Robert Walters Sponsors #LeedsHack by HAC100

Better late than never, the days just aren’t long enough!

Back in April Robert Walters had the honour of sponsoring LeedsHack by HAC100. For those of you that don’t know, HAC100 put on a variety of Hackathons in Manchester and Leeds including events specific to gaming and students.

This was the first venture into Leeds in a while and there was a great turn out, even on a rare sunny day in April! This was our second #Hackathon involvement after being heavily involved with Sprint24 Hackathon in Liverpool last year, however this didn’t dampen our amazement of the talent on show. It is a real credit to those involved what can be created in just 24 hours with only a limited brief as to what we were looking for.

Robert Walters Challenge

“The UK skills shortage within Digital and IT is well documented and has come about for a variety of reason. Technology is evolving at a rapid rate which our education system cannot keep up with. Less people are taking IT related degrees with more and more developers being self taught. There is a wealth of courses and classes out there and here at Robert Walter’s we offer excellent career advice

However, we think you can do better! Come up with a way to help people with their careers - whether that’s a career change or encouraging young people into the IT world to bridge the skills gap.”

Sky Bet Challenge

Rather than us challenging you, we want you to challenge us.

Create a series of puzzles, each one unlocking the next, the next being more complex than the last. Think CrystalMaze, Fort Boyard & Jungle Run, but for hackers.

Whether it’s a web-based room escape, a terminal program that needs hacking or a text-based adventure game, we want you to test us.

We’ll be judging the submissions on their difficulty, creativity and execution.

Most teams opted to try and win everything on offer by including aspects of both challenges; a gaming experience that enticed people into a career in technology. This yielded some fun gaming experiences and blew us away with the fact they were created in 24 hours!

Our Winners

Best in Show

The Winner of Best in Show was one of the teams who decided to tackle both the Robert Walters and the Skybet challenge. MD Lab created 'Stuck in the Matrix VR'.

This was a VR gaming experience created within Unity where your character is stuck in a computer and has to use their own knowledge to escape. The project itself is a puzzle game which tries to combine fun with learning by creating a series of puzzles. It creates fun challenges that everyone can try but, whilst doing so learn about how computers work. Within the game the user will learn about computer architecture and computer processors. You will use logic gates, defuse binary bombs and climb motherboards in order to fetch data. By failing the user learns and by completing the game the player can consider if they have the talent for problem solving and if they would be interested in pursuing a career in Computer Science. The game challenges you to learn about the fundamentals of computing, bridging the modern skills gap within technology. All the judges were extremely impressed by the submission by MD Lab!

Robert Walters Challenge

The winner of Robert Walters hack again came from a team who approached both Robert Walters' and Sky Bet’s challenges.

Hungary4Success created a web-based game ‘CIO Simulator’ that measures your skills in different fields of computer science, analyses the results and informs you of which sector you're most aligned to - making it easier to choose your ideal carrier within the industry.

It works by giving you a series of challenges, all taking you to the next level upon completion. If you are stuck they, they offer tips on how to pass on to the next level, offering a learning experience at the same time. On completion, you will have solved numerous puzzles in each area of Computer Science.

Of course the winners weren’t the only ones to create some outstanding products, here are some of the other teams who took on the Robert Walters Hack.

WhatName created a puzzle game aimed at young children who have no idea about programming, the game focuses on a series of puzzles each teaching a fundamental of programming.

T1m34Coffe came up with a chrome extension which translates job adverts to convey some humorous truth’s* about key works in a Job advert. My personal favourite ’Consultant’ – “We pimp you out” *Truth in the opinion of the T1m34coffe team

#15:Burger King Foot Lettuce built a service to "analyse" social media activity and use the information from posts, pages etc to automatically create a profile of a person and use it to suggest appropriate jobs and suggest new career ventures

**That first suggestion has an interesting salary – my email address is Jason.king@robertwalters.com ?? **

Batman Created a website call MyBookshelf.co.uk which I am sad to see is no longer live ?. What happened Batman? This is a virtual bookshelf for sharing books and career building. It gives the user the ability to recommend books and put them into something similar to a playlist. Senior figures in the industry could create a bookshelf of their most recommended books to learn from. I wonder what Books Oleg would recommend?

Hopefully we will see you at one of our events soon. We run a variety of events from technology meetups to round table lunches.

Photos courtesy of drewforsyth.com / HAC100