The Bootcamp Interview Day
On Saturday 22nd July, School of Code got to meet the 35 people who had wowed us in their applications, character building task and phone interviews.
After weeks of reading names on databases and spreadsheets, talking to voices over phones and staring at pixelated characters, it was great to meet the faces belonging to those names, voices and pixels in person!
We gathered at thestudio in the morning and Chris gave a welcome talk to our budding programmers. This was followed by an icebreaker which we tried to make as painless as possible: the applicants had sheets with the characters on that they’d all made on the School of Code platform when they registered for the Bootcamp. We simply asked them to mingle and find who made which character! You should go and make your own to see what the hell we’re talking about — give it a try here.
The Marshmallow Challenge
We then ran the famous Marshmallow Challenge in teams of 4.
For those who aren’t familiar with this, each team is given:
- 20 sticks of spaghetti
- 90cm of tape
- 90cm of string
- 1 marshmallow
The challenge is to build the tallest free-standing structure with the marshmallow at the top in 18 minutes…
And the team with the tallest structure wins…
This challenge is a great way to assess teamwork, organisation and mindset in a fun and simple way — check out Tom Wujec’s TED talk about it here: https://www.tomwujec.com/design-projects/marshmallow-challenge/
This was followed by group written tasks and individual 1-on-1 interviews before a break for lunch! The applicants seemed to be relaxed and enjoying themselves, which is really what you want from an assessment centre to let people’s true personalities shine through. Seeing as we were interviewing for a place on a free course that we’re running, rather than a job at our company, we had to avoid slipping into ‘intimidating employer’ mode and simply try and judge: is this person right for the Bootcamp? And equally importantly, is the Bootcamp right for this person? This was only made more difficult by the overwhelmingly high standard of the finalists, which made us wish we had more than 16 places on the course! Despite big decisions having to be made, the quality and diversity of the group is a really promising step for tech, both in Birmingham and in general. Thanks to thestudio for having us and all the applicants for their time and effort.
We look forward to announcing the final places soon! #WatchThisSpace
