Finding a Job at the Grace Hopper Celebration North America

The Grace Hopper Celebration is a great place to find a job or internship. The conference features a three-hour Career Fair with over 70 recruiting organizations, as well as exhibit booths that are open all conference long and interview booths for job and internship positions. If you are looking for your next internship or job position, here are some tips to make the most of your conference experience.

1. Update Your Resume: Showcase yourself and your accomplishments on your resume. Make sure that is up to date and reflects all of your current experiences and skills. Check out our article with tips on preparing and optimizing your resume.

2. Upload Your Resume to the Resume Database: Sponsors are now beginning to access the Resume Database, so upload your resume now if it's not there already. Conference sponsors look through the Resume Database to find candidates to interview for job and internship positions while at GHC. Don't miss out; upload your resume today.

3. Visit Exhibit Booths and Bring Printed Copies of Your Resume to GHC: Talk to company representatives, find out about open positions, and learn about daily life at these organizations during the Career Fair on Wednesday, November 9, from 7 pm to 10 pm. Stop back at sponsor booths on Thursday and Friday to speak again with recruiters, ask questions, and make an impression. Be sure to bring printed copies of your resume, as well as business cards, with you to hand out to recruiters.

4. Refer to the Conference Job Book: The GHC Job Book is your guide to the organizations recruiting at the conference. The Job Book features company profiles and details about open positions, desired education level of candidates, and more. The Job Book will be published before the conference, so familiarize yourself with it before you arrive at GHC, pick out several organizations to target, and come prepared. We'll feature an article on the Job Book in the newsletter when it is published.

5. Network: With over 3,000 attendees expected at this year's GHC, you will have the opportunity to meet technical women and men from many organizations, in various types of positions, with different specializations. You never know who you might end up talking to or where that connection could lead. Be proactive about meeting other conference attendees. A connection you make at the conference could lead to your next friendship, professional collaboration, or job position. We'll be running an article about networking closer to the conference, so watch for more tips about mastering the skill.

For those of you who have found work at previous Grace Hopper conferences, what advice would you add?

Grace Hopper Celebration 2010 - View from the Program Chairs - by Wendy Rannenberg

You might not realize it, but we started planning for this spectacular conference in July 2009. For us, it is wonderful to see the schedule come together, the letters of acceptance go out to the hundreds of presenters, the keynotes lined up, all just in time for us to start work on next year's conference.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. This year's conference theme, Collaborating Across Boundaries, highlights collaboration across boundaries of: academics, industry and government; international borders; multidisciplinary aspects of computer science; K-12 and higher education. There are probably more but you get the gist. It is a very broad set of topics.

This is a milestone conference. Not only is this the 10th celebration, it is the largest and we have responded to your input by adding new tracks, new collaborations, all at an exciting venue. This year the program committee saw an increase in the number of papers, panels and workshops that were submitted for review. Wow. So many great ideas. We have seen an increased interest in the conference from both academia and industry, here in the US and abroad. We are truly getting noticed.

Here, in this first article in our "View from the Program Chairs" series we take a look at many of the conference features and a closer look at a new event, the new Career Fair, and the Open Source track as well as the Technical Papers track.

In response to requests from our industry partners, the committee has added a Career Fair to be held on Tuesday (Note that is a day earlier than usual! Be sure to mark your calendars.) The Career Fair will have simultaneous tracks where you can meet up with our many sponsors who are hiring and also where you can work on your resume. In addition to the Career Fair and Resume Clinic there will be a Women of Color Workshop on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we will have the Phd Forum and New Investigator talks, and lots of career development workshops for both industry and academia. These will be followed by the poster session and opening reception.

After that great start the conference will have 10 tracks for you to ponder on both Thursday and Friday. (remember, it is the10th anniversary). We highly recommend you attend the Newcomers session on Wednesday to get tips for selecting from the wide variety of choices. The tracks are focused on Academia, Industry, Technical, Student, Career, our Theme track, Invited Technical Speakers, a special Steering Committee track, an Open Source track and an HCI track. There are Executive Forums, Leadership workshops and more.

The Open Source technical track is being designed specifically for the conference by a team of women who are dedicated to increasing the number of women involved in the open source community. A series of talks and hands on exercises will lead you through the process of getting started and understanding the tools out there.

In addition to the Open Source track we will be presenting a special track on Human Computer Interaction (HCI). This will be highlighted in our next article, along with some of the other special topics and presenters that we have lined up.

All in all this is going to be a very exciting conference!


Wendy Rannenberg is the Grace Hopper 2010 Program Co-Chair