diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a9eb9744c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+# Contributing to Citus
+
+We're happy you want to contribute! You can help us in different ways:
+
+* Open an [issue](https://github.com/citusdata/citus/issues) with
+  suggestions for improvements
+* Fork this repository and submit a pull request
+
+### Getting and building
+
+1.  Install the following prerequisites, as necessary:
+  - A C compiler. On Mac OS X, Xcode should suffice.
+  - PostgreSQL development libraries
+
+    ```bash
+    # on mac
+    brew install postgresql
+
+    # on linux
+    apt-get install libpq-dev
+    ```
+
+  - Git 1.8+
+
+2.  Get the code
+
+   ```bash
+   git clone https://github.com/citusdata/citus.git
+   ```
+
+3.  Build and test
+
+   ```bash
+   ./configure
+   make
+   make install
+   make check
+   ```
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 335e0053c..f48c16aea 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -80,6 +80,6 @@ page](https://www.citusdata.com/citus-products/citus-data-pricing).
 Citus is built on and of open source. We welcome your contributions,
 and have added a
 [helpwanted](https://github.com/citusdata/citus/labels/helpwanted) label
-to issues which are accessible to new contributors. The CONTRIBUTING.md
-file explains how to get started developing the Citus extension
-itself and our code quality guidelines.
+to issues which are accessible to new contributors. The
+[CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) file explains how to get started
+developing the Citus extension itself and our code quality guidelines.