Demystifying Speaking at Grace Hopper Conference with Shreya Rajkumar

Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) is one of the largest global conferences for women and allies in the field of science and technology. I sat down with Shreya Rajkumar, who presented an enlightening talk at GHC 2022 to learn more about her experience speaking at a large-scale tech conference. She is a senior software engineer at LinkedIn who has become an expert in the field of Search infrastructure through her work experience.

The search ecosystem at LinkedIn is the backbone for many of the user activities such as finding jobs, interest groups, colleagues to connect with, etc. With millions of users searching each day for different entities, Shreya and her team ensure this complex system is up and running at all times and develop features that help improve the member experience.

Some worthy standouts of her work include spearheading the efforts to migrate search verticals from the older architecture to the next-gen search architecture, optimizing the index size by 80%, and reducing latencies of search results for users by 34%.

Could you share more details on the topic you presented at GHC?

I spoke on the exciting world of Information Retrieval. The first portion of my talk was an "Intro to Search" to ensure everyone attending the tech talk understood the mechanisms behind information retrieval. The subsequent portions of my presentation focussed on the architecture developed at LinkedIn and its evolution.

How did you decide on the topic?

I wanted to present a topic that was interesting as well as useful to everyone tuning in. Understanding the workings of LinkedIn Search Infrastructure is the perfect combination of both. It introduces the audience to the internals of search and the importance of having a rich LinkedIn profile which certainly helps when job seekers are trying to catch the attention of recruiters and hiring managers.

What was the selection process to present at Grace Hopper Conference?

Every year, the selection rate to present at Grace Hopper Conference is pretty low. In the past, the acceptance rate has been around 9%. As part of the application process, I had to submit a topic proposal under a particular track and mention its purpose, methodologies, and key takeaways as well as my expertise in the topic. Track experts reviewed and scored each topic proposal against different categories and selected the top few from every track.

How was your experience presenting at the conference?

It was an incredible experience! I was flooded with messages from students and early career professionals to learn more about the search infrastructure. Seeing the topic resonate with thousands of attendees was as rewarding as it was exciting. It truly felt great to give back to the community that is taking so many initiatives to empower women and its allies.

Finally, any tips you would like to share with our readers who wish to present at such prominent tech conferences?

I would recommend anyone interested first identify all the areas they are a subject matter expert in and come up with a presentation that is easy to comprehend and engaging. Through my various public speaking experiences, I have realized that people love stories. Thus it’s always good to incorporate storytelling into tech talks to make a compelling presentation.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 23, 2022 03:31 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).