Uber may be in the news in India for allegedly defacing city infrastructure with its posters calling for drivers, but its recruiting tactics in the home country are getting noticed for the right reasons.
Uber’s employing a creative hack to lure engineers into applying to Uber. In certain areas in the US, the company randomly sends an invitation to a quick coding challenge while the person is on an Uber ride.
If they accept the test, Uber challenges the rider with three coding problems to solve, each with a 60-second countdown, and scores them based on their answers.
The unique recruiting tactic was brought to notice by an Uber user and Microsoft engineer Joshua Debner who was a part of Uber’s pilot.
Uber is now offering coding questions to potential candidates while you're in an uber. How did they know I code? pic.twitter.com/W2zn8bmouy
— Joshua Debner (@jdebner) March 25, 2016
The initiative is called “Code On The Road”, and according to Uber is a unique activity to spot and get great engineers to apply to Uber. Uber does not use a rider’s personal information like email address, company name or employment details, but rather sends the gaming invitation at random to users in areas that have a dense engineering population.
“The option to play gives interested riders the opportunity to show us their skills in a fun and different way – whether they code on the side or are pursuing a career as a developer.”, a company spokesperson told Business Insider.
The recruiting hack by Uber is reminiscent of its Silicon Valley neighbour and investor Google which has been known to use many fun and creative ways to hire engineers. Apart from asking potential candidates to solve codes on billboards, Google is known to throw mysterious coding challenges while a user is using Google search on certain keywords.