Recruiting for UBC Launch Pad
An overview of how our application process works and why we have one
[UPDATE] Since this post was published, we have made our new recruitment goals, criteria, and processes available in our public handbook!
Launch Pad is a student-run software engineering club whose primary objective is to be the best space at UBC for students to meet other tech enthusiasts, build projects in a team setting, gain experience with professional development tools and principles, and share their knowledge with others (learn more about us in our other article!).
Twice a year, the Launch Pad leadership get together to prepare for the new recruiting season. We want to invite designers, developers, and strategy members to join our community and bring some new perspectives to our projects. Part of this process involves deciding on which students we want to invite. It is important that everyone feels comfortable in Launch Pad, and also that each member can help shape and improve our experiences together in the club.
Our recruiting process involves an online application and an interview. These two steps help us manage the volume of applicants while allowing students to talk to members of our team. In this article Rene (Strategy Lead), Jenny (Co-President), and I (Yichen, Co-President) will talk about the recruitment process for our Strategy, Design, and Developer roles.
🤔 Why do we even have a recruitment process?
This is probably one of our most frequently asked questions, so I’ll try to address this before diving into the specifics:
Software engineering is inherently a collaborative process — one that requires every contributor to work well with each other and to be on the same page as everyone else. We want to make sure that every member has the interest to learn, and to be able to not only absorb knowledge, but also to contribute with their own unique perspective.
More importantly, our leads put in a great deal of effort to manage teams, design projects, provide technical guidance, organize events, liaison with sponsors, and more. These leads are volunteers: we do not get paid, and there isn’t any particular recognition for taking up the role. Given the small number of people at Launch Pad who have time and willingness to do all this, we sadly can’t accept and adequately support everyone who applies.
One of our goals for the future is to be able to accept more members while still maintaining a good experience for everyone in the club, but for now the we unfortunately must have a recruitment process.
📬 Online Application
Students who wish to join Launch Pad begin with the online application. It is a form that allows you to showcase what you’ve accomplished in the past, and gives you the opportunity to talk about how you would make the most out of joining Launch Pad.
For designers, what we look for is an understanding of UX thinking and designing with a user-first approach. A built-out portfolio is no longer necessary, but examples of previous work that might be relevant to UI/UX helps us understand that the applicant is self-driven and passionate about design. Since the designer is also responsible for designing a project’s user interface, we look for graphic design, illustration, or any visual projects that an applicant has done in the past. Maybe you’ve attended a hackathon? A case competition? Brainstation workshops? Let us know!
For developers, we want to make sure applicants have the necessary technical baseline so that they can learn quickly from others and begin building projects. For each applicant, we take a look at their resume to gain a holistic view of their past experiences and interests. In addition to projects, we also look at code samples based on links provided. To save time for our applicants, we have removed our take-home technical project since last year, and instead we ask an open ended technical question to see what perspectives they may offer and what technical design experience they have.
For Strategy applicants, the online application is designed to get to know you and your skills from your past experiences. The evaluation criteria include passion, the relevance of experience, technical understanding, and communication skills. Being in the strategy team, the responsibilities are more diverse as aside from being on a team we are also responsible for the organizational tasks for the club.
🎤 Interview
If the student applicant seems to be well rounded and knowledgeable in their field, we will invite them to an interview in person. All of our members have gone through this interview, and it closely follows what one would expect in industry. We gave around 70 interviews last September, and although it is a huge time commitment for us, we want to get to know the applicant as much as we can for a fair decision.
For designers, we look for the same understanding of UX/UI and why it matters in our interviews. The difference between the interview and the online application, however, is to determine if a designer is able to apply their knowledge of UX/UI to real life scenarios. In such diverse teams composed of developers, strategy members and designers, we also want to know that a designer can adapt to their team and solve problems with them. The interviews are typically 20 minutes long and might include a simple design challenge or an app review.
For developers, we run interviews that we try to keep as fair and as unbiased as possible by ensuring that there are two Launch Pad members, at least one of whom is a tech lead, at each interview — if circumstances prevent two interviewers from joining, the applicant will always have the choice to reschedule. These interviews are usually 30 minutes long, where we spend some time getting to know the applicant before asking the applicant to complete a traditional whiteboard exercise. The goal of this interview is to get to know the applicant more as a person, and see how they would tackle and explain problems that they have not seen before.
For Strategy applicants, the interviews are 20 minutes long consisting of a mixture of behavioural and case questions. The behavioural questions were designed to evaluate applicants’ ability to take initiative, to think outside of the box, and to be a problem-solver; whereas the case question tests applicants’ understanding of Launch Pad’s value and their communication skill.
🏁 Decision
After the interviews are concluded, the interviewers get together and decide on who we want to invite to Launch Pad.
For designers, the online application is meant primarily to showcase an applicant’s UI design capabilities. The interview is more focused on gauging the applicant’s understanding of UX principles and processes. This will also let us know if a designer will be able to adapt to their team. Year level does not matter, especially considering that UBC does not have a proper UX/UI program.
For developers, we judge applicants based on their technical ability, problem solving, communication and perspective, and team fit (while making sure to take the applicant’s year level into consideration). As you can see from these criteria, it is very important to us how well you can work with other students. Software engineering is a collaborative process, and we expect our members to be welcoming, helpful, ambitious, and most importantly, eager to learn.
For Strategy applicants, applicants are judged based on their communication skills, experiences, and team fit. Since Launch Pad is a place that encourages people to make ideas happen, the purpose of the application process is not about having the “perfect answer”, but to help us understand how you can work in a team to make things happen, and hope to have you bring those passion into the team!
💭 Final Thoughts
Whether you’re looking to apply to Launch Pad, or just curious about the recruitment process for an engineering design team, I hope this was a helpful article!
Also please note that while we try to be as transparent as possible with our process and our club activities, we cannot give specific feedback for everyone due to the sheer volume of applicants. We are also aware that as with all application processes, there are flaws in our recruitment pipeline — as students, we are often busy or short on time, but we will try our best to improve the process where needed. It’s a big time commitment for our leadership team: we do not get paid and we don’t have “leads-only events”. We run the club because we love our community, and we enjoyed our experience enough that we wanted to give back what we can to the next generation!
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