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>> I've personally started a couple co-op programs that resulted in permanent hires. Do you have any notes about this process? I would love to understand what

• TYPE_FASTER 9y ago
  It's pretty straightforward to get co-op students to come work for you. It's harder to manage them in a way where you both succeed. 1. Find a local university that is known for their co-op program. They will be looking for companies to sponsor their students. 2. Write a job description and post it on their job board. 3. Interview. Remember they don't really have much experience, especially if it's their first co-op. You can walk through FizzBuzz and other standard programming questions. Give them an open ended problem to see how they think about solving it. 4. Onboard the co-op(s) you end up hiring. It might be their first job, so provide clear detail on expectations and leave time for questions. 5. Give them really simple assignments at first, just like you would any new hire, but with more direction. Have them reproduce a bug. 6. Ok, now tell me how you're going to fix that bug. Put it in an e-mail, and we'll review. 7. Ok, let's step through it together in the debugger (many co-ops do not have that experience). 8. Ok, let's work through the release cycle to get it into the dev environment. 9. Ok, now let's work with QA to get it into test. 10. Ok, now let's work to get it into production. 11. Goto 5. 12. Three to six months pass... 13. Co-op eventually graduates! Now they're looking for a job, and reach out to you. 14. They have experience with your codebase, and you know what they can do, so you hire them.