Amber Weinberg and Paul Maloney on Hired.im

This article first appeared in issue 231 of .net magazine – the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers.

.net: What is Hired.im?
AW: Hired.im is a job board for designers and developers with a twist. Basically 50 per cent of all listing fees will be donated to CodeClub, which is an amazing project that introduces children to coding at an early age in a fun and educational way.

.net: What inspired you to undertake this project?
PM: The design and development community is somewhat renowned for ‘giving back’. We wanted to work on something that would enable us to actively assist the community in the here and now, but somehow help the next generation at the same time. After some careful thought we feel we have found a way to do both.

AW: I liked the idea of having a circular site. We help find work for today’s talent, while training tomorrow’s to eventually take their place. We also thought it would benefit the younger talent to list internships that they could take while still in university, or while just starting out.

.net: Why do we need initiatives like this?
PM: Schools on the whole do a good job in educating children in ICT but not enough time is spent on the web side of things. CodeClub is doing an amazing job filling that void and helping children build an interest in the field. I believe that investing in our youth will only help the future of the internet.

AW: I’m actually from the States and I know from first hand that there is nothing like CodeClub for kids. I got interested in building websites back when I was about 12, and the internet was so new and shiny then, that there were barely any books on it and I had to teach myself. These days, there’s no reason why we can’t also begin offering classes and hands-on support to kids who want to play with this stuff.

.net: What kinds of things does Code Club do with kids?
AW: CodeClub is an initiative started by Linda Sandvik and Clare Sutcliffe. Their goal is to get into as many schools as possible and offer an after-school coding club for kids around the ages of 10-11. So far, they’re in about 22 schools and the lessons last for 12 weeks. They’re currently looking for volunteers to help go into the schools and be a teacher.

.net: Were you into coding as a kid?
PM: My computer life began on a ZX Spectrum, then onto the various machines that came after, so it wasn’t code as we know it today. I started doing some basic code when I was 13 but moved into design in my late teens, I got back into code when I was around 20.

AW: I started coding when I was 12 and there was no such thing as CSS. I stayed with websites up until my junior year of high school or so, and then I dropped out of the ‘scene’ until the end of college. By the time I came back, everything was different. I count myself lucky that I was able to get started as early as I did and watched the web grow.

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