War for Talent — Could This Super Weapon Be the Answer to Your Woes?
Are you and your team prepared for war? No, we’re not talking about geopolitical conflicts but rather the grave situation that many businesses are caught in today — the war for tech talent.
The tech talent war, as it is otherwise known, is not a new problem. In fact, it’s been more than a decade since half of the world’s CEOs expressed concerns about the dearth of digitally-savvy talent. And it’s only gotten worse since COVID.
While this may be a global problem, the truth is that in Singapore — the tech talent war is intensifying. Earlier this year, it was reported that the average salaries for software engineers reached an all-time high after increasing by up to 32%.
Many large companies are simply chucking large sums of money into their talent acquisition funnels. But what about small and medium companies? How could you effectively compete with these big firms to get the right talent if you’re not armed with a massive war chest of money? Read on to discover the super weapon that you could use to acquire and nurture quality tech talent without having to pay through your nose.
Challenge
The Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) is a top-notch technology organisation that drives innovation and delivers state-of-the-art capabilities to the defence force in Singapore.
Over the years, they’ve noticed that hiring tech talent has become increasingly challenging. To combat this problem, they asked themselves — Why not nurture and discover our own first-class tech talent?
Solution
This question gave rise to “The BrainHack” hackathon series. Based on their observations, hackathons were the perfect way to garner interest in areas such as cyber security, space technologies, AI, and more. Subsequently, winners of these hackathons could then be primed for the roles DSTA needed filling.
Hence, in 2021, BrainHack CODE_EXP, a virtual hackathon, took shape. It aimed to identify outstanding mobile developers and nurture them for the future. The problem statement was highly relevant: “How do we build an app that can help people cope during the COVID-19 pandemic?”
Pre-Hackathon Training
A week before the hackathon, all 800 participants who signed up for the hackathon underwent a rigorous 12-hour-long mobile development crash course. We covered the essentials of React Native (a platform that allows you to develop both iOS and Android apps). Across the 800 participants, a total of 185 teams were formed and each expressed a burning desire to master app development in order to build their winning apps!
Let the Games Begin!
By the time the 3-day hackathon commenced, all 185 teams were buzzing with exciting ideas for their apps. The Discord channels we set up for them boomed with innumerable messages.
Ed (a technical query answering system we organised specifically for this hackathon) also got flooded with countless questions. The competitive spirit was flaring up everywhere!
Each group expeditiously acquainted themselves with their respective mentors and kickstarted their design thinking process. Tapping on empathy, they identified common challenges Singaporeans were facing during the pandemic. Thereafter, they delved deeper into these pain points to define a clear and targeted problem they hoped to solve.
Once the problem was defined, that’s when the real work began. Teams set up multiple virtual brainstorming sessions to zealously discuss their most promising ideas. Meanwhile, they also constructed minimum viable products (MVPs) to garner concrete feedback from their mentors.
Outcomes
As the 3 days came to an end, our participants submitted their completed apps for grading. We received a total of 128 apps, a nearly 70% success rate! We were awestruck by the sheer hard work that every team displayed.
Not only did many of the teams build fully functional apps, but they also incorporated advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics and augmented reality / virtual reality into their applications.
Apps submitted ranged from queuing apps to online games that introduced COVID-19 safety regulations in an amusing fashion.
However, there was one submission in particular that blew all of us away. It was a virtual tour guide app that incorporated augmented reality (AR) to encourage visitors to explore Singapore’s most iconic tourist attractions even during COVID-19.
A screenshot of the augmented reality app, Hello World, created by Team Techtris.
As the group presented their app, we were stunned by how realistic the Merlion and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel looked on their screens. They built the entire city skyline using their AR-based app and quite naturally clinched first place.
A screenshot of the augmented reality Marina Bay Sands and Merlion created by the winning team.
It goes without saying that hackathons are an effective way to uncover the brightest and most talented individuals while discovering extraordinary ideas worth developing further.
If you see the value of hackathons in your talent acquisition strategy and wish to organise one for your workplace, do reach out to us at hello@tk.sg! Our goal is to help you identify high-performing talents that could be tapped into and nurtured further, and we find hackathons to be a perfect way to accomplish this.