Nikita Siddamsettiwar

The best career advice I've received is not to take whatever you're studying as what you will be doing even 5 or 10 years after graduation. It's really important to pivot, especially early on in your career, to get the biggest and broadest toolset that you can then apply to any job you have. When I first joined Microsoft, I was in finance. I did that for a few years, and then I moved over to engineering where I worked very closely with our engineers and sales teams, which really broadened my scope of what I thought about product at a tech company. Then I realized I wanted to be closer to the strategy side and how we actually go to market, which is what I'm doing right now on the go-to-market team. Through every different career pivot that I've made, I've learned something new, and I actually do think that employers really value that, especially in this day and age. It's not just about doing something very niche, but having a wide variety of skill sets. Especially since AI can do a lot of our niche skill sets, it's really important to be able to speak the language of business. I can know what engineering is saying and translate that to marketing or finance. Because I've pivoted in so many different types of roles, I'm able to do that. So my biggest advice is don't be afraid to move around. Try different industries, try different verticals. I think it will be really beneficial.

Use being a woman to your advantage. I remember some of my finance classes in undergrad where I was one of five women, which was very daunting. But we as women have different experiences that we can really bring to the industry, especially in tech. I feel like sometimes it is a male-dominated field, and a lot of STEM fields and careers are. But use that to your advantage. I think a lot of employers really value a different opinion, a different way of doing things. I do sometimes believe that us as women are a lot more empathetic, and I think we do need that in this day and age. So don't be afraid. I think it's a huge advantage coming into a male-dominated field. That's something that I hopefully will not let stop me in the future, but I definitely didn't let it stop me when I first started off my career.

One of the biggest challenges is just how fast everything is moving. I currently work at Microsoft, and we've basically led the AI movement. We were one of the first companies to start with an AI narrative, and that's just grown to almost the entire industry. So I think the biggest challenge is just keeping up with all of the innovations. I also feel like that's one of the biggest opportunities. No company can now stall. They have to consistently come up with new feature updates, new product roadmaps, they have to consistently think about the way that customers are evolving in every business. So I think that can be a positive and a negative thing. But for me, it's something that's really exciting, because I get to be at the forefront of it and see how Microsoft is really changing the AI landscape.

The values that really stand out to me are definitely honesty and trust. In this industry, especially with the employer's market where employers get to pick, honesty really stands out to me. Be honest with your candidates about what job you'll be doing, where the market is going, where the company is going, whether you're working at a startup or a fast-growing AI company. I think honesty is really key from an employer's perspective, so I really value honesty. I also really value trust, and that goes hand-in-hand. Working for a company like Microsoft, it's really important that you trust what the company's values are and you can stand behind it. There are definitely companies in the industry that I personally wouldn't see myself working at just because I don't trust their values. Microsoft's big value is security, and I think making sure everyone's data is secure and that's at the forefront of every one of the products that we're launching is really important. So I think those two, honesty and trust, are probably the big ones for me.