Only one-percent chance of making it to the BizReach World Hackathon FinalWinning team：Composed of students from University of Cambridge and Indian Institute of Technology

BizReach, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) held its first global scale Hackathon event, ”BizReach World Hackathon” over 4 consecutive days, 26-29 September 2019 at Tokyo, gathering top student engineers from universities all over the world.

37 students out of 3,528 applicants from 54 countries were shortlisted via technical selection based on online coding test and resume screening, bringing the chance of qualifying for this hackathon to only 1% (one in a hundred). These finalists were made up of students from 13 countries (USA, China, UK, India, France, Romania, Russia, etc.) and 21 universities (Stanford University, University of Cambridge, Peking University, Indian Institute of Technology, etc.).

Teams made up of 1-5 members had to work on “developing a product that visualizes the capabilities of engineers using GitHub repository data (Java-based)”and competed for ideas and technical skills for a winning prize of US$10,000.

Hackathon Event Movie

<Summary of BizReach World Hackathon>

• Schedule: September 26-29, 2019
  • Day 1: Welcome party, project team formation
  • Day 2 – 3: Hacking
  • Day 4: Final presentation, award ceremony
• Theme: To develop a product that visualizes the abilities of an engineer by using GitHub repository data (Java-based)
• Prize: 1st Place, US$10,000 / 2nd Place, US$3,000 / 3rd Place, US$1,000
• Number of Participants: 3,528 / 54 countries
• Number of Finalists: 37 / 13 countries (Country of school)
• Number of Teams: 9 (1-5 members)
• Participating Schools (in no particular order)

Winning team composed of 4 students from University of Cambridge and IIT

Participants with strong track records in coding competitions, impressive academic achievements and rich internship experiences at top global companies were given a time frame of two days in the development of their prototype.

Under such keen competition, the winning team consisting of 4 members: An Indian from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a Swedish and two Japanese from the University of Cambridge (CU), pitched a prototype highly evaluated by the judges for its great originality and high level of technical skills, and hence won out over all opponent teams.

The team had created an indicator measuring the ability of an engineer by the impact of his work:

• Potential Impact (Java expertise, commits)
• Team Impact (use of the code by team members - defined as“inspiration coefficient”)
• World Impact (repository impact in the Java ecosystem).

For doing so, they defined an “inspiration coefficient” that depends on graph theory, as well as predicting the growth of an engineer’s potential impact using predictor ML algorithms.

After-event feedback: “Increased awareness of the charm of Japanese culture.” “Interested in working in Japan.”

The BizReach World Hackathon was planned and implemented with the aim of creating opportunities for top engineers around the world to be interested not only in BizReach but also in the IT industry in Japan and Tokyo. Post event satisfaction and feedback survey suggested that interaction with Japanese culture and people during the 4 days event have changed the students` impression towards Japan and Tokyo.

<Participants' Comments>

• Luckily, I think, we had a really good skill set, so I was able to learn a lot about what they were doing, which was really cool, and hopefully, they feel the same way about me. On the last day, when we ran our code and it worked, that was also very exciting! (California State University, Los Angeles 2020/5)
• Before I participated in this event, I thought all Japanese companies more or less work like traditional Japanese companies. But after this, I'm attracted to the company culture and I find living in Tokyo is also very nice. (Nanyang Technological University 2020/5)
• Previously, I had no idea about the work culture in Japan. After talking to people at BizReach, I got a better understanding. Because of this, I might choose to work in Japan next year. (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay 2020/6)
• It was my first time in Japan and seeing Tokyo up close made me like the culture even more. (University of Toronto 2022/6)
• I've learned that BizReach is tackling a lot of uniquely interesting challenges in Japan. It seems to have both a good mission as well as strong technical contributions. It reminds me of a lot of the American startups and unicorns that I am familiar with. (University of Texas at Austin 2020/5)

BizReach’s global recruitment practice brought in engineers from 13 countries

Since 2018, a global recruitment team led by the Vice President of Engineering (from Switzerland), has been actively hiring talented global engineers from all over the world. Up till now, BizReach global recruitment activities have involved visiting and sourcing from 8 countries and regions.

To further improve hiring success rate, starting 2019 May, BizReach adopted a new "Global Hiring Standard" which eliminates the salary cap of starting pay and offers a minimum annual salary of 6 million yen based on ability. Consequently, the company hires about 20 global engineers a year. Considering that BizReach does not provide services overseas, the company aims to heighten both recognition and presence among overseas engineers through investment in an all-around hiring approach.