As you may have read in previous posts, we love celebrating Halloween at HomeAway, particularly in the Austin offices.
While some employees simply enjoy the opportunity to dress in character for a day, the real reason the holiday is so popular at HomeAway is because it involves a costume contest. When a competition is attached to anything at our company, employees pull out all of the stops to win, no matter what the challenge.
Mobile Product Manager, Ajay Waghray, earned the award for best individual costume for his interpretation of Prince
For Halloween, two awards are up for grabs in the all-staff vote - the Best Individual Costume and Best Group Costume. While the individual costume award might seem like the top honor, what really fires everyone up is the award for group costume. To win means your team not only came up with the most creative idea and executed it the best, but it also showcases how well you work together. For this reason, teams spend countless hours leading up to Halloween plotting, planning and piecing together their costumes, hoping to get the most votes.
This year, some groups went the more traditional route dressing as Zombies or in 70s Disco attire; while others opted for costume themes based on a play on words, such as "Party Animals" and "The Roots." Ultimately, the vote resulted in a tie between two teams that modeled themselves after classic movie characters: the Human Resources Team as "Toy Story" and the Public Relations Team as a modernized version of "The Wizard of Oz." The individual costume winner was Ajay Waghray, mobile product manager, who did his best impersonation of Prince.
Check out all of the costume contest entries on our Facebook page
As a special treat, here's a snapshot of a HomeAway pumpkin carved by HomeAway Senior Software Engineer, Thomas Betts.
Until next year...