Next campus placement season, one could find a swarm of Yahoo!s trying to turn young women girls into ‘girl geeks'.
A bunch of fiery Yahoo! employees, under the banner of Yahoo!'s Women in Technology (WIT) Group, are planning to tour colleges under a ‘campus connect' programme to lure women into the world of technology.
“We plan to go to tier-2 colleges and conduct programs to help girls with problem solving or interview skills” WIT volunteer, Ms Rashmi Mohan, Senior Engineering Manager at Yahoo, said.
This will be part of WIT's initiatives to drive up the number of women in tech leadership roles in the industry. (Four-year-old WIT is a not-for-profit group within the organisation formed to nurture an eco-system for tech women professionals in India.)
Outreach programmes
The volunteer-driven group conducts outreach programmes to get women technologists together and drive up the number of women technologists in leadership positions. WIT, for instance, conducted a networking event Girl Geek Dinner for women technologists from various organisations. “Most women are shy or hesitant when it comes to networking and prefer to stick to their small groups. We attempt to change that,” Ms Mohan said. This year, over 300 women technologists got together to spend an evening networking, discussing issues of women entrepreneurship and topped it off with a gala dinner.
According to Ms Mohan said, WIT also holds internal events that are more technical. “Women are not very confident to make technical presentations, and the forum will help them out of it,” she said.
“Networking helps women share their experiences at work, learn from each other's failures and successes and this will have a ripple effect in the long run and pay off,” Mr Shouvick Mukherjee, Vice-President and CEO, Yahoo! India R&D, said.
Efforts paid off
And all the efforts have paid off. The company said that between 2009 and 2011, Yahoo! in India has seen an over 84 per cent increase in the number of women making it to the senior manager's level. It also saw an increase of over 76 per cent in the number of women at the managers' level.