Knowledge we gain from Halo Career Development Training 2017

Halo Career Development Training session was organized by google women tech makers Sri Lanka on 8th October parallel  to DevFest 2017. This session was held for women in IT field. 

We had several sessions there on how to develop our career needs, our soft skills etc.

First we had a mini stretch training. In this session we learnt how we can promote ourselves and our achievements effectively. This session was done by Wyunii Luu. As an internal Team Development Consultant, Wynnii works with teams on identifying training needs. In her 6 years at Google, Wynnii’s experience and expertise span across talent acquisition, employer branding, learning and development, external and internal communities engagement for the Asia Pacific region. She currently leads efforts that focus on attracting top talent in two diverse regions, Southeast Asia and Greater China. Wynnii has facilitated more than 120 training hours to 900 attendees within Google and externally at events. 

We did so many Interactive activities throughout the event. We discussed about power posing which is really good for expressing ourselves. By watching Amy Cuddy's Tech Talk video we learnt a lot about power possing. 

Then we talked about confidence and risk taking. In this session we did a activity. We all wrote some things why we think we are remarkable. This i am remarkable thing has given us a great opportunity to express our self to others without fear and hesitation. We wrote all the things why we think we are remarkable and then pick a one thing and presented it to the others. It was a great opportunity for us to overcome our fear and present our self to a audience. 

The list i made including the facts why i think i am remarkable.

Then we had a session on how to act in some critical occasions such as meeting lecturers suddenly or how to explain project plans to the company etc. We did some do's and don'ts regarding some specific topics. It was also a group work.

Some do's and don'ts when giving a idea about your key achievements to your boss.
(my group activity on that day)

And then we learnt how to face interviews. That is the most important session we had today. Because all the participants were still in university and hope to join the industry in near future. It was really helpful for us because they taught us how to use power posing accordingly in an interview and how to be confident, what are the things we should study before going to an interview etc.
I will mention some facts we learnt now.

1. You should dress properly either formal or non formal(it depends on the company culture)
2. You should be confident and should not be afraid
3. You can use some power posing to motivate your self and also to give a good image about your self to the interviwers
4. You should know about the company background before you go for the interview.
5.  Don't ask about company from them because you should know about the company at the first place before applying(they expect that)
6. If they ask about something you are not sure or you don't know, don;t lie just say you don't know or say you are not sure.(tell the truth)

Those are some things we learnt about how to facing an interview.

Finally we had a panel discussion with the google people including Wyunii Luu, Christina Funk, Michael Tseng. That panel discussion also really important because they discussed about how to get in to the industry, what are new trends, and most importantly how they conduct interviews in google and environment and culture in google etc.

So finally the day has become a really well spent day for us.

Group Photo