Student groups host tech recruiting event

More than 200 people attended the recruiting event “LA to the Bay: A Tech Recruitment Event,” held last night in the Annenberg Innovation Lab. The event included a panel discussion and was co-hosted by Girls in Tech USC, the Society of Women Engineers and the Association of Computing Machinery. The event was supported by Blackstone LaunchPad, an entrepreneurship education program.

The event began with a panel discussion featuring recruiters and professionals from Facebook, Uber, Blizzard and Hulu. It was moderated by Lauren McGoodwin, a former recruiter at Hulu and founder of Career Contessa, a website geared towards inspiring millennial women. Students also participated in a networking session and submitted their resumes.

Questions during the panel discussion ranged from the interview process to company culture.

“The main purpose of this event is to give students a chance to interact with companies that usually don’t come to campus. This event gives students a more intimate environment to speak with the companies that they really want to work for,” Sara Clayton, founder of the USC chapter of Girls in Tech, said.

Clayton said she wants to build up the alumni network in technology.

“The USC network is already really big and we have a ton of alumni at great places, but I think tech is definitely an emerging network for USC,” she said. “As we have more events like this, we’ll have more alumni at great companies like Facebook and Uber.”

Though almost 700 students RSVP’d for the event on Facebook, only around 200 students were allowed into the venue due to maximum capacity issues.

“I thought it was great,” Calvin LeGassick, a sophomore majoring in computer science, said. “The turnout was much more than I expected. It’s exciting to see students, especially female engineers, come out to recruiting events like this.”

LeGassick also works for Blackstone LaunchPad, whose programs at various universities aim to house and train the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Alex Zhang, a sophomore majoring in business administration, said there were drawbacks to the large amount of student interest in the event.

“The lines are incredibly long, so as each person waits in line and each recruiter meets another person, faces start to combine and the recruiter gets less one-on-one time with each individual student,” he said. “It was definitely good publicity for the organizing companies since they were able to attract top students and top companies to come here at USC to speak.”

Zhang was interested in the panel discussion of the various company cultures.

“Facebook emphasized that their brand was at the top of their priority list, and they really wanted to emphasize that their goal was to make the world a more connected place, and if you didn’t have that mission in mind, then you’re probably not the best fit for Facebook,” Zhang said.

Clayton chose to team up with SWE and ACM because she said they are the powerhouse groups of the Viterbi School of Engineering.

“SWE is a very female-forward organization, and I think one of the main issues in tech is that there aren’t enough females, so a lot of companies are making the effort to recruit members from SWE and Girls in Tech,” she said. “These companies want to bring more women in tech and increase their diversity.”

Zhang also commented on the demographics of the students who attended.

“I saw a lot of graduate students and a lot of first generation students, which was really interesting because I thought the companies here would attract a larger array of more diverse students,” he said. “I am pretty confident that this event had about 70 percent graduate students, which I thought was interesting since I originally thought companies like Facebook and Uber would attract younger demographics like myself.”

Zhang said some of his friends left because they felt discouraged sitting alongside very experienced graduate students.

“I am definitely looking into hosting another event like this in the future. We would definitely need a bigger venue,” Clayton said.