I attended a local hackathon. I spent around 3/4 hours creating a real-time collaborative music maker (it was super basic, but pretty cool).
Unbeknownst to myself, whilst I was demoing my app my boss to be was watching and my simple music maker and was rather impressed. 18 months later when a suitable role opened up he reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked me in for a chat. A month later I started.
This has happened to me before too. The owner of a company I ended up working for found me at a hackathon. Apparently he frequents hackathons to keep tabs on the local talent of our somewhat out-of-the-way city. (To note, he also actively participates in those hackathons, so he’s not just some vulture looking for prey). When I called him up a few months later to ask if he was looking for devs, he hired me on the spot.
In his mind there was no need to interview me further, since we had already collaborated and he had seen me work and problem solve in an environment that’s much more natural than, say, whiteboarding in an interview.
Unbeknownst to myself, whilst I was demoing my app my boss to be was watching and my simple music maker and was rather impressed. 18 months later when a suitable role opened up he reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked me in for a chat. A month later I started.