Sonaksh Singh

In recent years, multiple avenues have opened up for successful tech hiring and hackathons are one of everyone’s favorites. Apart from helping various tech corporations gain skilled employees, hackathons have also helped generate great ideas that furthered the growth of businesses.

Typically hackathons are external, meaning they are held for individuals who are not part of the company but are seeking to be. On the other hand, internal hackathons are held for individuals who are a part of the company. The duration of these hackathons can be anywhere from a few hours to a few days and are held for several reasons, such as generating innovative ideas and products while improving employee engagement.

What are Internal hackathons?

In simple words, internal hackathons are tech-related events held by companies to drive internal engagement, break the clutter, promote skill development, and help boost innovation within the company.

After a hackathon ends, the winner is decided by a board of jury and is offered a variety of rewards for the same. It could either be an offer to bring their product or software to life or it could be a monetary reward.

Also, read: How Hackathons Can Help You Attract, Engage, Hire, And Train Top Talent

What is the Purpose of an Internal Hackathon?

Internal hackathons serve as a creative platform within an organization to bring together employees from different departments to collaborate, innovate, and solve real business problems. The primary purpose is to stimulate fresh ideas, encourage cross-functional teamwork, and identify hidden talent among employees.

These events foster a culture of innovation and open communication, allowing participants to experiment with new concepts and technologies without the constraints of their regular job roles. Additionally, internal hackathons help companies explore potential solutions to existing problems or uncover new business opportunities that may not have been considered otherwise. By the end of the hackathon, not only does the organization gain novel ideas, but it also boosts employee morale and creates a sense of ownership and pride in contributing to the company’s progress.

How Do You Organize an Internal Hackathon?

Organizing a successful internal hackathon involves careful planning and clear communication. Here’s a step-by-step guide to ensure a smooth and impactful event:

1. Define the Objectives: Start by setting clear goals for the hackathon. Are you looking to solve a specific problem, enhance a product feature, or simply encourage creativity? Defining the purpose will guide all other aspects of planning.
2. Form a Planning Committee: Assemble a small team to handle the logistics, from securing a venue to arranging the necessary tools and technologies. This team will also be responsible for promoting the event internally and managing participants.
3. Set Rules and Themes: Establish the rules, format, and themes for the hackathon. Decide if the event will be open-ended or focused on specific challenges. Make sure the guidelines are clear to encourage meaningful contributions.
4. Select Participants: Open the hackathon to employees across various departments. Diversity in teams can lead to more innovative solutions. To foster collaboration, consider forming teams of employees with different skill sets.
5. Provide Resources: Ensure participants have access to the necessary tools, software, and data to work on their projects. A dedicated workspace, reliable Wi-Fi, and refreshments can go a long way in keeping participants energized and focused.
6. Schedule the Event: Plan a timeline for the hackathon, whether it’s a one-day sprint or spread out over a week. Include time for brainstorming, development, presentation, and judging.
7. Arrange for Judges and Prizes: Invite a panel of judges consisting of executives, department heads, or industry experts to evaluate the projects. Offering prizes or incentives can boost engagement and add an element of friendly competition.
8. Plan Post-Hackathon Activities: After the event, provide teams with feedback, announce winners, and discuss the next steps for implementing viable ideas. This follow-up process helps maintain momentum and shows the company’s commitment to employee-driven innovation.

