Challenge for $ 500. Part two, about money

In the last post (tl; dr method of finding employees through contests with cash prizes on the Internet, rather than the classical scheme “resume, personnel department, work”), discussion of the profitability of the approach began with the first comment, namely, is it not too expensive? will cost. I will try to answer this question, well, and generally tell you what happened.

Let me remind you in brief general provisions:

• Everyone is offered a task in the C language;
• A programmer who sends a good solution the first time gets $ 500, without any obligations;
• From the second or more times - $ 250;
• Employment (including remote work) is offered in the presence of mutual sympathy;
• No summaries, cold mailings on LinkedIn, etc. bullshit.

In August last year, the aforementioned employee search event became international (before that, only residents of one very small country could participate).
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Results for half a year

Prize statistics: 14 people sent a good solution, another four received referral payments (the referral system works only through mail), only 18 × $ 250 = $ 4500

As a result, four programmers were hired. Many guys refused to cooperate, because did not need work. This partly confirms the effectiveness of the method: we have found good, working programmers. (And how to lure them out of Google and other Microsoft - let them break their head in accounting now.)

At least one winner was seen in (conditional) cheating - he sent a good compilation of answers from the Stack Overflow forum. However, he received the prize, everything is fair.

Total in asset:

• The company found several cool specialists at once;
• Without performing the usual "personnel" ceremonies, in particular, without reading kilotons of summaries and without interviewing each and every one;
• Also, the company still has contacts “for the future” - applicants who almost came up.

Is it good or bad?

Estimate the costs, which amounted to $ 4,500 in six months, can be compared with the "traditional" employee search services (recruitment agencies). On the territory of the former USSR, agencies want compensation for their services in the amount of 1-3 salaries of a potential employee (it is easy to guess what is obtained, on average, more than $ 4,500 per person ).

It turns out that handing out money to programmers is not only pleasant (giving presents is generally cool), but also beneficial. The method is recognized as effective.

The most important thing

The event continues , and those who want to get under the distribution of boring money and / or interesting work have every reason to do so.

And I will again try to answer your questions in a shuttle manner, transmitting them to the company management and back.