That's not how this works. We don't host challenges for other companies. We're an outreach project. It costs companies money to find people through us; skipping us and going right to employers saves them money. I don't expect many employers to ask candidates to go to us to make them more expensive.
And, by the way, if you don't have a great resume and you're looking to work in a field directly related to the CTF we're running: making you more expensive is exactly what we're going to do. :)
So will there be profile scores? Will any company or person able to see how a participant is doing in StarFighter? If it is so, companies will use it as a differentiating factor in the hiring process. And that's what I'm talking about.
By the way nowadays shiny resumes are not considered relevant. It's the bottom line of screening. I have a great resume in my country and I am expensive here. But it would not matter for any SF startup.
I think you are misunderstanding the incentives that are setup via the Starfighter business model. You are thinking of them on the QUALIFICATION side of the pipeline. That is, you have entered a companies hiring pipeline and they are using Starfighter to determine whether you should stay in it or not.
The Starfighter team is trying to change the ACQUISITION side of the pipeline. They are stepping in to the space where traditional recruiters feed applicants into the pipeline. In marketing terms they are generating leads. Their value proposition to the employer is that the leads they generate will be of higher caliber than the traditional contingent recruiters. Their value proposition to you is that Starfighter is a) fun and/or b) at least better than dealing with a traditional recruiter. Your Starfighter experience replaces your resume/cover letter that gets you into the pipeline. Not your ability to navigate the pipeline once you get into it.
If your resume/traditional recruiters/responding to web ads/word of mouth is more valuable than Starfighter CTFs fun - hassle + employer payoff than you are quite simply not a good fit for the Starfigher Recruitment agency. Just like you wouldn't be a good fit for a DBA centric recruitment agency if you weren't a DBA.
If I'm disappointed about anything in the announcement, its that it is obvious to me anyway, that they are NOT trying to replace the current qualification steps in a hiring pipeline. Because to me, getting rid of that time wasting/unproductive process is the big value add, not shoveling more devs into the top of the pipeline (management at my company may feel differently).
No, performance and participant identities will be public only to the extent participants want them to be. Again back to our incentives: it does not in fact work to our benefit for any random employer in the world to be able to query our site to qualify a candidate. Those companies are free-riding off our work. :)
We need participants to make the game fun (for all of us). We can't do things that make participants wary of us.
This is fuzzy because I didn't let Patrick write about what the game was (that's entirely we're-about-to-ship-itis). It'll be less fuzzy soon.
I may seem to be against StarFighter, but no. I'm not. Actually I'm on the mailing list and waiting for the service to be offered. But I am not fully sure that I will be a good contender. I have not been a good gamer for a long long time.
I believe you fully understand my concerns. It's about the interviewing process, not the tools. Every tool has it's uses and quirks and every institution may use the tools in different ways, intended or unintended.
I really hope everyone doesn't feel like they have to be a "contender". It's not a competition to get our attention. It's much simpler: we have a basket of skills and concepts we want to let people play with. For people who engage with that stuff and find they really enjoy it and latch onto it, we happen to believe we'd have good ideas on how to match those people with jobs. That's it!
This "best of the best" stuff was meant to be empowering, but in a lot of ways it didn't come off that way.
The next company expecting me do some obscure online automated coding test will need to pair me with an engineer inside.