Types of Internal Hackathons with Examples

Internal hackathons can take on various forms, depending on the goals of the company. Here are a few common types, along with examples:

1. Product Innovation Hackathons:
   Focused on creating new features, improving existing products, or even developing completely new products. For example, a software company might hold a hackathon for its developers to design new app functionalities, with the aim of adding value to the user experience.
2. Process Improvement Hackathons:
   These hackathons aim to streamline internal processes, such as automating repetitive tasks or improving workflow efficiency. An example is a financial institution conducting a hackathon to develop a tool that simplifies data entry and reporting, reducing manual errors.
3. Cultural or Social Good Hackathons:
   These events focus on building a sense of community within the company or working on projects that have a social impact. For instance, a company might host a hackathon where employees develop solutions to make the workplace more inclusive, or tools to support local charitable initiatives.
4. Technical Skill-Building Hackathons:
   Designed to help employees enhance their technical skills in a fun and collaborative way. An example would be an IT company organizing a hackathon to learn and experiment with new technologies like blockchain or artificial intelligence.
5. Cross-Departmental Hackathons:
   Encourages collaboration between different departments, such as marketing, sales, development, and HR, to tackle company-wide challenges. For example, a retailer might hold a hackathon involving both its technical and business teams to find ways to improve customer experience across digital platforms.

By choosing the right type of internal hackathon, companies can align the event’s objectives with their broader strategic goals while providing a rewarding experience for employees.

Benefits of conducting an internal hackathons:

There are great benefits to hosting internal hackathons, let’s take a look at a few of them:

Encourage and drive innovation

Internal hackathons will bring out the best in your employees, there is no doubt about that. With great rewards at stake, you can be sure that every participant will bring out their best game. More often than not, people tend to whip out extremely unique solutions to abstract problems while in a competitive environment.

Hackathon is a cost-effective way of getting every team in the organization involved in hopes of discussing and generating ideas that align with the organization’s goals. Apart from giving innovative minds a much-required boost, it also helps drive engagement.

Improved learning experience

If you are looking to target specific skills then internal hackathons may just be what you need. It gives the employees and other individuals of the company a chance to try out new tools and new frameworks and also allows them to think of a unique solution for abstract problems. It provides the employees with a safe space for them to showcase skills without being under any pressure.

Whatever solution seems to work the best can be incorporated later by the organization’s employees. This way it helps the organization streamline quite a few of its processes as well.

Continued exposure to learning is extremely important for individuals as they do not end up stagnating their skills and capabilities. This further helps the help organization decrease its turnover rates as well.

Inclusion and diversity

Internal hackathons help drive inclusion and diversity. People from different backgrounds and different teams come together to bring about solutions that can further help the organization move forward.

Try to involve the entire organization rather than just technical teams, this helps in giving the entire organization’s employees a broader perspective and helps them work together and bring about viable solutions that can further help them and the organization.

Additionally, people feel free together voices any concerns they may have as there is no higher kill role present in an internal hackathon

Encourages internal networking

In a time where quite a few organizations work remotely, it is essential to get the teams to interact with each other. This can be done by bringing them together for events such as these.Additionally, internal hacked ones are not your everyday formal office interactions. Internal hackathons can help build productivity and help the organization move toward its objectives. Internal hackathons result in increased employee engagement and happiness and there are several pieces of research that state that happier employees always result in low turnover rates for organizations.

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Also, read: Virtual Hackathons: All You Need To Know

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Healthy competition

Comes as no surprise that internal hackathons help drive competition within organizations and with multiple rewards being at stake encourage the employee to work harder and smarter to come up with abstract solutions for any given problem.Healthy competition always gives birth to creating innovation, this comes as no surprise. The same goes for internal hackathons, almost every internal hackathon has a great reward for the employees and the organization waiting at the end.

Identify employee skills

This is one of the best reasons to hold an internal hackathon at your organization. It gives organizations a chance to review their employees and their skills.More often than not, individuals possess skills that can help the organization move forward. As a manager or a higher-up in the organization, you should be able to identify such talent across the organization. Once identified, you can help them hone the skills to help them grow and your employee will use those skills for the benefit of the organization.Doing this also helps increase employee retention rates, in other words, your employees' loyalty toward the company will do nothing but increase.

