Last updated on February 16, 2023
Grace Hopper Conference History
The Grace Hopper Conference (GHC) has been known to be the largest conference historically that is not only created by but specifically made for women computer scientists. Since the late 2000s, the conference has gradually become one of the most sought-after opportunities for female computer science students in the United States and abroad to network with leading academic institutions and companies in various fields. The conference is run by AnitaB.org, a nonprofit organization that describes itself on its website as “a nonprofit social enterprise inciting a movement to achieve intersectional equity in the global technical workforce by 2025” [2]. This hopeful mission statement summarizes what they aspire to accomplish with the conference, and for this reason, AnitaB.org as well as several other companies, universities, and institutions have been able to offer scholarships for some attendees with financial obstacles that may keep them from attending otherwise.
Attending the GHC with Intention and a Plan
It is impossible right now for any conference or event to be fully equitable despite its goal of serving underrepresented communities. However, as an FLI (first-generation and/or low-income background) student that was lucky enough to win a scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Conference for the first time in 2022, I can say that having proper preparation for the conference is the best way to utilize the event to further one’s education and career.
Because tech is a male-dominated industry, in most cases women are at a disadvantage when it comes to realizing the number of opportunities available to further their careers. This in turn makes it difficult to even know events like GHC exist and/or figure out how to navigate them even whilst attending. Although I knew of the conference a few years before attending it, I had no idea that it could introduce me to internships and full-time job opportunities. For that reason, I didn’t make it my goal to attend until I realized that the fall semester of my senior year was my last opportunity to attend while in college. Once I had my sights set on it, attending was the best choice I made for myself to achieve my goal of receiving a full-time offer in the tech field post-grad.
My first step was figuring out the format of the conference as a whole. I had a virtual ticket, which will be spoken about later on. This meant that my only way into the conference was through the online conferencing portal, where I could see information on all the companies and institutions attending the conference. My year held video information sessions, one-on-one meetings with recruiters, video interviews, and other versions of virtual programming with people in various industries. At this time, I was in the midst of my job search as recruitment for full-time roles for the Class of 2023 had started in the summer of 2022. I quickly learned at the conference that larger companies start recruiting this early, while smaller companies and startups begin recruiting just a few months before start dates. This meant that the GHC was my opportunity to focus on larger companies and get as much information as possible from midsize and smaller companies for when their applications open up. My goal for the conference was to leave with as many connections to companies and roles that interested me. For other attendees, their goals could be to find the right higher education institution to start applying to post-grad. For younger attendees, there were countless internship and research opportunities available. One of Grace Hopper’s greatest strengths is the large number of institutions that partner with them. My advice is to have a goal set for what kind of networking you would want to focus on to confidently attend the conference without feeling overwhelmed.
The Virtual Grace Hopper Conference
Attending the Grace Hopper Conference has completely changed since the pandemic. In 2020, the conference rebranded to vGHC and was still able to successfully host celebrities and important industry professionals as speakers [1]. The virtual ticket has been offered in all the years since the first virtual Grace Hopper conference, even after reintroducing in-person programming. Like many other conferences and events, the equity of offering virtual-only tickets has been argued, since some people may say that attendees who can only attend virtually will not be able to gain the full experience of the event. However, it seems that AnitaB.org believes it is better to have a virtual ticket to offer at least some access to the programming than none at all. Both in-person and virtual-only attendees use the online platform to reserve for different activities, but for those with virtual tickets, this search for useful programming may look completely different.
