This is a continuation of Yuki’s notes on “Mastering the Art of the Technical Interview: Hints and Tips for a Successful Interview Experience”.

Some tips I learned from this (very helpful!) session:

• Do your homework on the company. Show that you know what the company is about, and maybe read some recent news articles about what the company is doing today. This applies to talking to career fairs as well–before introducing yourself, have some background about the company.
• Resume clarity. Your resume should be simple, and easy to get through. It should illustrate technologies you’ve used, and experience that you’ve had–whether it’s in class or in industry.
• Use the whiteboard. One of the impressive things that the interviewee did during this mock interview session was to specifically ask to use the whiteboard when asked a difficult question. Using the whiteboard can help you jot down ideas and illustrate your thought process. After all, this is what the interviewer is most interested in!
• Confidence. Be confident when answering questions (or at least, act confident)!
• In team projects, talk about your specific achievements. If you’re asked about a project, such as a team project you did in school, don’t answer with too many “we”’s. Make sure you show your specific contribution to the project.

Also, here are some tips that came in the brochure that they gave us at this talk:

Phone Interviews

• Stand up and smile! This makes your voice project with confidence and authority.
• Speak slowly and enunciate clearly.
• Clear the room. Turn off the stereo and TV.
• Have your resume out. Just in case they ask questions about your resume, the answer is right in front of you.

Career Fairs

• Target your top ten companies
• Bring copies of your resume
• Create a 1-minute commercial. Use this as a way to introduce yourself by demonstrating your knowledge of the company, expressing enthusiasm and interest, and relating your background to the company’s need–all in one minute.

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One of the opening sessions — there were more than 1600 attendees this year!

Some of the banners from past GHCs

There were several companies with booths set up in the foyer, it was nice going to an all women career fair

We went on a hike in Tucson, the mountains were quite different from those in Washington!

There were several cacti, we liked this one in particular.

There was a dance on Thursday night–yep, all women!

I got a chance to reconnect with my friend Yunling from Columbia; we worked together this summer.

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What do you think?

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From the ABI blog on June 25th:

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) announced today it has received a $30,560 Innovation Generation grant from the Motorola Foundation. This award will fund a K-12 Computer Science Teacher Workshop at the 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA)University of Arizona. The attendees will engage in discussions with community and national leaders, generating and disseminating solutions that are grounded in teacher perspectives readily applicable. The sessions will represent teachers serving diverse populations of students.

See the full press release here.

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In the interesting article “He Said, She Said: Gender-Typical Speech Can Sour Teamwork” by Joanna Wolfe and Elizabeth Powell, researchers examine the communication differences between genders that may contribute to women leaving engineering disciplines at higher rates than men. Negative interactions reported by women during teamwork experiences tend to lead to self-doubt about whether engineering is a good fit, and the purpose of this research was to examine everyday exchanges that may influence this perception.

This study was conducted through surveys given to 522 undergrads in engineering and other disciplines that asked for feedback on different team interaction scenarios. The results show that engineering men have low tolerance and impatience with the female-typical behaviors of admitting mistakes, showing weakness, or engaging in self-belittlement, regardless of which gender is displaying this behavior. “This trend was most pronounced among students majoring in mechanical and computer engineering and least present in bioengineering and industrial engineering, the latter two being disciplines with comparatively high levels of female enrollment.” Interestingly, other groups outside of engineering found male-typical behaviors more bothersome.  Across the board, however, participants in all groups expressed annoyance at aggressive acts/communication of self-promotion.

Bottom line from the article: “Based on this research, engineering educators might coach female students to avoid self-belittling discourse and teach all students to avoid aggressive displays of self-promotion. Such coaching might not only help women and other ‘at risk’ groups fit into an engineering community but might also improve the interpersonal skills of all engineering students.”

Your thoughts?

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CSE Women,

Details on the 2009 conference from the GHC site:

“Creating Technology For Social Good”
Tucson, Arizona
September 30 – October 3, 2009

“The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.

Past Grace Hopper Celebrations have resulted in collaborative proposals, networking, mentoring, and increased visibility for the contributions of women in computing.”

All UW CSE women planning to go must submit a scholarship application. The deadline to apply is May 27th.

Please contact me with any questions and to let me know if you would like to attend.

Thanks!

Megan

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Congratulations to Saleema Amershi, who has won a 2009 Google Anita Borg Scholarship, and to finalists Kristi Morton and Julia Schwarz!

http://googleforstudents.blogspot.com/2009/04/announcing-2009-us-anita-borg-scholars.html

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Today’s fantastic Seattle Times piece “The UW’s Yoky Matsuoka is leading the quest for robotics that take orders from the brain” highlights Yoky’s life and background, her neurobotics research focused on helping people with disabilities live fuller lives, her mentoring of students and the desire to encourage female participation in the sciences, her leadership in creating the Pacific Northwest Center for Neural Engineering, and her non-profit efforts with the goal to bring professional women and engineering students together to produce custom devices for people with various disabilities.

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CSE professor Susan Eggers is the recipient of the 2009-2010 Athena Lecturer Award.  The Athena Lecturer Award, given by ACM-W, recognizes women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science.  Susan was recognized for her work on computer architecture and experimental performance analysis has led to the development of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), the first commercially viable multithreaded architecture. Read the full press release here.

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