Dani attended TARGETjobs Events IT's not just for the boys! last year and made some great life-long contacts!

Name: Danielle Walsh

University: Northumbria University

Degree Title:Ethical Hacking for Computer Security

Waking up on the day of the “IT’s not just for the boys” event left me feeling anxious and excited all at once! Grabbing a coffee amongst the busy London crowd, I approached Bloomberg HQ in London contemplating what other female geeks were like. Prior to this event, I never had the pleasure of knowing any other females with the same passion in technology as me.

My intentions for the event were not to get a graduate job or placement, as I had already secured a sponsorship with my placement company before I arrived.  My goal was to network with other female geeks! My wish was granted as I approached the buffet table and met Dagmara. Dagmara introduced herself as a mechanical engineer and I introduced myself as a software engineer studying “Ethical Hacking”. We immediately clicked and laughed about debugging problems - and what it’s like to be one of few girls studying male-dominated subjects.

Moving into the bright conference room, the day continued with meeting lots of incredible peers like Raluca who shared her love of web application programming - who now works for Microsoft (congratulations)! For me, the chance to meet Kathryn Parsons, founder of Decoded, was such an honour as she filled me with inspiration to share the love for coding and celebrating her success was unbelievable.

Although I did not wish for a job, the companies who attended showed a lot of interest and did pass out invites for assessment centres/interviews! I gained a lot of knowledge from the companies about how to be successful in interviews and skills companies like employees to have. I can only hope that I have been able to express how truly amazing the event was, from meeting wonderful women geeks, being inspired, eating great food and knowledge gaining from tremendous companies.

Long behold, Dagmara is now one my best friends and came to my city of studying (Newcastle) to do her placement. Since then we go travelling and work on coding projects together in our spare time. Looks like IT’s not just for the boys gave me a friend for life! Thank you for the opportunity!