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Volunteering at the TEALS CS Fair

By Jordan Naftolin on 15 Apr 2016

In early April, Zillow was invited to participate in a computer science fair organized by TEALS at Microsoft’s Redmond campus. The goal of the fair was to introduce high school students to tech professionals to help motivate the students to pursue a career in computer science.  I was excited to volunteer with Karen Milfeld, Brendan Fruin, and Andy Wassyng to represent Zillow at the event.

To prepare for the day, the four of us put together a slideshow of what it’s like to work at Zillow, and grabbed some fun swag from Human Resources to give away to the students. We also designed and printed a “Why Computer Science?” handout.  The handout explained the types of jobs students could expect in the CS field and typical starting and mid-career CS salaries. It also included a list of resources the students could use to further improve their programming skills after the event.

With over 1,200 students attending the fair, our Zillow booth was pretty much packed for the entire morning. We spoke with students about their interest in computer science, answered their questions, and of course encouraged them to follow a career in computer science. The students wanted to know what it’s like to work at Zillow, what they could to do help prepare for CS jobs, and our personal stories of how we landed our jobs at Zillow. Oh, and one student asked us for real estate advice 🙂

It was exciting and encouraging to see such a diverse group of students interested in pursuing computer science.  I felt this Computer Science fair was successful in helping to guide the students towards an exciting and prosperous career path.

Giving back to the community is important to me, and I love that Zillow is eager to participate in events like these. I’m already looking forward to next year’s fair!

In case you’re interested, here are the resources we chose to include in our handout: