Hiring at grace hopper conference
Anyone familiar with how hiring at grace hopper works? What’s the best way to go about landing an interview?
Bring your A-game. The companies here tend to bring high level people to do interviews. For eBay last year we brought several VPs and senior directors. People just walked up to our booth to give us a short interview — maybe 3 to 5 minutes. If you made a good impression, we’d arrange a private interview. If you made an outstanding impression, we’d pull you aside right there to interview with a VP or senior director and you’d be given an offer on the spot if you passed
If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of questions were asked? And we’re these interviews just limited to software engineers? I currently work as a production engineer but I’d really like to get on the product side.
We had people interviewing for front end, mobile, SRE, hardware, product design, back end, data science, and ML/AI. You’d probably fall under back end. Yeah we were mostly looking for engineers but we were also hiring for finance analysts and designers, too
Facebook has a huge booth and trained interviewers will be on site. We do onsite interviews for top SWE candidates (after a resume review, top candidates will be given an interview card)
If you are ME/EE/design/research/etc, we gather resumes and recruiters will follow up later. For research, last year I actually reviewed a lot of resumes that were uploaded on the GHC site in advance and invited a few select students to stop by to chat with me.
Thank you! What did you look for in these resumes? I have 3 years work experience but I’m looking to pivot into product, even if it means a more entry level position.
I work in a specific subfield so I was looking for relevant PhD research experience. Can't speak for SWE, but we definitely interview on site for new grads and interns. I have once flagged an industry candidate and arranged a meeting with an eng manager too. Good luck!
Email recruiters ahead of time so you’re in the system before you go. Try to have phone calls before you go to improve the process.
They have a hiring fair. The companies have booths. You can walk up and present your resume, and chat them up. If the hiring manager is present and they screener like you, you can get an instant interview. Be prepared with your resume in printed format, stored on your phone so you can email it right away, and in a USB drive so you can download on their computer if your phone battery dies.
Do they only hiring software developers or do they hire for other tech roles as well? I’m looking to get into product management
All tech roles. If you are trying to decide whether you want to go or not... You can look up the list of companies coming and see their job listings. GHC might also have the list. You can plan to visit the booths of interest on a priority basis.