Hello all,
I promised you a post on problems with the conference, so here it is after a few weeks.
The conference occurs during the weekdays, which for students, takes time out of group projects and classes (this is why I’m so late in posting). I’m sure there are a lot of other women in the work force who would be happy to go, but smaller companies are probably hesitant to send them to the conference in the middle of a project.
Like some people noted, a lot of the conference was on big data and job/internships. As someone interested in healthcare, I would like to see more technical companies in healthcare. As for jobs and internships, this is very intimidating for someone looking for a job and does not feel qualified. Sure there is the imposter syndrome, but really, going to the career fair, most people are going to judge their applicants by how much experience they have.
Its hard to get out of your comfort zone. I was fortunate to start out meeting people already out of their comfort zone, so I got to meet more people. But really, if you only talk to them for a small amount of time and then get their contact information, how likely are we to remember them in one year? How likely are they to remember you? especially the Microsoft, Google, or Amazon people? Also, I had difficulties with the contact sharing part of the Grace Hopper App, so I awkwardly ended up having to type in peoples names into my phone.
You know, one of the important parts of the conference was the sessions. For around 37,000 women, a lot of the sessions were more than half empty. Many women were focused on the career fair. Others were taking advantage of the city. My question here is why are they not attending the sessions? Is there a way to make them more interested in the sessions? Is it possible that making a time slot for people to explore the city (like give them a task in the city) would be beneficial?
So this was a small bit of the issues I faced or saw. Please comment! Thank you for reading all the way through. Have a wonderful day!
~Wynne