The Scramble to Book Sessions
As someone that has never attended a formal conference of this kind before, I had no idea what to expect when I was emailed a date and a time for when sessions would open up. GHC offers attendees the option to individually meet with recruiters from their sponsors for 15 to 20 minutes, which can often function as an informal interview or even lead to formal interviews. This is one of the most anticipated features of the conference as spots are limited and therefore extremely competitive. If I had known that as soon as they opened up that it would be a mad dash to reserve sessions before they were all sold out, I would have had a much better game plan aside from logging in 15 minutes late after a class. All the sessions are visible on the online conferencing platform before they are open to reserve. The best way to make sure that you are reserving quality sessions is to comb through the hundreds of profiles on the platform and look for the kinds of sessions available. Obviously, interview sessions with companies are very high in demand, but most one-on-one sessions with recruiters are interview-style and sell out very quickly because of this. When looking at larger companies, info sessions are usually open to drop-in whenever, so it is not necessarily important to focus on attending info sessions for the entirety of the scheduled time especially when a large company is offering virtual info sessions for several hours throughout the conference. Focusing too much on big names in any industry can also keep one from discovering better opportunities in mid-size and startup companies.
What other attendees and I discovered in our year is that a lot of financial companies and banks didn’t have high demand because their names didn’t carry much buzz in comparison to Big Tech companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. When we attended closer contact one-on-ones or small info sessions with these companies, we realized that they were offering great opportunities that we wouldn’t have learned about if we only chased after large companies that regardless would have thousands of thousands of applications for their roles. In fact, a few of my friends that attended virtually with me, as well as myself, were able to land a full-time offer with a company they met with during Grace Hopper! The choice to curate a focused, more intentional approach in meeting with companies worked heavily in our favor. A key aspect of the conference that also helped us is that there are a lot of changes in the sessions. A lot of sessions that were previously sold out as soon as the reservation period opened would open back up again when somebody canceled even up to a few minutes before the session. Because of this, I was able to snag at least two one-on-one interviews with mid-sized companies that I learned of for the very first time because someone had canceled their reservation. The online conferencing platform puts limits on how many sessions you can reserve, as well as blocking out any sessions that overlap, but people will inevitably try to fill up their schedule despite not attending all the sessions.
Overcoming the Fear of Networking
Networking is a huge buzzword that, for many years, I didn’t understand the importance of or how to achieve it. The biggest step is simple: just talk to recruiters, professionals, and representatives of opportunities that are exciting to you and fit into your goals. Some of the best advice I’ve received about networking especially for job opportunities has been that all these companies are trying to find the perfect fit for their roles. The only thing you need to do is to know yourself and your skills and offer them what they need (this is where your confidence should come from—even if it needs to be exaggerated in moments of discomfort). Knowing that countless other people will be talking to a single recruiter makes it feel so much less daunting if I decide to be bold enough to ask for a LinkedIn connection, email, or just a word of advice. At the end of the day, despite this event being formal at times, companies are excited to meet confident and skilled talent. Not a single person said no to me when I asked for their contact info, including the CTO of a company I was lucky enough to have a one-on-one interview with, despite the role not being the best fit for me. I will never know if her contact may be useful to me in the future, but at least I’ll forever come off as the friendly entry-level computer science student she had a good conversation with during the conference.
Having a Successful Conference
For some, their ideal conference experience would be to have interviews in the flesh, go on exciting company-hosted dinners and see the huge performance at the end of the week. However, this is not a reality for a lot of attendees that may not be able to travel and pay for a conference. I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything at all because I felt that I was able to dedicate so much time to intentionally meeting companies to network. I ended the conference with a few interviews under my belt, several LinkedIn connections with recruiters, a spreadsheet full of job opportunities that were exciting to me, and a lot more knowledge on the tech industry that I never had access to before. The Grace Hopper conference is a great opportunity for both in-person and virtual attendees, especially if you can do the work to make the conference work towards your goals.
References
[1] “2020 vGHC Speakers,” Grace Hopper Celebration. https://ghc.anitab.org/2020-vGHCspeakers (accessed Jan. 17, 2023).
[2] “Our history,” Grace Hopper Celebration. https://ghc.anitab.org/our-history/ (accessed Jan 12, 2023).
[3] “The Grace Hopper Conference goes virtual this year,” Electrical and Computer Engineering. https://ece.princeton.edu/news/grace-hopper-conference-goes-virtual-year (accessed Dec. 16, 2022).
