Professional Support Sessions

Back to All Actions

What is the Action?

Provide professional support for female students in the form of career advice. These advice sessions are dedicated to different topics, for example, preparation for technical interviews, CV reviewing, sessions with corporate sponsors etc.

Quick Facts to Support this Action

Despite known shortages of computing professionals, women still find it hard to get a job in the field according to Bettina Bair, a chair of the ACM-W organisation.

Ways to Implement this Action

The goal of this action is to offer some preparation to female students for their professional journey in computing. This can be done, for example, through a university female network/club, or incorporated within the curriculum of a course.

Some ideas on what can be organised in forms of sessions for women specific events:

➤ Interview Prep

Technical interview preparation sessions.

➤ CV/Cover Letter Review

CV and/or cover letter reviews for internships and placements.

➤ Alumni Events

Alumni events to provide students with insights of real experience with the industry after completing their degrees.

➤ Industry Events

Events with industrial sponsors, who can provide information of jobs available and other career advice

Some ideas on how career related activities could be part of a course for all students:

➤ Invite Professionals

Invite an industry professional who, for instance, has experience hiring students from this university, as a guest lecturer to give a talk on how to prepare a professional CV.

➤ CV Assignments

Introduce a mandatory CV writing assignment ahead of a relevant career event.

➤ Extra Credit

A possibility for students to earn extra credit when taking part at career events.

Evaluation Approach

While it might be challenging to assess a short-term impact of this action, a way to see some impact is for instance, to compare student performance (grades) before and after the change where it was implemented within a particular module, or to issue a survey to students, and include questions relevant to the activities implemented. 

Sample survey questions (taken from study L. Ott. Explorations in computing: Could this be the key to retention? In FIE, pages 1–9, Madrid, Spain, 2014. IEEE Xplore, IEEE. – a mandatory CV writing assignment was introduced in this study):

  • How valuable was the resume writing assignment? – where 1 means a complete waste of time and 6 means very valuable 
  • Please indicate the extra credit opportunities you participated in (attending a career fair was one of the actitivities to earn an extra credit).
  • If you participated in any extra credit opportunities, which did you find the most valuable?
  • What is your favorite course this semester?

L. Ott. Explorations in computing: Could this be the key to retention? In FIE, pages 1–9, Madrid, Spain, 2014. IEEE Xplore, IEEE. 

E. Shein. Women in computer science are making strides. Communications of the ACM, 66(5):15–17, 2023. 

L. Horne. Women in Computing provides professional development opportunities to NU graduates. The Daily Northwestern, 10/02/2025.