Grace Hopper Conference
A celebration of young women technologists
In-person event
Concept development
The short version
I art directed Coursera's first presence at Grace Hopper Celebration: a booth, an interview room, swag, and social, built around #WithoutLimits.
It became our most successful recruiting event ever, with 1,158 candidate sign-ups, 109 candidates fast-tracked for interviews, and 21 hires.
THE OBJECTIVE
Attract top female tech talent
It was our first formal presence at GHC, so it was also a pilot for new ways to recruit.
Grace Hopper Celebration is a leading tech event for recruiting, and it's important Coursera has a formal presence to position Coursera as a top employer for female candidates. We must communicate the professional value and impact of joining Coursera in order to build a strong (and diverse) candidate pipeline.
THE BRIEF
A brand experience that lands 5+ job offers
Design a cohesive brand experience for our presence at Grace Hopper Celebration to attract top talent to work at Coursera, with 5+ accepted job offers.
Our primary audience was early-career technical talent who are passionate about working for a mission-driven company. The creative asks were a career booth and on-site experience, an interview room, a swag collection, collateral, and social media promotions.
Who’s involved:
Art direction and design lead (me), Brand Director, talent team, brand events manager, and our fabricator
EXPLORATION
Do it for the 'Gram
This event took place when instagrammable female empowerment quotes were having a moment and were extremely popular with our target audience: young professional women.
My strategy was to tap into the cultural zeitgeist without coming across as too girlboss-y or romanticizing hustle culture.
THE CONCEPT
Without limits
Three choices shaped the concept: the theme, the color, and the words.
THEME
#WithoutLimits
Our company tagline was 'learn without limits' but that call to action wouldn't work for this audience, so I suggested we use #WithoutLimits as the campaign theme and hashtag, which would counter the idea of a glass ceiling and allow us to speak to the limitless potential of women.
COLOR
A gradient instead of pink
I wanted to avoid using pink as the primary campaign color due to its overuse in marketing to women, so I created a gradient with 3 of our brand colors (yellow, pink and blue) which was still feminine and eye-catching. To ground the designs I added a deep purple that provided great readability, and our organic brand shapes for texture.
QUOTES
Words from women in STEM
This event experience would be driven by empowering statements and inspiring quotes from women in STEM and other fields. These quotes spoke to the impact that candidates could have at a mission-driven startup like Coursera.
THE BOOTH
A lot to fit in 10' × 20'
Our booth had to accomplish quite a bit in a 10' x 20' space.
We needed a spot for chatting with candidates, space for storage and a laptop display, a table for swag, some kind of activity to draw people in and enough room for visitors to move around. I worked closely with our fabricator and the event team on a booth design that was inviting and clearly communicated the company's values and culture to potential candidates.
The footprint was a 10' × 20' booth plus a 10' × 10' interview room. I designed both and worked through several rounds of renders with our fabricator, PreCon, from July to August.
An early 3D walkthrough of the footprint, by PreCon.
My booth design (left) and PreCon's production render (right).
Interactive moments
Reasons to stop and stay
Two moments gave people a reason to stop, take a photo, and talk to us.
Selfie spot
Learn. Grow. Code., in neon
My research had shown neon signs were super popular with this audience, so I designed a selfie station in the booth that featured a neon sign which read "Learn. Grow. Code." for attendees to stop in and take photos with.
POSTCARDS
A postcard to your future self
We placed a custom branded mailbox at the corner of our booth to entice attendees to stop by and write a postcard to themselves following the prompt "#WithoutLimits, I will succeed at…", which we would mail out after the show. This tapped into the accountability and manifestation trends at the time to voice your dreams into reality. There were 5 different postcards to choose from featuring inspiring words from successful women.
Our audience was mostly computer science students, who tend to take instructions literally, so the prompt had to be short and open enough to get a real reflection. We landed on "#WithoutLimits, I will succeed at…"
SWAG
Enamel pins over plastic
For swag we wanted to avoid creating a lot of plastic waste from items that would get tossed right after the show, so I designed a set of high-quality enamel pins with uplifting messages about working in STEM.
Our pins were a big hit at the conference, drawing a lot of people over to our booth. They also were receiving lots of love on our social channels with learners around the world wanting to get their hands on one!
SOCIAL
Bringing the experience online
I created gif stickers for the event so our audience on social could also participate in the celebration.
During the event we highlighted some of the women engineers at Coursera and reshared the postcard designs with a larger audience. A “Coursera at GHC” landing page carried the theme online, with a free month of any Specialization for attendees. The quote posts drew 190 comments and twice our average click-through for the quarter.
EMPLOYEE BRANDING
T-shirts and Zoom backgrounds
For the recruiting team on-site and virtually I created coordinating Zoom backgrounds and t-shirts.
INTERVIEW ROOM
Recreating our in-office interview experience
I wanted the interview room to feel like our office in Mountain View so candidates would get an idea of what working at Coursera might be like.
Our fabricator sent over a mockup for the interview room that utilized the same look and feel as our booth, but a room you'd sit in for an hour didn't need to be bright and attention grabbing.
In my design plan I specified soft plush chairs like we had all around our headquarters and a table similar to the desks we all worked at. To make the space as warm and inviting as our offices, I brought the outside in with plants, and used home-y floor lamps for lighting. I also instructed the fabricator to choose finishes close to Coursera's brand colors.
The fabricator's first mockup reused the booth look (left). I specified office furniture, plants and warm lamps instead (right).
On site: the neon selfie spot, the pins, the postcards and the mailbox.
THE RESULT
Our most successful recruiting event ever
We set out to land 5+ accepted offers. We made 21 hires.
1,158
Candidate sign-ups at the booth.
109
Candidates fast-tracked for interviews.
21
Hires for internships or entry-level positions.
What I learned
Design the moment, not just the booth
The neon sign and the postcards gave people a reason to stop, take a photo, and talk to us. We set out for 5 hires and made 21.
Small words matter
One line on the back of a postcard decided whether people wrote a word or a real goal.
Pick swag people keep
Enamel pins over plastic giveaways meant less waste, and they kept showing up on social after the event.
