 The journalism she reads, technology is everywhere. Every industry needs it. So whatever she's interested in, start with that. Just be like, all right, so you like watching YouTube videos? Why don't we make a project to analyze how people are watching it? Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing coverage continues in a moment. From Houston, Texas, it's The Cube, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with The Cube. We are live in Houston, Texas for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the best name at tech conferences, bar none. We're going three days of wall-to-wall coverage just as day one. They had the keynotes earlier today. Expo Hall is buzzing, and we're really excited to have a return guest that we've had on way back since the beginning, and a new guest, Sarah Clatterbuck, who is the Director of Engineering for Applications Engineering. Did I get that right, Sarah? Application infrastructure. Infrastructure, very important. Erica Lockheimer, the Director of Engineering, Growth, and Head of LinkedIn's Women in Tech Initiative. Those are huge titles. Welcome. Thank you. And of course Rebecca Knight is joining us. Yes. She's been anchoring the set all day, and we'll be really happy to have you on board. So, LinkedIn's Women in Tech Initiative, what is it? Yeah, so it's basically, it's a dedicated group that we have at LinkedIn, where it's 20% focus of our time. So Sarah and I commit 20% of our time for Women in Tech. 20%. Yes, I mean it's basically valued just like any other core project that we have in engineering. And it's a program that we have initiatives inside, that's happening inside the company and outside the company that we focus on. Yeah, because often, you know, like the Google's got like the 10% or a lot of companies have 10% but 20% that's one day a week. That's a significant amount of time. It's a substantial commitment. And I think we started initially like a lot of other companies where there were a core group of us women leaders who were doing this on a voluntary basis and we would plan our Grace Hopper event and we would do different lectures and talks internally but then we realized that we actually needed to commit real time to this and have objectives and key results that we were trying to measure our outcomes on the program. Yeah, and our executives approached us and said, hey, will you lead this? And we wanted it to be a change initiative, not an ERG group. So we have funding, we have programs. It's a true commitment. I was just going to say from the keynotes earlier, they said what separates the top companies from the not top companies and one of the items was flex time policies, leadership development programs but true gender diversity programs that are not ad hoc, that are not kind of feel good but have funding, have budget, have executive sponsorship and are just like any other project that you would want to successfully execute in the company. And you want the people that are in the trenches leading it, right? They know exactly what should be done and how we're feeling and what we should do moving forward. So talk a little bit about the specific programs that are part of the initiative, the high school training program and other kinds of things that you're doing as part of. So I'll, you want to go first? Yeah, so I'll talk about the high school trainee program and then maybe we can kind of round out some of the other programs that we're working on. So the high school trainee program is something we've just completed our second year running. The first year was very much a pilot and our hypothesis was that if we expose young girls to what it was like to be a software engineer in a tech company before they had to make that decision about what they would study in college that we could influence their decision about what they would study. And the first year we came out with all but one declaring that they were gonna study computer science. And as we followed up with them, it's been amazing that even the last one has now switched her major to computer science. So really encouraging results. This year we expanded the program a little bit. We had 10 trainees this year, similar results. So I'm really looking forward to trying to scale that program in upcoming years. And were these high school girls who were inclined toward computer science or were they? They had some experience with programming but we were more hiring for potential than for actual skill set. So they had some exposure either through coursework at school or through immersive community programs like Girl Scouts or Technovation. And then we actually brought them in and did, this year we developed a curriculum for them where they actually built a full stack web app in their first couple of weeks to get a sense of how the whole thing goes together. And then they pivoted towards working on actual features with our engineering team. So for the day in the life, they participate in stand-ups, do they shadow you, do they go out to launch? I mean. Yeah, everything like a regular engineer. Sit in meetings. Yes. We bore them with meetings. Long conversation. I know. And they came out wanting more. And they still bought it. A lot more, yes. They came for our lip sync competition that we ran. So yeah. So what did they say is different than what they expected it to be? Or what was it that