Vice President, Product and Operations, CodeDay
Lola Egherman is Vice President of Product and Operations at CodeDay, a non-profit helping students use technology and creativity to work on meaningful problems. Lola's excitement for CS started from a young age, in part due to attending CodeDay's K12 events when she was in middle school. Lola is a strong advocate for Open Source software and the transformative power being an open source contributor can have.
University recruiters are drowning in applications, and AI slop resumes have made the signal-to-noise problem significantly worse. Every candidate claims similar skills, lists similar projects, and uses the same language. The cost of a bad early-stage decision: wasted interview slots and new-grad hires who struggle to contribute in an AI-ready world where the baseline expectation has shifted dramatically.
This panel will discuss frameworks for predicting new-grad success in an AI-integrated workplace. Drawing on a peer-reviewed study of dozens of tech hiring managers, we'll walk through the 7 traits they most consistently associate with high-performing new graduates, and what separates AI-ready ""company hires"" (someone talented, coachable, and positioned to grow) from a candidate who will plateau quickly.
Panelists will share how companies have retrained their screening process to surface these traits before a single interview is scheduled.
Attendees will leave with specific, practical tools:
Which resume signals reliably indicate genuine project experience versus AI-assisted padding.
Screening call questions that reveal coachability and problem-solving capabilities.
How to spot the 7 hiring manager traits in a resume/conversation, and how project-based work, open source contributions, and event participation can serve as stronger proxies for potential than GPA or coursework alone.