Her Story
About Anuradha
I started my career in HR as a recruiter and eventually progressed to leading my own team. After that, I took a big sabbatical to raise my kids. When I came back to work, it wasn't easy, but I put myself out there on LinkedIn and found my current position through networking, with people seeing me for what I do. Now I'm helping a startup by creating a community of people here in the US. I hire people, take them through a funneling process, onboard them, and enable them to become mentors who can go and explain to clients and organizations how they can use our platform. I also serve as an account manager, helping these mentors and facilitators get their clients. I'm enabling them to become AI transformationists so they can talk to organizations about how to develop products using AI. The other major part of my work involves going to conferences where I get to meet a lot of people, talk to them about what our product entails, and how they can use our platform. When I'm home, I work with my community of leaders, and when I'm traveling, it's me at the conference talking to people. I'm a very people-oriented person.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Anuradha
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Network like your life depends on it. Soft skills are so important. I cannot specify this enough, because I go to a lot of conferences and I see kids, even from college, come and talk to us, trying to explore and network at this age, which is very nice. If you don't have these soft skills, I don't think you'll be able to be a good team player, or first of all, find a job, right? And then, eventually, after you land a job, to be a good team player, and then eventually progress yourself into becoming a leader or an expert in your area that you're trying to build. Soft skills are not given much importance, but it is very much so that every individual needs it, especially the younger generation. They need it more because the communication that I see, especially in my kids, you're on the phone all the time, you don't socialize much enough. So all these things, brushing up on soft skills will help them.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think for anybody in any field right now, keeping up with what's out there in the market takes a different level of effort, for sure, because we keep talking about upskilling yourself, and if you're not upskilling, then you're going to rot like iron. You have to, especially in the knowledge-based field where things are advancing, especially with AI, every single day. I think everyone needs to make time, and especially it's not easy for the women to do that, especially if you have a family and you have kids and all that, so putting yourself or giving yourself time. I call my weekends, one day is self-care, one day is for upskilling, so there are no weekends as such. Every single day is something that we got to work through.
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