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Meet your potential future employer at Newcastle Hackathon

A technology event by a leading local software firm looking for potential stars of its future workforce, will be held in Newcastle next week.

Scott Logic, a growing consultancy headquartered at St James’ Gate in the city, has been partnering with universities across the country since 2013 to host undergraduate Hackathons, the first of which, with Newcastle University, attracted just six competitors.

But the next experience-driven Newcastle Coding Challenge, which involves an intense period of collaborative coding, will be held at Newcastle University on Saturday, February 6th in the Lindisfarne Room, King’s Road Centre between 12noon and 4pm. It has so far attracted almost 40 students to take part, but there’s still room for more.

One of the firm’s software developers, 22-year-old Sam Burnstone, attended the very first Scott Logic Hackathon after hearing about it from a lecturer, and found it helped him decide whether to apply for its Graduate Programme.

He explained: “The Hackathon was a really useful learning experience. It improved my understanding of the inner workings of software development, as well as getting a good impression of what it might be like to work at Scott Logic.”

Sam said it was his curiosity about the company that attracted him to take part in the event, and he subsequently joined as a Graduate Developer in August 2014.

He went on: “I’d seen Scott Logic at a few careers events and wanted to find out more about what the business did and how a software development firm works. We were tasked with creating an algorithm that buys shares and the idea was that in teams we’d work to make a virtual profit.

“It was pressured in a positive way as it forced you to work as a team, which was great as in computer science degrees you often work in isolation. It made you step out of your comfort zone, but at the same time, there were plenty of staff on hand to ensure you had a really high level of support throughout.”

At the Newcastle event, which is being run in conjunction with the university’s Computer and Technology Society, or NUCATS, competitors will battle it out in teams of up to six, for not only the honour of the title of course champions, but also for some sought-after prizes before chatting with staff from the firm over refreshments.

Recruitment Manager John Wright said: “We know how daunting it can be to approach a prospective employer at a careers fair, when you’re vying for their attention against hundreds of other potential applicants.

“We also realise it can be difficult to get a real understanding of the culture of a company in such a formal setting, so in addition to exhibiting at fairs and conferences throughout the year, we devised our Hackathon.

“We’re incredibly proud it has grown so quickly, and that’s down to our strong partnerships with universities such as Newcastle. We’d like to thank staff and volunteers at the university for helping us plan the event and we’re really looking forward to meeting the students on the day.”

To register to take part in the Newcastle Coding Challenge, students can visit http://info.scottlogic.com/newcastlecodingchallenge.

Scott Logic’s 2016 internship and graduate programmes for 2016 are open to applicants. Roles available include those in software development, software testing and User Experience (UX) design. For more information on Scott Logic and its services, visit scottlogic.com.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jule Wilson .