My GHC Experience — Get that dream job at GHC Career Fair

Hello World,

Here I am sharing my GHC 2017 experience and some tips. I know that there are a lot of articles on this topic, but I felt like sharing my perspective on job-hunting at GHC.

This post is written to give you a small glimpse of how job fairs can be and how you can take advantage of such fairs for your job hunt.

Some of the tips might be similar to other blogs as I followed tips and advice from others so that I have a positive experience at GHC17.

This blog can be broken into 3 parts:

1 Basic tips for career fair at GHC

2 My own experience and feelings

3 Some more random tips after navigating the experience.

Part 1:

The number one thing I will say is that you must have a purpose : of achieving your full potential at GHC.
So primary goal was to get a full-time offer and my blog is tailored to folks attending / hoping to attend GHC to get full time offers (and internships as well).

Have 30–40 copies of your resumes ready with you.

Submit your resume in the resume database. Once submitted, you can edit and update your resume as many times as you want (The 2018 GHC web-app has some issues with updating resumes but you can email them to ghc@anitab.org).

The number of views on your resume doesn’t matter as many companies download resumes in bulk.

Create a business card to hand over to the people you meet at GHC.

I personally did not create cards as I was only focusing on my job search, but I did see some students who had created cards and they were handing it to the recruiters.

Cards also help in networking with fellow students. So , a card can help but it certainly won’t hurt.

Then the same old advice: “ prepare really well for your interviews”

Algorithms,Data Structures, Operating systems, Network Engineering, CS fundamentals, Linux etc are omnipresent in most tech interviews.
No matter how many calls you get, if you aren’t good at the basics of CS, its of no use.

Also remember to prepare for the behavioral and resume interview.

Have your 2 minute pitch ready.

Decide what you will tell someone in order to sell yours skills.
At GHC, people might not have the time to look at your resume as they are as exhausted as you, if not more.

You need to have energy in every single pitch, to make the recruiters take note.
(After my pitch 3–4 recruiters told me to steal my name for their new born or expected baby ❤.)

My Pitch was mostly out of my resume.

It went roughly like this :

“Hi, I am Khushali Desai from San Jose State University. I am a Master’s student in Computer Engineering with an emphasis on Computer Networks and Distributed Systems.

I was an intern at Yahoo in 2016 and mentored for Google Summer Of Code in 2016 and 2017.

I am also the co-organiser for PyLadies SF chapter.

I have been a speaker or workshop leader at many events like Silicon Valley Code Camp, SHE++, Girls Who Code.

I am interested in SRE full time roles and I would love to be considered for the same.”

Read other people’s blogs and start preparing a list of things to take to conference and also things to be taken care of, even the smallest everyday advice like keeping your clothing and shoes comfortable.

Keep healthy snacks with you. You might have to walk a lot and also might have to skip lunch sometimes.

As the date approaches for the conference, do two things,

1) Sign up for company events which will be taking place. You can know about through many Facebook groups, LinkedIn and Twitter hashtags and also the offiicial Slack channel GHC2018.

The best place to sign up for events is :https://github.com/missCarrieMah/GHC-Events

And this is the best blog for “all you need to read for GHC” : https://medium.com/techbit/optimizing-the-grace-hopper-celebration-experience-726d624a0733

Your resume in the GHC database will get you event RSVP emails. So, keep an eye on your email all the time.

2) Reach out to people from above social media who are going to GHC.

Change your LinkedIn, FB, Twitter status to “Going to GHC18” or something similar.

Introduce yourself to people whom you connect with and tell them why you are fit for the job and send your resume across.

I did it, and because of it I managed to have many interviews scheduled before the job fair itself.

This boosts your confidence and keeps your stress levels in check.

I had 5 interviews planned.

I did not schedule more interviews because it’s possible that you will get interviews when you meet various companies at job fair.

So take out some time to meet more companies outside of your finalised list.

Some other companies reached out to me regarding a chat with specific persons from their tech teams.

Some of the companies were not interviewing for the role I was looking for but they wanted to chat about my interest(s) and if I would like to interview with them after the conference.

I went to meet them all and got many more calls interviewCalls++ .

Another thing which happened with me was that some of the companies/people I reached out to, did not have their table at job fair but those employees referred me for the role and I got more interview calls, interviewCalls++

Apart from all the above tips, here is one curated list of blogs for GHC.

Part 2:

Now comes the D-day.

I arrive in Orlando. I took my GHC badge and went to the hotel. I had one event to attend in the evening so I went there.
During the event I met other women and shared ideas with them. Interview slots were being booked at the event and I got one for 8:30 AM the following morning.

PHEWWWW.

I went back to the hotel knowing I had to be at the conference pretty early. So I slept at 10 PM.

