Crowdsourcing startup partners with Microsoft to promote innovation through coding

Crowdsourcing startup CrowdSourceHire is collaborating with Microsoft for the first time in order to run a competition showcasing how businesses can drive innovation by hiring programmers with original ideas.

The Code4Goal Coding Challenge, which is sponsored by Microsoft and will take place in February, is for programmers looking to promote their coding skills as well as solve issues faces by Australian companies.

Participants will be asked to develop a product that helps businesses sift through large volumes of resumes in order to help them save time and money – while at the same time assisting them in choosing the right candidate.

The competition’s judges include Shaun Clowes, director of product growth and analytics at Atlassian, and Andrew Coates, developer evangelist at Microsoft. The winner will be selected based on speed, accuracy, the cleanliness of their code as well as how innovative their solution is.

Co-founder of CrowdSourceHire, Des Hang, told StartupSmart the competition was about “identifying and providing a solution” for a problem faced by large companies.

“It’s also about promoting how you come up with a logical implementation to a solution – and that’s the part that is important for coding,” he says.

“At the end of the day you can always take a course and learn how to code. But if you want to be a good coder you need that experience to plug in your skills.”

Hang says he also hopes a few participants will get hired due to their work or at least build some strong connections with companies interested in being innovative.

“Raising the candidates’ profiles will be the whole outcome of this,” he says.

“We hope to help people in their career projection as well as any opportunities they may have as well.”

CrowdSourcedHire is currently taking part in the Telstra-backed Muru-D program. Hang says the startup is currently in talks with Grabtaxi, an Asian-based company that uses taxis instead of private drivers and is looking at taking on Uber.

“We’ve engaged with a couple of Telstra business units and engaged with a big startup – Grabtaxi – in south-east Asia. They are ramping up their hires and they want to use us to help them with that.”

CrowdSourcedHire uses crowdsourced industry experts to assess prospective hires for startups and other businesses that may not have the infrastructure in place to adequately vet candidates.

Registration for the Code4Goal Coding Challenge is currently open, with submissions closing on 2 February.

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