2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Recruiting top talent is a challenge many organizations face, including our own. At the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), we consider opportunities to broaden our talent pool through targeted activities in inclusion, recruiting, and retention. In the search for a novel, inclusive, and informative recruitment tool to engage future interns and new hires, our team of representatives from various internship programs across our organization designed a hackathon-style, engineering competition called Net-Hack. The intent of Net-Hack is to address these challenges by providing students with networking training and professional development, followed by facilitating introductions between interns and staff through technical talks, mentoring, and workshops. Net-Hack saw participation from over 75 college interns who were assigned to small, interdisciplinary and cross departmental teams of 4-5 students. Teams were formed based on challenge interests to develop a research proposal similar to an internal research grant, demonstrating both interest and capability. Throughout the weekend, interns attended technical presentations and workshops hosted by staff; the weekend culminated in a poster presentation to experienced staff, hiring managers, senior leadership and executives’ gallery walk where prizes were awarded. Our goals are to grow participants’ confidence in networking, technical communication, and exposure to the JHU/APL and impactful research topics through this immersive experience.
Students developed communication skills in STEM topics, competitive presentation experience, and professional networking opportunities, while gaining direct access and exposure to over 30 technical staff members, including 16 day-of volunteers/mentors, 10 technical talk speakers, and 8 gallery walk judges. A majority of the intern participants (over 85%) attended technical talks and gained exposure to cutting edge technologies and relevant topics (including hypersonics, natural disaster response, anti-gravity machines, and 5G networks). Many of these interactions directly informed the students’ project brainstorming sessions and eventual final proposals. Students who responded to the survey stated that they met and interacted with on average three or more staff outside of technical talks and approximately 46% stated their confidence increased after participating. With intentionally removing the barriers of needing prior technical skills and providing professional development trainings for students such as networking, Net-Hack was able to provide a supportive and accessible space for participants regardless of background. Our approach has the potential to be used as a non-conventional recruitment tool for organizations.