4 Things to know for Grace Hopper Celebration

• Submit your resume to the resume database! I cannot stress this enough. You’ll likely get a lot of emails, and this shouldn’t bother you if you are already on linkedin and get a lot of emails anyway! Companies cannot invite you to anything if they don’t know you exist or know that you are going to GHC.
• Bring snacks for your room. You need to eat breakfast and you probably will not have time to stand in line to get breakfast there. Starbucks will be very crowded, too, so do what you have to do for whatever caffeine keeps you going.
• Have some goals in mind. Just like purposeful coding is better for enhancing your skill than passively reading some APIs, purposeful networking and talk participation is key. I think quantifiable goals help, but don’t be afraid to only have one goal at a time or even a whole goal for the entire conference. I had a much better time my second year because I went with the goal of finding out how my organization can recruit and keep more women. I therefore jumped “tracks” fewer times and came back with insights for my diversity programs team they didn’t have otherwise (that I know of).
• If you aren’t actively looking for a job/school or otherwise don’t need to go to the career fair, save your career fair visiting for when a talk you wanted to go to gets filled up. They fill up sometimes and it can be intimidating to bother someone on their laptop in a hallway. As an aside, if you want to be bothered at a table, don’t have your laptop out. On second thought, don’t even bring your laptop to the celebration. Note taking is better on paper because it is less distracting. Remember to schedule time to type them up later.

back