In the past, most companies sourced developers from top universities, like Stanford, MIT, and UC Berkeley. Today, technical recruiters and hiring managers, from big and small companies, are finding promising candidates in unconventional talent pools.
One unconventional talent pool that is churning out skilled developers is top coding bootcamps in the US.
At HackerRank, we help companies find the right developer based on their skills. Not pedigree. Using practical coding challenges, employers can standardize the way they measure skills. This is the evolution toward skills-based hiring. We full-heartedly believe that companies can find and hire candidates from top coding schools in the US who have the same skill set as candidates from a top 10 school.
In 2015, HackerRank partnered with The White House and hosted a nationwide online hackathon, to promote their TechHire Initiative. 'Untraditional' developers from underrepresented cities participated and solved coding challenges.
During the hackathon, we became curious about the skills of developers from top coding bootcamps in the US and wondered: Which bootcamps performed the strongest on HackerRank coding challenges?
How we determined the top coding bootcamps in the US
TechHire, which is powered by the Opportunity@Work nonprofit, targeted developer communities in 9 states. Fifteen bootcamps participated, and The Software Guild stood out with the most participants and strongest developers.
We looked at bootcamps with the most developers who made it to the 70th percentile. Dozens of employers sponsored the event in kind, and we sent them the contact info of the 70th percentile.
Which languages were most popular in the TechHire Hackathon?
It turns out, bootcamps focused on Javascript more so than traditional colleges. Javascript’s popularity has been skyrocketing. Because it's - well - everywhere. It’s used by 94% of all websites.
"Bootcamps have a limited amount of time to teach, and Javascript is a more practical skill in the industry," says Dr. Heraldo Memelli, the lead content curator at HackerRank. "Javascript has increasingly become one of the most sought after skills. It's a tool that new developers can use to build things fast."
The Bottom Line
Strong developers can come from anywhere, from unlikely towns and unlikely backgrounds. It's hard to measure someone's skills based on a certificate of completion. Standardized skill assessment is expanding the talent pool for companies and uncovering untraditional talent.
Untraditional developers may not look as good on paper. But they could have the drive, ability, and skills to do the job. All you have to do is give them the opportunity to prove their skills to you first.
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