INTUIT AGAIN – Meet & Greet Event 2019

Intuit Again is an initiative that inspires and provides an opportunity for women technologists to return to work after taking a break in their career. This platform not only gives women tech geeks a chance to work at one of the “Best Companies to Work For” (#2 in India, #13 in the U.S.), but it also provides technical and other training to upskill their professional skills.

It was introduced in 2015 in India, as a program to tap into a vast pool of talent, Intuit Again received hundreds of resumes from women on break professionals who wanted to ramp up their skills to a level that could help them succeed in the evolving technologies. The results were humbling and inspiring, as we were privileged to witness 20+ professionals transform as a result of their participation in this program. Due to the tremendous success in India, at the beginning of 2018, we launched a similar program in the U.S.

Some facts on Intuit Again – Meet & Greet Event 2019:

• 30+ odd women talents across the industry and from big organizations like PayPal, Juniper Networks, Cisco, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, SAP, Oracle, etc.
• Across the skill sets like C++, C#.Net, Java- Backend Engineers, Data Engineers, UI Engineers, etc.
• Event covering – Motivational & Inspirational discussions on how women can bring changes and return to work, real-time success stories by Ex Intuit Again employees, Panel Discussion.

Motivational Talk:

Speaker - Gayathri Belapurkar, Director of Engineering @Intuit

Gayathri motivated the entire crowd with her awesome discussion on how women can be a change maker and what factors to consider for pushing themselves to come back to work. Her discussion created positive energy with the crowd. She made the discussions on we should learn from the opportunity rather than proving ourselves from the opportunity. The more we open ourselves for new learnings, the more we can explore ourselves and do our best to move up the ladder. The audience response on her discussion created a motivation factor, can do mindset, charged-up and come back impact with great responses.

She encouraged the crowd with her positive talks to women tech folks to generate a willingness to want to explore new fields and learning mindset. We need to constantly learn and explore ourselves for what we are and the figure out the strength within us. We definitely need to form the supportive system by networking, connecting with like-minded people and discussion about our interest areas and seek help for upskilling ourselves. We need to positively connect with our peers, mentors in our workgroup and leave out the fear.

Panel Discussion:

Speakers:

o  Lona Patnaik, Group Development Manager (Intuit Again Hire)

o  Monika Agarwal, Senior Software Engineer (Intuit Again Hire)

o  Neeraja Ganesh, Head JobsForHer Foundation

o  Kaajal Ahuja, Content Creator @ JobsForHer

Lona started the discussion with the purpose of Intuit Again program, she discussed on how the program has created a creative diversity at work by encouraging the women techies to get back work leaving out the fear on thoughts as to how they will manage the things professionally and personally. This program has been designed in such a way that it will create an ease with the women folks without pressure and help them to scale up with the right set of the hiring process. The hiring process has a couple of procedure which the candidates have to follow and get into the role such as –

·      Interview process – where the candidates will undergo a full-loop discussion process.

·      Rightly trained – The candidates will be put up on a live project and customer-facing matching their skill sets and will be trained to upskill themselves.

·      Rightly mentored – The candidates will be put on dedicated peer and mentor who will guide and support them for learnings and upskilling.

·      Conversion – Once they were put up for this return-ship program for 6 months to 1 year they will be analyzed on their performance and if they fit on to the bar, groomed themselves for the skill sets then they will be converted for full-time employment.

Monica took over the discussion and spoke about her experience on coming back to work after 5 years of break where she was unsure how she will make the things happen and grow up the ladder. This program helped her to gain her confidence back and she has got the right support and guidance from her mentor and manager. She is now a full-time employee post the 6 months returnee program and she is performing really well along with the team. Her journey within this period brought the transformation within herself.

Neeraja discussed on how she has transformed her career as she comes with 25+ years’ experience in the software industry as a Software Engineer, post which she moved to help women transformations in their career post taking a break in JobsForHer. She encouraged the crowd by stating not to leave/ quit before we really want to quit in whatever situations in our life. We need to pick up things which we know or aware of, get into some interesting, challenging and exciting work/project which should drive us positively on a day-day basis.

Some Facts on the returnee program:

·      This year the count for returnee program is around 10 employees across Java Backend Engineer, C#.Net, C++, DevOps Engineer, UI Engineer.

·      The interview for hiring process majorly focuses on Analytical Skills, Problem Solving Skills, Learning ability, positive Attitude, Emotional Quotient, Intelligent Quotient.

·      The candidates will be provided with all the benefits as an intern in Intuit and also will be paid at par with the market standards depending upon the role which they will be offered.

Hiring Process: Assessing for Awesomeness (A4A)

Speaker: Mohan Kumar, Talent Marketing & Programs Leader APAC Intuit

Mohan discussed on how the entire process of hiring looks like and how different it is from other interviews.

·      The entire hiring process will be an awesome opportunity to discover & rediscover ourselves on our skills and talent.

·      It is an opportunity to showcase how to perform the task and right approach towards solving the task.

·      Case Study will be provided either before coming for the interview or on-spot which focuses on the thought process to solve the case and approach towards solving it using any programming/ coding.

Right Mindset to make a comeback:

Speaker – Anshu Gupta, Group Development Manager

Anshu addressed the crowd by encouraging them to create the right mindset to make a comeback and hit the floor with a positive impact. She has shared some of the best ways to help the women returnees to rediscover themselves.

Rebuild – She mentioned the crowd as we need to try to say NO for ourselves for others whom we care for. We need to create the right expectations with our family, personal & professional life when we really need to grow in our career and break the stereotypes. We need to mentally be prepared to draw the right boundaries & expectations with everyone at home as well. We need to stay confident and always have a positive approach at any kind of journey we do. This will help us to be stress-free and help ourselves to explore more on over career move.

Rise – Dust the Rust – Start learning new things, explore new technologies and move ahead with today’s competitive world. Technologies have evolved to a new level and we need to keep upskill ourselves to move up the ladder.

Discipline – We need to take time out to explore and learn to upskill ourselves and doing it on the floor. We should not compromise on learning and reading every day. If we stop learning ourselves, we are stopping our growth.

Prioritizing – We need to prioritize 3 major things and work around that on what it takes for. We should not feel guilty for anything as we need all these things to do it for ourselves for our self-growth.

Special Note:

Speaker - Zeeshan Ramlan, Head Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion, CSR

Zeeshan addressed the crowd with one of the innovative and awesome projects run by Intuit which is Intuit RISE. This engagement promotes the opportunity which has conceptualized a first-of-its-kind project for supporting the education of a girl child for every female employee who joins Intuit India. We aim to empower the future of hundreds of young girls in India. This program will increase access to quality education and help their all-round development through after-school support, life skills training and extra-curricular interests. Our “We Care and Give Back” employees network will keep us informed about the activities planned with these young girls and we help the underprivileged children to groom themselves through this Intuit-RISE CSR initiative.

Some Testimonials:

Overall, the event was full of energy within the crowd and it helped the women returnees with the right set of encouragement, confidence, guidance, motivation, networking and get-to-know session. They all have quite a positive discussion around and could able to connect with the right set of industry leaders to seek guidance to come back and make a difference at work. We have received a lot of positive responses till now and more than 50+ women techies have shared their resumes for the open roles that we will be conducting the hiring process and count is still on. Hopefully, the hiring process will be a huge success and we would be able to invite a good number be women returnees to join us in this program.