Final thoughts

Internal hackathons are a great way of furthering the success of your organization as well as your employees. From being creative with solutions to promoting internal networking, internal hackathons can help a lot.It can help organizations retain their employees, improve employee satisfaction rates, help them be more creative, create a safe environment for the growth of employees, and much more.So why don't you give it a try? And why don't you choose HackerEarth's hackathon platform?It's got amazing functionality and features! From hackathon promotion to evaluation/analysis support, we've got everything covered for you.

Internal Hackathons FAQs

What is an internal hackathon?

An internal hackathon is an event where employees within a company collaborate intensively on software projects. It's a creative and productive way to foster innovation, team building, and problem-solving skills among tech teams.

How do internal hackathons drive innovation?

Internal hackathons encourage participants to think outside the box and explore new ideas and technologies. This environment of unrestricted creativity leads to the development of innovative solutions to existing problems or the creation of entirely new products.

What are the benefits of hosting an internal hackathon?

Benefits include improved employee engagement, enhanced collaboration across different departments, rapid problem-solving, skill development, and the potential to uncover hidden talents within your organization.

How long does a typical internal hackathon last?

The duration can vary, but most internal hackathons last between 24 to 48 hours. This time frame allows participants to dive deep into projects without disrupting regular work schedules significantly.

Who can participate in an internal hackathon?

While primarily designed for tech teams, employees from all departments can participate. Involving a diverse group can lead to more creative solutions and better team cohesion.

Do participants need to have coding skills to join?

Not necessarily. Participants can contribute in various ways, such as idea generation, project management, design, and testing. It's about collaboration and leveraging each team member's strengths.

How are projects chosen for the hackathon?

Projects can be proposed by participants or pre-selected by organizers. In some cases, a theme is provided, and teams develop projects aligned with that theme.

Cybersecurity is among the most critical aspects of building an online business and it goes without saying it needs to have an expert to make sure everything is in place. Without good cybersecurity experts, it becomes an extremely difficult task to protect your company’s data, servers, software, and other electronic systems from hackers and other cyber attacks. As per Accenture data security breaches have surged by 11% since 2018.

As of today, we are in a world where almost everything is online and electronic devices are important as food, we can’t live without them. This goes without saying that our information is online too but the threat of cyber-attacks or stolen data still looms over us.

This is why cybersecurity interviews should be as thorough as any other interview for a tech role. When hiring a cybersecurity expert, you should know what the role requires, what to ask, and what you should look out for in a candidate.

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, and data from digital attacks. These attacks aim to access, change, or destroy sensitive information, extort money from users, or disrupt normal business processes.

In essence, cybersecurity is about safeguarding the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of information. It involves a combination of technologies, processes, and people working together to create a secure environment. To stay protected from modern digital threats, it’s also wise to secure yourself with a VPN when accessing online systems or handling sensitive data remotely.

Key areas of cybersecurity include:

Network security: Protecting computer networks from intruders.

Application security: Ensuring software and applications are free from vulnerabilities.

Data security: Protecting sensitive information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction.

Endpoint security: Protecting individual devices like computers, laptops, and smartphones.

Cloud security: Safeguarding data and applications stored in the cloud.

Importance of a thorough tech interview for cybersecurity candidates

As mentioned above, almost everything is online. To keep up with the ever-growing online population and to make the best out of this opportunity, businesses need individuals who are well versed in coding and other related aspects.

Moreover, it’s not just about coding and tech, you also need someone who can think on their feet and come up with abstract solutions for abstract problems. As a recruiter, you will find a ton of applicants with outstanding resumes, but a lot of them may not translate to practical application.

This is why you need to be thorough with your cybersecurity interview questions to hire the best candidates only. You can also make use of HR tech software and tools to smoothen the process of tech interviews. For instance, you could use FaceCode, a useful tool by HackerEarth that lets you take online interviews with an in-built code editor that can be used in real-time and comes with a lot of other features as well.

Apart from that, asking the right questions and looking out for optimal answers will get you the best candidates possible. Asking the right questions also opens up the avenue for good dialogue and helps the candidates understand the role and brand better. The answers provided will help the interviewer understand candidates better.

It also helps recruiters understand the extent of the candidate’s abilities and their interest in/towards the brand.

Also Read: Hiring DEV Talent: SQL Interview Questions

Interview questions to ask cybersecurity candidates

Here’s a list of 20 cybersecurity interview questions that you should ask if you want to hire the best candidate:

#1 – State your personal achievements and certifications in cybersecurity.

This is an important question, it will help you understand the candidates’ qualifications and experience. It will give you a brief look into their academic journey in cybersecurity as well from which you can ascertain if they’re a good fit for the role or not.

Any candidates who have put in the work will clearly stand out from the rest.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an eye out for applicants who have certifications that could close the gap in your cybersecurity system.

Don’t just look at their qualifications, look for candidates who are willing to learn on the job as well, why?

Because you need someone who can constantly grow with the organization.

#2 – Tell us, If you were a hacker, how would you steal our information?

This is a unique question and in simple words, you should look out for unique answers.

Cyber-criminals, typically are able to get into several well-protected systems because they’re either one step ahead or are extremely abstract in their thinking and if you want to keep your systems/data safe, you need someone who can match their abstract thinking.

You need someone who can understand the way they think and should be able to come up with solutions for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for practical yet hypothetical problems with solutions. Also, someone who can read patterns and predict future trends in the digital world will be of great help, undoubtedly.

#3 – What is effective cybersecurity? How would you quantify it?

One of the cybersecurity interview questions that need not have a correct answer, you should ask this question to understand your candidates’ definition of effective cybersecurity and the parameters he/she would follow to quantify the same.

Of course, every answer will not be the same, but this will also help you differentiate between people who’ve had practical experience and those who haven’t. Although answers may vary, a good candidate will use practical examples and offer practical parameters for measuring different aspects of effective cybersecurity.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for the methods they use to define effective cybersecurity and more importantly, you need to know how the candidates rate and understand the different parameters involved.

#4 – When building firewalls, do you choose closed ports or filtered ports? Explain why

Talking tech terminologies and understanding them are two different things, this question helps you understand if the candidates have sound knowledge of the basics. Anyone who has been in this field will answer this question with relative ease.

#5 – Tell us about a time when you had to resolve an issue after finding a vulnerability issue in your company’s server.

The answer to this question will tell you how good the candidate is at figuring out problems and weak spots in the server. You will also be able to assess them on their problem-solving skills.

What Should You Look Out For?

The ability to take initiative, and always trying to be one step ahead are two things you should look out for here.

#6 – If there was a massive security breach? How would you inform your superiors of the situation?

One thing has always been clear in business, communication is everything, it does not matter how skilled you are, if you cannot communicate with other people within the organization, then you are not helping the organization grow.

It also helps you see how well the candidates can communicate the problem to people who aren’t well versed in tech.

What Should You Look Out For?

Look out for the ability to explain tech terms in a non-technical way. Someone who can explain the gravity of the situation without disrupting any peace.

#7 – Tell us about how well you work with a team. Give an example as well.

Working together with other employees and teams when necessary is an important part of the job description, you need individuals who can build rapport and work with other team members as well. A lone wolf is of no use to a company.

What Should You Look Out For?

It goes without saying that you need to keep an eye on someone who can be a great team player.

Again, look for moments of hesitation when you ask this question, it could indicate they may not play well with a team.

#8 – Did you ever identify an incoming cyber-attack? If so, how did you handle the same?

This can give you an insight into how good the candidate is at identifying incoming attacks, be it internal or external threats. Also, it gives you a picture of how they are handled from which you can ascertain their effectiveness and the candidates’ ability to think/act quickly.

What Should You Look Out For?

Intricate information about the cyberattacks and the candidate’s responses to the same.

#9 – What do you use in your home network?

A simple yet effective cybersecurity interview question, it will help you understand the candidates’ personal preferences in tech and how they make use of it. It is also an indication of how well the candidate’ knows the tools he’s using.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an eye out for how the candidate uses his/her setup, even if they don’t have the latest setup, what matters is how effectively they use their current ones.

#10 – What do you think is this organization’s cybersecurity risk?

Of course, he may not be able to give the most accurate answer given the fact that he doesn’t know all the details involved. But if the candidates recommend a one-for-all solution, that is not what you’re looking for.

You need someone who can do a risk assessment with the relevant information and accordingly comes up with an effective solution.

What Should You Lookout For?

Look out for candidates who ask for certain specific information when they’re faced with this question, you want people who will understand your system and its intricacies.

#11 – If you were our cybersecurity expert, what would you want from our company to get the job done?

In this question, it’s not just about obtaining software and quoting prices. You should look for the candidates’ interest to work with other teams for better outcomes.

You should understand if the candidates’ request is feasible or not and if it is, is it worth spending that money?

What Should You Look Out For?

Candidates who don’t just name tools and software but know how to make effective use of them and are able to come up with viable solutions.

#12 – How will you prevent a brute-force attack?

one of the cybersecurity interview questions that will help you understand how good the candidate is when it comes to preventing an attack. It will tell about the preventive measures that the candidate is familiar with.

#13 – Has there been an instance where you’ve taken down your company’s network while testing?

Although that shouldn’t happen, it is quite unavoidable. For candidates to admit the same and their experience may not be the best thing to do, but the truth is quite the opposite.

If a candidate opens up about an incident where he took down the company server, it reflects honesty and you need honest people on the team. Everyone makes mistakes, but they should be accepting of it as well.

What Should You Look Out For?

It’s simple, look out for genuine answers that reflect their honesty.

#14 – Are cybersecurity certifications the most important?

A ton of candidates nowadays come with multiple certifications, but do they think it’s the most important?

Their answer will tell you a lot about them. Of course, certifications are important but the experience will always matter slightly more. The reason for asking this is, that you need someone who understands that practical cybersecurity problems aren’t like certification courses.

What Should You Look Out For?

For candidates with relevant certifications and experience to back it up as well.

#15 – Do you have an emergency procedure in place?

Cybersecurity professionals must concentrate on both regular surveillance and application as well as long-term planning and development. This is done to prevent cyberattacks and if a cyberattack happens, they should have a contingency plan in place.

These cybersecurity interview questions will help you understand if the candidate can think one step ahead at all times.

What Should You Look Out For?

Keep an ear out for practical contingency strategies and also for prior experiences that state the same.

#16 – What is the difference between IDS and IPS?

This will help you understand how well the candidate knows his basics. IPS is basically to scan and identify incoming cyberattacks. IDS is a monitoring system.

What Should You Look Out For?

For a detailed difference between the two as they are different and yet they work together. Someone who knows will be pretty experienced.

#17 – Explain system hardening.

This refers to software and methods used to protect vulnerable systems in the organization. You need someone who can compress the attack surface effectively.

What Should You Look Out For?

A practical example of them hardening any system and how it helped.

#18 – Polymorphic viruses: What are they?

You need someone who can not only identify attacks but identify viruses as well, especially the ones that can change after it infects a file.

As an organization prone to this risk, you need someone who can identify this and provide a solution for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

Practical ways of identifying polymorphic viruses and effective solutions. Also, look for any experience related to the same.

#19 – Explain active reconnaissance.

This refers to reconnaissance by the attackers. But this isn’t a direct attack, it’s a recon mission of sorts, mainly to steal data.

You need someone who can differentiate between different types of attacks and provide positive outcomes for the same.

What Should You Look Out For?

For any experience of the same and how they handled it.

#20 – How would you strengthen our company’s cyber defense?

You need someone who will proactively suggest effective solutions to safeguard to company’s systems and servers.

What Should You Look Out For?

Questions about the current system to make said suggestions, will help you understand how well the candidates can understand your system and provide defensive solutions for the same.