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terriko
This may have been the most directly practical of the sessions I attended! My raw notes are on the GHC12 wiki (and they're quite interesting, including a lot of questions from the audience) but here's some take home messages:
When job hunting, make sure to excel at the following:
(The speaker joked about this as "win all steps, all the time")
1. Resume and web presence
If you don't have an online presence, you can get passed over. Nowadays, this includes LinkedIn, and the speaker (as a LinkedIn employee) told us that filling in more information is generally better, and that your LinkedIn profile can be used to supplement a shorter resume with greater detail if you so desire.
2. Meeting the recruiter
A recruiter is interested in your passions, your fit with the company and company culture, so articulate your interests and show your personality!
3. Phone screen.
Be prepared and do research on the company. The worst thing is to be unprepared, so make sure you learn about the company and have questions ready. Show your passion during the interview, and let the interviewer push you in the right direction -- if you're not a great fit for one position, they might know of others. And make sure, even if you're not sure if you want the job that you treat it seriously: it's good practice and you don't know if you might want to apply for another position in the organization.
4. Onsite interviews.
For tech interviews, you need to be comfortable writing on a whiteboard, so practice doing it, and practice articulating your ideas as you write. This is the way to show your interviewer how you think!
When writing a Technical resume, make sure to excel at the following:
1. Fundamentals.
Make sure you've proofread and had others proofread for spelling and other mistakes, and make sure the formatting is organized and consistent.
2. What did you contribute or learn
Women especially want to focus on the team effort, but companies want to know about you, so focus on what you did to affect the outcome of a project. Make sure to differentiate yourself: don't just list skills, talk about how you applied them.
3. What value was added in the end result?
Think about the bigger picture and talk about how your work impacted the project, your company, the world. If you can, quantify what you did whether that's percent speed up, dollars saved, or increased value of the project.
4. Differentiate yourself, authentically
Highlight ways you stand out, especially as a leader. Did you take on additional responsibilities? Negotiate between two groups? Do exceptional community service? You shouldn't over-embellish, but make sure you demonstrate what makes you awesome and unique.
5. Does your resume convey your personal brand?
One way to check this is to have someone read it and ask them to summarize you in two sentences or 5 keywords. If what they say doesn't match up with what you'd hoped to convey, maybe you're sending the wrong message and need to revisit.
There were a lot of really interesting questions at the end of this session, and if you're interested my raw notes are on the GHC12 wiki, including all those questions.
Note: If you're one of the speakers and feel I accidentally mis-represented your talk or want me to remove a photo of you for any reason, please contact me at terri(a)zone12.com and I'd be happy to get things fixed for you!
A big thank you
Date: October 9th, 2012 04:13 am (UTC)Re: A big thank you
Date: October 11th, 2012 08:34 pm (UTC)BTW, if you're looking for other sessions, there's a whole bunch of community volunteers who blogged or took notes during the sessions, and you can browse the whole list of sessions we were able to cover on the GHC wiki:
http://community.anitaborg.org/wiki/index.php/Ghc2012