Hi! So you need a pic or bio for me. I'll also address a few other common issues / questions.
If I sent you here and there's something I haven't answered, please let me know.
My Name & Pronunciation
First Name: Gayle
Middle Name (Maiden Name): Laakmann <---- two n's! Lots of people mess this up. As in at least 25% of speaker bios / articles misspell my name.
Last Name: McDowell
How do I pronounce Laakmann?
"Laakmann" is pronounced the way you would expect "Lockman" to be pronounced. Something like "Lockmen". (Not: Lack + man or Lack + men.)
You have so many names! Which name do I use?
I'm an author and a lot of people still associate me with my maiden/middle name. Therefore, when you're writing out my full name, I prefer "Gayle Laakmann McDowell".
If you're just going to use my last name (for example, during subsequent mentions in an article), then "McDowell" is fine (or "Gayle").
Title
I generally use Author of the Cracking the * Interview Series"
Bios
Here are some bios of different lengths.
Mini
Founder of CareerCup.com. Tech hiring consultant. Author of Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, Cracking the Tech Career. Former Software Engineer (Google, Microsoft, Apple).
Short
Founder/CEO of CareerCup.com. Tech hiring consultant. Acquisition interview consultant. Author of Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Interview, Cracking the Tech Career. Software Engineer (Google, Microsoft, Apple).
gayle.com
twitter.com/gayle
facebook.com/gayle
Medium Length
Gayle Laakmann McDowell is the founder/CEO of CareerCup.com and the author of the best-selling Cracking the *interview books (Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the Coding Interview, Cracking the PM Career, Cracking the PM Interview, and Cracking the Tech Career). She consults with large and small companies on their engineering hiring process and teaches interviewer training workshops to improve hiring effectiveness.
Her background is in software development, with a BSE/MSE in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School. She previously worked as a software engineer at Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
She can be found online at twitter.com/gayle, facebook.com/gayle, and gayle.com.
Contact Info
You can provide my contact info if you'd like. I usually provide the following in speaker bios:
gayle.com
gayle <at> gayle.com
facebook.com/gayle
twitter.com/gayle
linkedin.com/in/gaylemcd
Pictures
These should all be fairly high resolution -- good enough for a website. Just open whichever one you want. You can also download the originals here. That's probably only useful if you need to print at very high resolution.
