Women’s History Month: Tips to achieve your goals

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re excited to launch an internal female employee resource group, HylandWIN, focused on empowering females at Hyland to achieve their personal and professional goals. Moving forward, women who work at Hyland will be offering advice to other women interested in the tech industry. Enjoy!

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Hyland is the first organization I’ve worked for since I graduated from college. I found the company through a career fair at The Ohio State University (OSU). The career fair was intimidating because there were thousands of students all wanting to stand out and place their best feet forward.

I found that speaking confidently and in-depth about a few important topics on my resume sparked more memorable conversations than listing every single project I’ve ever worked on. I also find this to be true now when participating in career fairs for opportunities at Hyland.

During my time at Hyland, I have met numerous people who all have different roles within the company. Each interaction with a coworker is a networking opportunity. It’s also a chance to learn and create a relationship with a person to use as a reference when questions arise. And in tech, questions will arise.

Get out there

If I have one message to drive home about networking it is this: participate in any event that sounds even remotely fun, including both professional and after-hour events. Participating in the Women in Tech conference last year, as well as speaking on an engineering panel at OSU, gave me the opportunity to talk with many aspiring programmers.

On the other side of the coin, Hyland’s annual Poker Tournament has been another great way to network for me because there’s a high likelihood that I will be sitting with people I have never spoken with before. Reaching out and making positive connections with peers, coworkers and colleagues only enhances your knowledge because you know who you can tap to learn from when you don’t know something.

Wellness affects your performance

In addition to networking, wellness is also extremely important. For the first year or so, I didn’t focus on my wellbeing and started to feel sluggish and unmotivated. Then, I started to participate in Hyland’s Cross-Fit class. At first, it was hard to keep up, since I was extremely sore on a daily basis. But after it became a habit, I found myself feeling better and having more energy later into the evening.

Prioritizing wellness was definitely a shift in thought, but it is worth it. To stay consistent, I found a time where I couldn’t make an excuse to not workout.

Schedule success

I’d always be “too tired” in the morning, and “too busy” in the evening, so fitting a quick 20 – 30 minute run or class in around meetings worked well. Additionally, I found putting it on my Outlook calendar created accountability where I couldn’t say “Oh … I can go later in the day.”

Another thing about scheduling activities and tasks on my Outlook calendar is that it definitely helps my productivity, even if the topic is for myself. This helps me block off time to complete things that I need to finish in a timely fashion. As your time progresses at a company, your responsibilities become greater, and scheduling helps keep the small things, such as code documentation, e-mail follow-ups or personal goals, organized. It also motivates you to complete those tasks.

Another productivity hack I find useful is creating rules within Outlook to navigate certain emails to different folders; then, I’ll manually check those folders when I’m at a good pausing point. This works well for things that are constantly updated, such as code reviews, progress tracking updates, etc. While manually checking those folders, I’ll perform the necessary actions to stay updated and in-the-loop.

I’m very happy to have found a great job fit at Hyland and I’m excited to be working in the tech industry. I hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!