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I know if I were a BigCo I'd launch a program to sponsor programming contests / projects in universities. Toy robotics challenges, programming puzzle teams, AI

I know if I were a BigCo I'd launch a program to sponsor programming contests / projects in universities. Toy robotics challenges, programming puzzle teams, AI contests, whatever. This would a) give me mindshare and contact with the students who actually get stuff done outside of coursework b) help give these students useful experience. c) be relatively cheap.

ig1 16y ago
They do, often through places like TopCoder, but it's a very expensive way to recruit (not because of prizes but in terms of the amount of employee time taken to run these things and the risk of it not paying off). The average BigCo already spends in the region of 10-20k per candidate hired, running a graduate recruitment campaigns is an expensive business, so return on investment is an important factor.