About the challenge

Skip the resume pile. Ship something real.

Get Hired Hack is a one-day, in-person hackathon at Columbia Startup Lab where NYC startups that are hiring bring real problems from their own roadmaps, and you show them what working with you looks like. The founders write the challenges, walk the floor and judge the demos. Your project is your interview.

This year's theme is AI You Can Trust. Counselors, pharmacists and investors make high-stakes decisions from messy data every day. They don't need another chatbot that sounds confident. They need AI that's grounded in real data, honest about what it doesn't know, and clear about how it got its answer.

What we're looking for: working prototypes that solve a real problem for a real company, built by engineers who care about getting it right.

What we're not looking for: slide decks with no product behind them, thin wrappers that pass a prompt to a model and print the result, or pre-built projects.

Get started

Pick one of four tracks. Each one is a real problem from a startup that is hiring.

🎓 The Counselor Copilot
Build an agent that takes a student profile (grades, activities, a draft essay), finds similar past applicants, and produces a reach / target / likely college list with reasoning grounded in real outcomes.

💊 Fax to Fill
Pharmacies still get prescriptions as blurry faxes that someone retypes by hand. Build a pipeline that turns faxed prescription images into structured, verified orders (patient, drug, dose, directions, prescriber) and flags uncertain fields for a pharmacist instead of guessing.

📈 Comps in 60 Seconds
Build a tool that takes a small business's financials, finds comparable peers, produces a defensible valuation range, runs scenarios ("what if revenue drops 20%?") and explains in plain English what's driving the number.

RFQ to Quote

Industrial buyers send requests for quotes (RFQs) as messy emails, PDFs and spreadsheets. The same item gets written five different ways ("304 SS sheet 16ga 4x8", "Stainless 304, 0.060 in, 48 x 96"), and each one needs a material grade, a spec standard, certifications and a competitive price. Today a person decodes every line by hand.

Build: An agent that takes a messy RFQ and turns it into a ready-to-send quote. It should:

Parse each line into a standard spec (material, grade, dimensions, quantity, standard such as ASTM)
Match each line to items in a supplier catalog
Price each line against market benchmarks and explain why the price is competitive
Flag compliance requirements (mill test reports, country of origin, spec certifications)
Send any ambiguous line back to the buyer with a clarifying question instead of guessing

Requirements

What to Build

Build a working prototype that addresses one of the four tracks mentioned above. It must:

Be built during the event
Show how it handles uncertainty: what it does when it isn't sure

Prototypes can be web apps, CLIs, APIs with a simple front end, or notebooks with a usable interface. What matters is that it works and that a judge can check its output.

What to Submit

Your Devpost project page must include:

Project name and one-line description
Which track you're competing in
What you built and why
How your solution handles accuracy and uncertainty
Tools and technologies used
Team member names and roles
Link to a video demo
Link to your GitHub repository

Prizes

1 non-cash prize

Interview Slot

1 winner

Get interviewed for a startup.

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judging Criteria

Technical Execution (5)
Does it actually work, and does it get the right answer?
Trust & Explainability (5)
Can a user see why the AI said what it said? Does it flag what it doesn't know instead of bluffing?
Design (5)
Could a counselor, pharmacist or investor use this tomorrow without a walkthrough?
Uniqueness of Idea (5)
Did you find a sharper angle on the problem?