Our first WomenHack night
A fun and engaging way to connect with women in Tech
After almost doubling the size of our Engineering department in the last 12 months, we continue to grow our teams. It is now a company-wide commitment to focus on diversity, equality and inclusion. The diversity-focused recruiting night organised by WomenHack in London on the 4th of April was the perfect opportunity for us to tackle this goal.
Abbie — Software Engineer here at Spektrix — and I prepped our approach, packed as much Spektrix swag as we could carry, and headed off to the event.
The Event
The recruitment event, run by WomenHack and hosted by Vodafone, had 150 attendees. It kicked off with 5-minute keynotes from companies who sponsored the event (Giffgaff, Lloyds, Made.com, Red Badger & Simply Business), followed by rapid interview sessions.
The Keynotes each followed a similar structure. Companies shared their experience trying to diversify their technical workforce and attract more females into technical roles. It was reassuring to know that companies of all sizes, industries and values are facing similar difficulties and have similar objectives to those we have at Spektrix.
The event became most enjoyable when the rapid interviews started. Our main intention was to chat with candidates with the experience and interest to be successful in our live roles. But we also wanted to raise our profile across the tech community, and reinforce our commitment to diversity and inclusion. So we did our best to turn our table Spektrix-green; filling it with branded notebooks, bags, pens, badges and of course job descriptions.
Attendance was very product, design and UX oriented which was perfect to fill our open Product Owner role. However, we would have liked to meet more back-end engineers, particularly senior developers.
The Rapid Interviews
The strict 5-minute speed dating style interviews had their pros and cons. They gave us just enough time to talk about our company and roles, find out about a candidate’s interest and gather their contact details. The time limit kept the conversations focused and to the point. It meant that conversation wasn’t too awkward when you inevitably were sat opposite someone who had no interest in your roles or company!
On the other hand, the time limit was difficult when a candidate was a potential perfect match. I can also imagine the frustration from the attendees’ perspectives. When you have done your research and identified the companies you’re interested in, you might want more time to chat with them in depth.
The floor did open up at the end of the night but this became a little overwhelming and not really useful either for hiring companies or candidates.
Key Takeaways
For a first attendance to the event, it was a huge success for Spektrix. As corporate-event rookies, we didn’t come ready with a fancy banner, but the conversations we had were really valuable. It was great to have the opportunity to introduce 100+ people to Spektrix and what we do.
As a B2B company that services theatres and playhouses, our brand is more established in the Arts sector than in the Tech world. So being able to tell our story to passionate women within the tech industry was great! The level of interest in Spektrix and our mission from candidates was fantastic. We definitely didn’t feel overshadowed by the large companies and household names of the brands surrounding us at the event.
The event allowed us to connect with several women from the event, giving us a chance to bring new people on board. Spektrix will definitely be seeking out similar opportunities in the future that can help us diversify and grow our teams!
Spektrix is recruiting! Join our growing teams in London and Manchester and help build the SaaS platform pushing the Arts forward!
Check out our open positions!
