed. The senior members were ready to help if their subordinates required any.
Apart from that, there were fun activities going on. Guitar sessions, music etc. caught people’s eyes in between. People were actually enjoying the whole event along with working on their ideas. Many newcomers participated in the event as well.
Fresher’s experience:
Freshers were more than excited for this event because it was their first such event in the organization. They came with their own innovative ideas and tried to implement them, and yes, they succeeded. Though the freshers were relatively inexperienced, their enthusiasm was no less than others. The urge to win could be seen while they were working.
Some of the ideas such as
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Naukri Naksh: Implementation of Job Search on Map,
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JobSense: Displaying jobs as ads in various sites.
Seemed quite interesting.
After 24 hours there were many brave souls who kept on working on their projects and led to one of the most successful hackathon at Naukri.com
The projects that won were:
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JPM: Job Posting on Mobile
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Android Application Uninstall Tracking System
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Test Server Monitoring System/ Dashboard
Want to know what we do at Hackathon? Come work with us.
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