Episode 103
How to Get Hired for Applied AI Roles in Fortune 500 Companies (Target Sr Data Scientist POV) - w/ Sowmya
Picture this: it's 2023, ChatGPT just dropped, every Fortune 500 suddenly needs an "AI strategy," and the job postings want 5 years of experience in a technology that's barely 18 months old. How does anyone actually get hired in that mess?
Who this is for
- You are trying to get hired without sounding like everybody else in the pile.
- You would rather hear Sowmya's version while the mess is still fresh than get another polished hindsight sermon.
Key takeaways
- Get Hired for Applied AI Roles in Fortune 500 Companies (Target Sr Data Scientist POV) - w/ Sowmya
- team that literally decides what AI gets built and what gets killed. Cost was not even a discussion point on the table....
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What if the most important AI skill at a Fortune 500 company is knowing when to not use AI? So it's not about which enterprise of which company has the best AI or the best platform.
It's about who has the best judgment in terms of when not to use AI actually or even when to use AI. Joining me today is Samya Podila. She's on the centralized generative AI team at Target.
The team that literally decides what AI gets built and what gets killed. Cost was not even a discussion point on the table. You can go experiment. You can have your own model. You can spin up a DD.
Everything is self-service and you can just have credits. You have free reigns, right? You can choose your model, do it however you want and then go talk to the person that's going to be using it.
So it's your customer quote-unquote. Clearly you get access to these models even prior to the public release. So we know that four points. iPod 4 is coming at least one or two weeks ahead.
Show notes
Picture this: it's 2023, ChatGPT just dropped, every Fortune 500 suddenly needs an "AI strategy," and the job postings want 5 years of experience in a technology that's barely 18 months old. How does anyone actually get hired in that mess? She's now a Senior Data Scientist on Target's centralized Generative AI team — basically the internal startup that decides which AI use cases get built, killed, or scaled across the entire company. Before Target, she was deep in the chaos: interviewing at Google and other Fortune 500s during the wildest hiring wave applied AI has ever seen.
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