This year’s conference attracted 3600 attendees from 42 countries, as well as 162 corporate sponsors. About 1500 out of 3600 of these attendees are university students, most of whom are from top universities doing research in areas Yahoo is interested in. It was such an honor for us to be a silver sponsor, promoting our brand at a 3-day career fair and an exclusive breakfast reception. Our WIT branding was a huge success! Hundreds of students and professionals visited our booth everyday and loved our slogan ‘Code Like a Girl’. For many of them, Big Data, mobile development and web design were in the air. When we talked about the many terabytes of online data we deal with and 700 million users we can make an influence everyday, their eyes lit up. One of our recruiters from the University Recruiting team recalled “There were so many attendees who were bright-eyed and curious about our products, our brand, and our leadership. The conference gets bigger every year, and we are connecting and building relationships with students who are talented and true ‘techies’ at heart.” 

72 top candidates attended our breakfast event early the second morning of the conference. One Yahoo! Sports Front-end developer showed a demo of the Fantasy Football app and encouraged this group of young women who love games not to be afraid of joining the gaming industry where 90% are male engineers. Another engineer from Information Security gave a tech talk on security issues which Yahoo! takes very seriously and invests heavily to ensure the safety of our users’ data and avoid countless attacks from hackers everyday. Students were really inspired by the speeches. A student from Duke University said “I really enjoyed hearing how their jobs have allowed them to focus on an area they are passionate about. Their enthusiasm (especially at 7 am!) was incredibly evident!”