International Women's Day 2024: SAP, Amazon, Microsoft and Google

As part of our International Women's Day celebrations, we've collated some of the best initiatives, events and resources available to women from the SAP, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google ecosystems. Energize Group is a vendor specialist recruitment agency and these four organisations provide ERP and cloud computing technology to our customers in North America and Europe.

According to Gartner, women hold approximately 26% of tech-related roles in the workforce worldwide. As a specialist recruiter, we act as the conduit between talented technology professionals and the world's leading employers. Our expert Consultants strive to ensure our women candidates have complete access to the employment market, securing the best-possible remuneration and career advancement opportunities, as well as supporting hiring businesses to meet their own strategic inclusion, diversity, and equity objectives. Let's take a closer look at what SAP, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google have to offer women through their own advocacy that inspires girls and women to pursue education and careers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

 

What does SAP offer for Women?

Here are some of the great things SAP do to #InspireInclusion, break down barriers to representation and advancement, and close the gender gap in the future!

• SAP Learning, the digital skills initiative for women  
  The free digital skills initiative is designed to support the SAP careers of people generally considered to be underrepresented within the technology industry, such as women, military veterans and their family and caregivers, single parents, people in remote or underserved geographic locations, people who are physically disabled or neurodivergent, first generation university students, people looking to change their careers mid-life, and other minority groups. The SAP Learning digital skills initiative offers women an opportunity to learn valuable SAP skills that can help entry-level professionals to improve their employment prospects and secure more lucrative career opportunities in technology industry!
  
  Women can study and achieve an official SAP Certification - completely free. With this program, women can upskill in key SAP functions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Integrated Business Processes using SAP S/4HANA, SAP Analytics Cloud Functionality, and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Core. Study is entirely self-paced via a dedicated learning site, and users simply inform SAP when you are finished. After completing your learning journey, SAP will send you an official SAP Certification exam. Once you achieve certification, you have already begun enhancing your reputation in the SAP ecosystem employment market with a recognised credential on your CV or resume. Visit this page to find out more!

• SAP's impactful and rewarding Returnship Programme
  SAP also offer a 20-week paid Returnship program in North America. Designed for mid-career professionals with a minimum of five years’ professional experience who have subsequently taken a career break of at least two years for caregiving, relocation, or military service. The structured program includes collaborative workshops, supportive coaching, and a dedicated mentor to ease the transition as attendees on-ramp back to the workforce. With open vacancies allocated exclusively to those undertaking the program, returnship provides the SAP organisation access to an untapped, diverse, highly educated, and motivated talent pool. Positions include remote and hybrid roles across a range functional areas including Development, Sales, Marketing, Services and Corporate Functions. Visit this page to find out more about SAP Returnship.
   
• Independently of SAP SE, we've also identified 'Women in SAP' from the independent UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UISUG). They provide a safe space for like-minded women to connect, learn, share experiences, foster relationships and support each other to thrive in the workplace, offering mentorship sessions, in-person and virtual events, and training for public speaking to amplify women's voices in the SAP ecosphere. Find out more about this community here.

What does Amazon Web Services offer women?

Read this article on how AWS is helping women and girls succeed in technology careers, with real-life testimonies from women AWS Solutions Architects, Software Engineers, and Network Engineers who are working to inspire and lead change, overcome disparities, and build skills, experience, and confidence within a supportive culture.

Here are three official groups for women in AWS:

• Get AWS Certified: CloudUp for Her Cloud Practitioner
  AWS CloudUp for Her Cloud Practitioner is a flexible learning pathway for women globally. If you're a student thinking about a career in tech, or a professional looking to re-skill, cross skill, or simply cloud curious, this is for you! This learning pathway will set you up for success on your cloud learning journey and help gain the global recognition of achieving your AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification.
   
• AWS Empowerment through mentorship: Girls In Tech
  Since 2021, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has provided global support for Girls in Tech, a nonprofit founded in 2007 dedicated to eliminating the gender gap in tech. Girls in Tech provides training, workshops, resources, and networking opportunities to women looking to enter the tech workforce, make career changes, or re-enter the workforce after taking time off. AWS has been working alongside Girls In Tech to make lasting change and empower the underrepresented demographic in tech: women.
   
• AWS Girls' Tech Series
  This program is a free learning experience that focuses on each of the STEAM areas with activities designed to engage, connect and activate future female innovators. This program exposes girls and young women, ages 8-24 to coding, robotics, cloud computing, problem-solving, and more. Celebrate International Women's Day 2024 with them here. 

How does Microsoft support women?

Via Microsoft's own #BuildFor2030 Initiative, Microsoft are working to support gender equity and Microsoft partners who are driving innovation. Read this article, accelerating our collective progress with women-led innovation. 

For a formalised educational offering, Microsoft provides a specialised 'Women at Microsoft Scholarship', empowering high school women and non-binary people to pursue a career in the technology industry.

Here's two nonprofit, partner-led associations networks for women that Microsoft collaborates with:

• The Women in Tech Network (WIT) 
  WIT supports women in organizations within the partner ecosystem through training, mentorship, and development, improving business results. In March, Microsoft is partnering with WIT to celebrate Women’s History Month by offering programs designed to inspire and empower women—join and learn from an extraordinary lineup of panels and speakers.
   
• Women in Cloud (WIC)
  WIC is an economic development organization focusing on digital co-sell marketing and entrepreneur advocacy, taking collective action to generate $1B in new net economic access for women entrepreneurs and professionals by 2030 through global partnerships with corporations, community leaders, and policymakers.

Here's some of the key offerings from Google

Read this article: Four things to remember this International Women's Day and Women's History Month, including how you can access women's stories from Oscar-winners to video game characters; the contributions of women throughout history, in science, art and culture; how you can support women-owned businesses, non-profits and organisations; and how you can be ally in your own daily life. 

You can also join their International Women's Day 2024 Virtual Summit, taking place over March 13th and 14th, featuring live Q&A with Engineering Directors, Software Engineers, AI/ML Engineers, Security Engineers, Recruiters, and Google Cloud's own Global Head of DEI.

Here are three community groups for women by Google:

• Women Techmakers
  Google’s Women Techmakers program provides visibility, community, and resources for women in technology! Celebrate IWD with Women Techmakers and find upcoming events near you.
   
• Womenwill
  Womenwill, an initiative by Google, to raise awareness about the gender gap in technology and raise money to support programs designed to help women make the most of the online world.

Thank you for reading our International Women's Day blog article, we hope you found these resources both interesting and useful! For any women currently working in the technology industry, or if you are seeking new opportunities with to maximise your skill-set, please visit our latest vacancies or contact us directly for a friendly career consultation.
 

Energize Group is a global staffing business operating across Europe and North America. As vendor Specialists for SAP®, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure ecosystems, we support our hiring partners with an array of innovative services in their challenge to build teams and scale organisations with world-class SAP and Cloud talent.

Delivering exceptional experiences to all our Clients and Candidates, thousands of independent reviews saw us reach an impressive Net Promoter Score® of 71 in 2023. We're also considered among the leading employers in the staffing and recruitment industry, recognised and ranked amongst Recruiter Magazine Hot 100, The Sunday Times  'Best Places to Work', and the UK's Best Companies to Work For, thanks to our Employee Engagement Score averaging 95%.