Site seems to be in progress still - the "companies attending" list is empty (<a href="http://hirelite.com/companies" rel="nofollow">http://hirelite.com/companies</a>) and so is the blog (<a href="http://blog.hirelite.com/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.hirelite.com/</a>).<p>Interesting concept though, looking forward to seeing which companies will be attending. Will you be updating the blog as new companies are added?
If you only permit 20 candidates and 20 jobs, some of the attending candidates will be only be qualified to apply for a fraction of the jobs - perhaps even just one or two.<p>For example, if a Django front-end expert shows up and only 1 company is looking for a Django front-end expert, then that candidate only gets 1 interview and goes home.<p>Since most candidates have particular specializations that make them more or less qualified for particular jobs, it seems unlikely that every candidate will be applying for every job. I actually wish hiring companies cared less about skill specializations than they do but that's just how it is - the Django specialist is often not going to be taken seriously for the Websphere position even if he lies awake most nights dreaming about J2EE (fortunately, this particular example is quite rare).<p>So, if each attending candidate only qualifies for a single job, then there is a possibility that the entire event will be over in 5 minutes. As a candidate I would be fine with that, since it's one extra interview under my belt and - since I didn't pay to attend - I don't lose anything. As the host, you will go home with $6,000 - minus expenses for the space, unless you hooked up a free space through a personal connection, in which case you came out with a nice profit. However, from the perspective of the hiring company, everyone may not be so happy about the return on their time and money.
1. Good idea.<p>2. Will recruiters be involved?<p>- Recruiters are always going to try to be involved in events like this. I guarantee that recruiters will try to attend by either posing as candidates in order to meet real candidates or by actually paying the $300 fee to attend as a hiring company. Maybe that's a good thing for hirelite's bottom line but is it a good thing for the event overall? This event seems like a good opportunity to cut recruiters out of the process but there doesn't seem to be any plan here to deal with this unavoidable contingency.<p>3. It says candidates who want to attend have to pass a programming test to qualify for free admittance.<p>- Wouldn't the programming test need to be tailored to the job each candidate is applying for - in which case it wouldn't make sense to give a test until during or after the event?<p>4. Is St Patrick's Day in NYC good or bad timing for a job interview?<p>5. In real speed dating, the 1-minute date is often strictly enforced. It says the interview will last 5 minutes. Is that a strict 5 minutes?
- How will you enforce the 5-minute time limit?<p>Sometimes when people get into a groove and there's some chemistry - as in dating - it's hard to pull them apart. Are you going to use the same style of musical-chairs-style rotation that they use in speed dating where everyone has to physically move to the next location all at once?
It says "Participate in 20 interviews, each 5 minutes long."<p>What if 300 candidates show up and only 10 hiring companies?<p>In that case, will candidates be paired with companies on a first-come, first-served basis or do you have some other plan?