[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrChFgKALBo&w=560&h=349]
IGN was having a very difficult time trying to find developers the traditional resume way. It turns out job experience isn’t the best way to find developers, since the average coder begins programming at around age 13, said Roy Bahat, President of IGN. After cranking through the same resume churn, Bahat realized his company was talking to the same college grads everyone else was talking to. He began to wonder why he should care about their higher education. If candidates can code and love what we do, then that’s what they want, Bahat said.
In response to their great coder awakening, IGN created “Code Foo.” It’s a challenge to any programmer who wants to work for IGN. They submit their code and submit a statement of passion for IGN. If a candidate completes the challenge, he/she is hired for six weeks of training through working on projects. If they make the bar, they get a job. In the past incarnation of Code Foo, IGN had 75,000 people check out the application. One hundred people completed the task and IGN ended up hiring a third of them. Of that 100, a third hadn’t even finished college. Bahat realized that finding extraordinary people in unusual places is worth it. If you’d like to participate this year, finish the coding challenge on the Code Foo page by April 30th, 2012. 