I was ready by 7 AM and reached the venue at 7:45 am after having a huge king size breakfast. After reaching there I tried finding out the interview hall and when I reached there, no one was around.

I reached out to my recruiter and she told me that they wouldn’t be able to start the interviews before 10AM. We ended up re-scheduling it.

Now what ? I was there and I had a lot of time. I thought let’s utilize the same. I went to all of the interview booths where my interviews were scheduled for the coming days so that it would be easy for me to go there and not waste time in last minute “venue searching”. As there were many companies with their booths, I felt as if I was in a maze ;)

Now let’s jump to the career fair.

The doors opened and everyone was going in. I thought it would be crazy as there were 18,000 women attending, but then I realised not all of them will be in the career fair.

But yes, it was a huge and vibrant crowd. Now as per tips from other blogs, I had kept a list of companies I wanted to go to and also a map for finding them.

I tried going to companies I was most interested to get interviews at, thinking people will be fresh and ready to listen.

I went to my 2 most favorite ones and to my surprise, they were not recruiting for full time roles and I was heartbroken.

What to do now ?

With a heavy heart, I started going to different companies and their responses were really good.
People were actually taking resumes and marking and scheduling interview. Keeping the famous quote in mind : Success is jumping from one failure to another without the loss of enthusiasm.

Around lunch time, some people started moving for lunch but I had read about not wasting time going for lunch and using that time to go to companies where there is not much crowd.

So, I started going to other companies, and I thought of opening my energy bar to consume some energy.
Suddenly I got a call from one of the companies with whom I had an interview scheduled for the next day.

The caller was saying that they were waiting for me in the interview booth and I was 15 min late.

I totally freaked out( noooo…..)…

I had already had a pretty bad day from my first interview getting rescheduled , my fav companies saying no to even talk to me and now this.

So I told them that there is some mistake in scheduling my interview which was tomorrow.

So the caller said : “Can you come right now ? We are waiting.”

I was like sure I can totally be there in seconds( as I already knew where to go).

I rushed there and gave the interview.

Then they called the higher executive to interview. After that, they phone called their team back in the Bay Area and other higher executives joined the call and took a brief interview.

I was giving answers but ohh damn….. I was so hungry.

After the interview they told me that they are making an offer. I was like what ???

I had heard that people get full time offers at GHC but I had never imagined that I would be able to get one like this.

And believe me so many people were getting full-time and internship offers right at the conference.

After this it was all same as above: going to companies, delivering my pitch, giving interviews, pick swags and repeat.

In the evening I went to many parties hosted by the recruiting firms and had a lot of fun.

And that’s what I did for basically all the 3 days.

PS- I got 3 offers with in 3 days, and crazy lot of interviews even after the GHC. I made mistake of not doing those interviews because I was little tired of interviewing but do not make that mistakes. Part 3 has more learnings.

Part 3:

Few things to add for the interviews: where I made mistakes( which I realized after the conference)

Job fair is open during the whole conference (for 3 days).Please go there from the very first day if you are going to GHC for a job search.

Never quote an unexpected salary figure as it will hinder their ability to make an offer right away. Just say that you would like to first see their offer and then make a decision.

Never say no to any interview.I did it because I already had tonnes of them and I was not interested in the moving out of the Bay Area. But I was wrong in doing so. Having more offers gives you more advantage while negotiating.

Do not schedule a lot of interviews at the event. Try to schedule interviews after the career fair, so that you can meet more companies.

Do not apply to companies before going to GHC.Some companies will have special links for GHC that they will disclose either when you go to their booth or they will email before the conference.And they will reach out to you using the resume database too .

Some companies will scan your resume and will not take a physical copy, which is the best thing IMO.

Do not get disheartened if you do not get an offer at GHC. You will get many interviews to schedule after the conference from the resumes you have dropped at their booth.

After you get an offer at GHC, tell the company to give you something as a confirmation like an email or a letter.

Resources to take care of :

1. Career fair Map and also interview booth.

2. A list of companies, in which order you want to go and meet them.

3. Map them in your mind it will really help.

Here is the Map for 2018:

http://s23.a2zinc.net/Clients/abi/ghc2018/public/eventmap.aspx?thumbnail=1

Another list to keep making while at the career fair and before going there is of company events. Believe me you do not want to miss them.
I kept writing all events in my list of “to attend parties” and I went to a hell lot of them.

I also realized that whoever was inviting people for parties at the career fair, were not inviting everyone but only those folks who they thought were possible employees.

SO DO ATTEND those parties as you will get to know people and the company culture.

I hope this helps!! :) All the very best!!

Special thanks to Aditya Kaushik for helping with editing.