I was really touched to read your story. Thank you for sharing your challenges, and particularly around how you felt the only other option was to go back to school just to get the opportunities one would get by being a 'student'.

Here are answers to your questions:

-Most of our candidates will receive an offer in less than a week since we are able to shorten the interview cycle

-Yes definitely-- if a candidate doesn't like where they interned at, they are always welcome to come back on to our platform to get matched with more employers for a new internship

-We usually match employers with 2-4 candidates we think suit what they are looking for. We get them to interview them back to back (similar to the Waterloo co-op system) so they can evaluate and interview fairly, as well as make a decision quickly (hopefully by the end of that day)

-There is a penalty if an employer provides an offer to a candidate and in between the time they make an offer and the start date-- they pay half of the entire internship salary to the candidate

-Good last question-- this has not happened yet with us. Most employers are actually quite open and let our candidates know that they are allowed to interview and even accept other offers. I believe that most employers at the end of the day only want to hire candidates who want to be work for them, so if they are curious about other companies and want to take another offer, it probably wasn't a good fit to start with!

Thanks so much for your feedback, would love to answer any more questions you might have!

Thanks for the quick reply. Had a few more questions, out of curiosity!

- Does Hatchaways provide support to candidates with regards to salary negotiations? A common method is to have multiple competing offer and it may be difficult for candidates to go through conventional interviews when they are going through the more immersive Hatchaway cycle.

- Does Hatchaways provide health insurance to candidates while they are in the 'internship-phase' of the recruitment process to full time?

-- R

- we generally give an average salary to expect depending on your skill level/ experience level, so both the candidate and employer going in with a similar expectation.

-at this time we don't offer health insurance but some of our companies still do during the 'trial phase'. It's something worth thinking about for the future though, thanks!

Yep definitely a fair point. Our assessments are building out full projects (so it's less easy to share answers/ get one person to do one question and another person to do another).

Secondly, we do meet each candidate for a 1-hour virtual call as well just to ensure their skills in person align with those online!

We just know candidates are more comfortable completing assessments in their own environment (which is what they would be doing on the job anyway) so we don't want to dock out points for people who get anxiety for onsite tests.

Right now we mainly onboard employers manually, and hoping to create the other side of the market in the near future.

Thank you for sharing and it sucks that you feel you 'wasted' years. I'm glad you found your way into tech and wishing you the best as well :)

Hey Pete this is great! Thanks for sharing. I'll reach out. Would be awesome if there was some way to help each other :)

Ooops! Didn't see this. My email is pete@nocsdegree.com :)

Appreciate your comment! Will look more in-depth and perhaps reach out in the near future to pick your brain further (probably after the yc demo day rush though :P)

Great website and mission. Wishing you all the best too!

Love this analogy. Everyone showcases their skills in different ways, and we definitely want to help more people shine in whatever run they perform best in.

I would guess in most cases candidates can't fully be their authentic self or perform at their best during the interview process, so for me I'm not sure I can boil it down to "fit".

Our hope is that we can remove the traditional method so candidates don't need to go through a lengthy process as a whole, and instead get on the job as quickly as possible via one interview!

Thanks for sharing your story. Glad to hear you were able to overcome the traditional barriers. Great idea to explore design as an industry we can expand into in the future!

Thank you for your note on LinkedIn. I hope one day you'll come back and share your non-traditional story as well!