Later in the month, Ashoka hosted Mr. Shashank Sahni, Managing Director of Global Ads Solutions at Google, who has been with the company for 11 years. Parth Agarwal, one of the Presidents of CS Society, gave him a tour of campus before we sat down for an exclusive session covering everything from Google and AI to careers and hiring.
The session was organised by the Career Development Office (CDO) and moderated by Akshat, a fourth-year student. Here are some of the ideas that stayed with us:
- Build a T-shaped understanding. In today’s world, it’s important to have breadth across many domains, but also real depth in at least one. Broad awareness keeps you adaptable, and deep expertise is what makes you valuable.
- Careers are becoming non-linear. With AI reshaping industries, we’ll see more people move between roles, fields, and paths rather than following a single straight line.
- Campus recruitment will change. Instead of a few mass recruiters visiting campuses, he expects more smaller companies to hire directly from campuses in the future.
- Networking matters most. When it comes to finding jobs, the people you know and the relationships you build make the biggest difference.
- Even big companies don’t know where superintelligence is headed. He was candid that there’s real uncertainty across the industry about where we’re going.
- AI is already changing search. Around 15 to 20 percent of new searches today are related to AI.
- Know when not to use AI. Don’t outsource your thinking. Use AI to support and test your hypotheses, not to form them for you.
- Who Google doesn’t hire. They never hire a know-it-all. And above all, know your own stuff: never walk into an interview without being able to speak to everything on your resume.
It was an honest, thoughtful conversation, and we’re grateful to Mr. Sahni for his time and to the CDO for making it happen.