Raising Our Levels Of Awareness With The Technology Speaker Series

Just as we all have a favorite color, movie or ice cream flavor, every team member at Rocket Companies® has a favorite ISM. While each ISM is significant to me in different ways, “Always raising our level of awareness” has been the ISM I admire the most. Conveniently enough, this is also the ISM I get to drive within our organization’s culture each day through the Technology Speaker Series program.

As an organization that is dedicated to revolutionizing the mortgage industry through technological innovation and client satisfaction, “Always raising our level of awareness” is a big deal for us. Our Technology Speaker Series is one of the many resources we offer to technology team members for the purpose of developing their technical skill sets.

The Technology Speaker Series is a monthly, virtual workshop offered to our Technology team members and features a selected guest speaker. This program was created with our team members’ professional development at the forefront, so the topics and speakers we select for the workshop are driven by feedback and requests from the team! Each Technology Speaker Series workshop provides team members the opportunity to expand their technical skill set in a way they might not have been exposed to otherwise.

A stagnant mind is a dangerous roadblock for our future as a team and an organization; what we aim to avoid through the Technology Speaker Series. These hands-on workshops are designed to be a resource our team members can attend during their workday or access at a later time on our SharePoint page.

We aim to promote a culture where our team members are not only inspired to always raise their levels of awareness, but we also aim to provide them with the opportunities to do so. By bringing in these professional guest speakers from a variety of different technological backgrounds, our Technology team can acquire new skills to apply in their day-to-day work, all within working hours!

Since the program’s kick off in spring 2020, our Technology team has had the pleasure of hosting a plethora of distinguished professionals from various specialties, a few of them being:

• Rediscovering JavaScript with Dr. Venkat Subramaniam
• State of .NET Panel with panelists Rachel Appel, Rodney Littles, Layla Porter, Mark Rendle and Corey Weathers
• Windows 10 for Windows or Linux with Scott Hanselman
• Web Performance Profiling and GraphQL with Tracy Lee

In each Technology Speaker Series workshop, team members take part in hands-on exercises, live demos and a Q&A session with the guest speaker. Each speaker leaves our Technology team with a diverse, new and innovative set of skills and expertise to adopt and apply in both their personal and professional work. Promoting a growth mindset is a key part of our culture, and so is team member experience. Therefore, each Speaker Series workshop takes place within working hours: We want to provide team members with the resources to excel in their career paths while also maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

As I stated previously, “Always raising our level of awareness” is an ISM I hold close to my heart and aim to drive within our technology community through the Technology Speaker Series. If you are interested in raising your level of awareness through the Technology Speaker Series, check out our available career opportunities. I hope to see you at our next workshop!