appealed to them? Or that kind of connected to them that maybe they thought it was or they had no idea that this was, because a lot of that stuff's just kind of work. Yeah. Besides the coding piece, right? I think they realized when they come that it's really much more social than they thought it would be. So even though I think the media is portraying computer science in the right way now and even though they've had exposure in classes, I still think that they have a perception that it's going to be a lot of heads down coding work. And they don't realize how social coding is and how much you have to interact with the product managers and the design team and all the other engineers that you're working with. And so what are some of the other parts and components of the women who lead? Yeah. So one of the other programs we have is an Invest program. So we want to invest in the women at LinkedIn as well, it's about giving them visibility and opportunity and coaching. So if we think about some of the ways that we have grown in the company, we have people that chose to invest in us, got us the right resources, worked on some challenges and also opportunities. So we designed the program based on how did we get where we're at and we basically have executive coaches come in and we're training some of the women to basically go through some of those challenges, have those difficult conversations and be able to have those outcomes that they wanted and it's great to see they come full circle and now it's like they want to pay it forward. Like they're here at this conference, they want to just figure out how they can do it for everybody. It's like once you get that itch and you've made that pivot point yourself, you're like, wow, I really want to give back and make a change. So we're seeing that in a lot of the conversations at LinkedIn and the women. So it's great, super inspiring. Yeah, go ahead. Last month you launched LinkedIn Learning. Yes. And so your platform is used by 433 million users around the world and yet your company's always innovating, always trying new things, always coming out with new features. Can you talk a little bit about LinkedIn Learning? Yeah, well, I think the way that we're thinking about it is that in this new age that people need to learn in different ways. They don't always have a traditional path of like a degree program and then an internship and then a job that they go to for 20 or 30 or 40 years and people are changing jobs. The technology is changing, industries are changing and people need to have different paths to keeping their skills relevant in the new economy. And so I think that's sort of what LinkedIn Learning is about. And then I think we're also thinking about how can that sort of expand our hiring practices and actually can we use that platform to identify people with potential to come work with us. And we even gave all of our high school trainees a subscription this year when they came so they could continue their learning online around Java or web development and different topics that they were learning during the summer. Yeah, because if you think about how we're hiring talent today, I think we've done it very traditional to Sarah's point. It's like, you have a four year degree, you did your two year internship, we'll then look at your resume, then we'll interview. It's like not everybody has taken that path. Maybe they taught coding themselves or maybe they did some academy and they threw some two year boot camp or something. There's no reason why we shouldn't be basically looking at them and figuring out, hey, how can they join our company and basically contribute. I mean that opens up a whole diversity in itself by hiring different types of people for different backgrounds. And LinkedIn really, this is the business of LinkedIn. It's helping people find opportunities. And yet you're also evangelists about how the future of work is changing and the nature and our day to day experience of work is changing. My question is how open are other companies to drinking your Kool-Aid in the sense of are other organizations and firms that you work with also seeing this changing path and are they open to it to being different? Yes, actually I was at LinkedIn Talent Connect last week and we had a small forum of about 15 people of the top companies around and we had this very open discussion and they're realizing, yes, we need to look at hiring differently. And I know Starbucks has some initiatives and some programs too about helping them get the right skills so they can get to where they want to be. So it is about solutions like LinkedIn Learning or how do they up level the skill force. I think everybody's open to it. It's just, we're not there yet. It's making these small steps as we move on. Well that's other companies. I was even just going to ask with Informal HR at LinkedIn, how much do they buy into it or how much of it? Okay, that's great. We're working on this cool project but when people are coming through the door we're routing them through the same kind of process, the same kind of gates. Or how's that conversation, are they accepting it? Is it a hard conversation? Do they see benefit? I think the whole company is bought into this from every discipline from HR and engineering and the executive team. I think everyone's starting to think about this in new ways and so everyone's on board with helping us to change how we hire, how we can be more inclusive as a company and how people can belong in our company. And they are our key partners in designing this program. You're right, you can't use your same program that you have today of how you hire talent. You have to do it a different way. So maybe if they fit this mold then that's the way that they're going to go on this time. But there's a new way that we have that we're designing right now that we basically get candidates that way. So they're partners in it. They have to be. There's no other way. Right, right. And then how does it manifest itself in my LinkedIn profile? So that Starbucks and the other people now see those as qualifications where before it didn't kind of fit the template, if you will. Yep. We have to innovate. We have to be the pioneers. Since you are ahead of it, but high up in engineering, also high up in HR, talk about what gives some advice to a young female engineer who's starting out some career advice in terms of what she should have on her LinkedIn profile and then also the kind of message she should be sending to her prospective employers. So I would say, you need to have a LinkedIn profile. First-in-one. I need to do a picture with the whole, right? Yeah, you're just gonna say, don't run out. Don't get a chair picture that's chopped off in half. Get a picture of yourself. And fill it out, not just with your schooling because if you just put your schooling in your degree program, then you're just giving us the same information that we've always had. Like tell us about who you are and what problems you want to solve and what interesting experience that you've had that may be non-traditional. Like try to explain through your profile. Stand out from the back. How you can stand out. And then I would say, take some intelligent risks. You have to take risks. You have to be out of your comfort zone. So even if that means putting non-traditional experience on your LinkedIn profile, that's what you have to do to succeed in this industry. And as you're saying this, I'm just thinking of listening to the ads online of the resume sniffers and the good employee, bad employee. Are the kind of the algorithms that drive the automated part of these processes knowing to look for, wow, that was kind of a high risk behavior that this person stepped out of their comfort zone in a box. I mean, it still seems like, what do we need to get there? Maybe it's the better question. So that it does flag positive thing that this person has this kind of non-traditional block on their LinkedIn profile. Yeah, I think you're talking to some innovation that we still need to do. Maybe in our recruiter platform we could have some different types of facets for searching that would be different characteristics that we're looking for beyond sort of the traditional education. Right. And also I think there's just ways to use the LinkedIn platform. I mean, there's great things on there as far as common connections, people that you know. I mean, that's relationships truly matter at the end of the day and be able to build them when you're here right now at Grace Hopper. This is where some of that just starts, even in college, right? So use the platform for what it's useful for. Eric, I have to follow you. I haven't followed you before. Sarah's got posts constantly. It's almost like Facebook with all the... Erica puts me to shame really. She puts you to shame. Yeah. So I mean, get ready. We're here together on this. You guys are, it's really great to see because you're constantly posting, you know, this little project and this little seminar and this little group of, I call them kids, right? They're all kids to me these days. But, you know, doing all these activities at a very steady and constant cadence, it's very impressive. Yeah, I would just add on that that I'm a firm believer that you do have to over post. You have to over speak out. I mean, you can't be the best kept secret. Awareness is key. And then that's when it all goes viral, just like, you know, suffer. Think about it. You can scale it as fast as possible. All right. So take risks and over post. Yes. We're to live by. All right. So we're running out of time. Give you the last word really on the Grace Hopper conference you both mentioned you've been coming for years. It fascinates me that I still talk to people that don't know what this is at all. So for the folks that don't know about Grace Hopper, what's your kind of impression here where we are today, what it's come from and why people need to get involved? It's a movement. It's now at scale. Learn who Grace Hopper is. Come to the conference. Be part of it with us. And I invite men to join us as allies here. It's amazing. And I think it's as soon as you come to the conference, it's really like a wake up call. You just, until you're here and you feel it, you're like, wow, I'm not alone. There's so many of us that are exactly the same. And it's just a feeling. You just have to come. All right. Erica, it's great to meet you. Thanks for stopping by. Sarah, always great to see you as well. Absolutely. Rebecca, terrific. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We are in Houston at the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. We'll be back with our next guest after this short break. Thanks for watching. Great.