Shruti Deshmukh

I attribute my success to always talking to people and taking advice from them. It started at home with my parents, with my mom, my elder brother. And also professionally, always going up to people and being open to understand what can be improved in you. So asking for advice, asking what I can do better is a question to ask. And if they say something, think about it. That's what has helped me succeed.

The best career advice I've ever received is that I should start making decisions and just not procrastinate. If you think that something needs to be done, understand the risks and just do it. And along the way, if it doesn't go well, it's okay. Things don't go well at times. You're supposed to live your life. It's okay. It's important to even sometimes forgive yourself for the mistakes that you make. That's the best advice I ever got.

The best career advice I would give is to try out things and not be afraid of making mistakes. Not every decision you or any young lady in terms of career has to make is perfect, but they should at least start making decisions. The younger they start making decisions, the more visibility they have, the more opportunities they're going to get. And in case a decision that they make doesn't go well, doesn't fare well, it's okay. What matters is how do they fix it and how they move forward from it, what they gained from their mistake. That's more important. But making decisions, start taking action. It can be a small decision, like opting in for a course that nobody ever opted in, starting a club, or raising their hand to take up the responsibility of running the club or running an event. Such things, they matter every day.

The challenge I would say is understanding technology. It's a challenge because when people don't have inclination to it, they don't tend to read through it or they don't spend some time in understanding it, but we cannot leave it there. So they need to overcome their apprehension towards technology. That's a challenge they should overcome. And an opportunity is that the moment you do step in and understand technology, you can bring your own expertise, your subject matter expertise to it, and work on it. So that's a huge opportunity there itself. Technology is both the challenge and the opportunity at the same time.

The most important value is being responsible, I would say. When you work, be responsible for your work, be responsible to the people, you know. Understand that, be responsible of how you are as a person when you're going through life. At times, you're going to meet people who are in the greatest need, or you'll meet people who need assistance. At that time, it's important that we become responsible and treat them the best way. So being responsible in all areas of life, like work, how they behave with people, how they work on themselves, like taking some time off if you need it, working out, having good relations with people. So being responsible is important.