Every developer in their college days keeps building projects to develop and curate a portfolio that they can put up on their resumes to showcase to companies. While this does help in improving your skills, it is all to a certain level, since most of us are learning a project out there on YouTube, or even sometimes by copying an existing GitHub repository that we came across on Twitter or Dev.

Some might take an extra step and start contributing to the open source but the problem with open source is that one might find it formidable in navigating their way through the open source in the beginning. It all gets overwhelming to not know where to start, how to find the right projects for you, or to even know how to apply your learnings after finding a particular project.

Well, this is why we thought of writing this article to help beginners out there. Hackathons provide the right platform to work on a lot of things, and that too in a very brief period. Here are some of them, which we found worth talking about!

Doing a hands-on project from 'SCRATCH'!

What else would provide you an opportunity to start thinking of an idea with your team, working out the possibilities, and deciding the whole of the development journey and components of a project? For those who think college projects could be one, come on! We all know how seriously we take them.

And here lies the thrill and the most important part of a hackathon. You are just not writing codes to see a feature working but you are brainstorming the features as well, helping you to explore and learn about some new stuff and technologies out there.

Feedback from the experts

Hackathons are known for the mentor sessions that are undertaken to guide the participants with their projects. And since the hackathons are competitive, judging happens as well. Mentorship along with the judging rounds provides an excellent opportunity for getting valuable feedback from industry experts in the most candid way. One could take them up to improve increasing their understanding of the project.

Peer learning

Can we forget the effectiveness of those one-night group study plans that we make just before the exams? It's like a 'been there, done that' situation. If you have once experienced the potential of learning with your peers, then you know, what exactly a hackathon holds for you. You have got plenty of peers from all across the country. You could even meet and have discussions with international peers if it's an online hackathon. It helps you know and discover topics that you would have never known earlier.

Networking & landing a 'JOB'!

Yes! A hackathon can even land you a job if you can find the right people out there. It is an open playing field depending on your capabilities and social networking skills. Some hackathons including ours (hackCBS 5.0) provide internship and job opportunities exclusively to the winners.

So make sure, the next time you participate in a hackathon, you are just not sitting around a corner alone with your laptop only doing the coding and rather try being a social butterfly.

Fundraising for a potential startup idea

Do you think your project has the potential of being more than just a hackathon project and could become a startup solving some real-world problem? Well, then you must be participating and competing to win the prizes and could use them as funds for supplementing the production costs of your idea. We, as hackathon organizers love the projects we see turning into full-fledged startups. We all as a team loved when Musixverse - the winning project of hackCBS 4.0, launched as an NFT marketplace exclusively for music in November 2022.

Exciting swags and fun

And lastly, who can forget the fun of being in an offline hackathon, binge-watching the code on your laptop screens throughout the night, enjoying the caffeine to keep you awake for the next half of the hackathon, exciting sessions, and having quirky discussions with the friends that you just made on the day of hackathon itself. The swags and the goodies at the end of the hackathon. Who can forget those stickers to decorate your laptops and those Tee's to show off to your friends?

Concluding with this, hackathons do provide an exciting platform, if you want to polish your skills, build something from scratch and make new connections. Whether a hackathon can land you a job or not, it can't be guaranteed. But one sure thing is that it would surely leave you much ahead in your journey in a matter of just 2 days.

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