In this interview segment, Gaurav Gandhi shares insights drawn from his experience interviewing over 500 students and his extensive LinkedIn presence. He outlines four core expectations that Indian multinational employers have of fresh graduates: (1) self‑awareness and genuine passion for one’s career path; (2) solid knowledge of the target organization – its business model, recent projects, key clients, and available roles – that can be articulated in a brief pitch; (3) continuous learnability beyond the college curriculum, demonstrated through up‑to‑date technical knowledge or courses on platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacity, etc.; and (4) basic professional hygiene such as an up‑to‑date CV, clear communication, and the ability to present technical, extracurricular, and social achievements effectively. Gandhi then shifts to the strategic importance of LinkedIn. He cites the platform’s massive reach (700 M+ members globally, 69 M+ in India) and argues that a well‑crafted LinkedIn profile serves as a professional persona that recruiters, startup executives, and peers scrutinize before any direct interaction. He describes his own evangelism: creating high‑frequency, positive‑psychology content (40+ posts last year, aiming for 100+ this year), mentoring others to grow their networks rapidly, and leveraging LinkedIn for speaking, judging, and mentoring opportunities. The overarching message is that LinkedIn should be approached as a give‑back platform – offering genuine value to attract connections and opportunities rather than expecting immediate reciprocation.
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But it's more about giving back rather than expecting. And they all move from 500 connects to 10,000 connects in 5 months. Why they need to have a profile on LinkedIn? Organization, uh, more and more are looking for people who are more passionate towards what they want in life. The youngster is not coming with a skill of constant being a constant learner and learnability, then it would be very difficult for him. In organization to grow.
My next question to you is, uh, more about— because you have been so closely, uh, related with academia as well as with the TCS, uh, what do you think is the expectation, uh, from— I, I wouldn't only say TCS, but from industry perspective, that anyone who's graduating or who's planning to join these multinational companies What is the basic 3 or 4 expectations from the freshers or from the people who are joining those companies?
That's a wonderful question, Haritosh Srivastav, and that is very, very close to my heart. The reason being, besides being closely associated with academia, I was also part of the interview panel from my organization side for several years. Probably in those 6 years, I would have interviewed, I would say more than 500 students from across streams, across universities, across colleges. And I would share some of my experiences and some of the tips for the youngsters. One of the tips is becoming more self-aware. Many of them want to get into IT because their colleagues are getting into IT or any other organization where they want to, because they want a job. But organizations more and more are looking for people who are more passionate towards what they want in life. So becoming more self-aware is first thing I would say. Second is their ability to understand which organization they are sitting for, uh, is very low, even though the information is very, very easily available. So if a person is coming from an IT organization, the organization expects the person to know what does this organization do. Can the person explain in 30 seconds what does this company does?, right, for earning its revenue? What are some of the key projects this company would have done in last one year? What are some of the key clients of this company, right? What kind of roles are available? And this information is easily available on the company's site, but people expect, you know, and they still miss going through that. And I've seen several, you know, intelligent young people getting rejected because of their lack of awareness about the organization they were sitting for. That's the second one. Third one is young professionals should look beyond their curriculum. The reason is simple, technology, especially technology jobs, or in fact, any other job, because technology is the backbone now, is changing very, very fast. So what we study in college in 4 years, 3 years becomes irrelevant when they sit for an interview. True. So in terms of that, what is going on in the industry, what are the latest technologies, and nobody is stopping people to do a course through Coursera or edX or Udacity, you know, or Khan Academy, which proves that you are moving beyond your curriculum to learn new things, because learnability is one of the key skills which every organization is looking for in young professionals. Right, because you may today hire them for, you know, .NET or Java or React.js, but these technologies will not even exist in next 2-3 years, right? Or they will not— there will be very less demand. So if the youngster is not coming with a skill of constant being a constant learner and learnability, then it would be very difficult for organization to, uh, for him in organization to grow.. So that is the third thing I would say. And fourth is, of course, you know, the basic hygiene stuff, which is updating your CV, you know, having your communications skills in the sense of how do you introduce yourself, how do you come across, how do you put your achievements, both technical, professional, social, extracurricular to the interview. These plays a key role. In determining their selection.
Thank you so much, that's amazing. So I just noted down a few points like awareness about the self, the company that you might be visiting for interview, and the industry in general, learnability, and having that basic hygiene of understanding what's going on and what is the communication style that I must be adopting to. Beautiful, beautiful. I think, yeah, apart from, I think We as an engineer, and I think we all have been guilty at a point that we get very nitty-gritty in terms of the technical skills, which are important, but there are so many other skills. If we'll be a little bit more careful, we can be ahead of our peer group. So thank you so much for that. Uh, my next question is, uh, I see you are— you have an impressive, impressive LinkedIn profile. Uh, you've invested, I believe, a lot of time, a lot of effort in that. You're getting close to 18,000 connections and having million plus views. So what do you think is the importance of LinkedIn in this particular point of time, and how can someone build their LinkedIn profile in a better way?
Haritosh Srivastav, uh, for me it's a million dollar question because I have been a kind of evangelist for LinkedIn for several years now, and more so in last few years. Even when I was doing a role of Academic Interface Program Head 5 years back, I used to go to every institute and even talk to youngsters that why they need to have a profile on LinkedIn and not wait till they get a job. And I'll tell you a few tips on this. One, LinkedIn has today 700 million+ members in 200+ countries across the globe. Even if you pick India, we have close to 69 million+ professionals on LinkedIn, which is 7 crore, close to 7 crore. You can't ignore to not be on LinkedIn and not be active, right? Because today, and I'll give you certain examples from real world, I'm working with startups in academia, right? I had a meeting with one of the startups last week, The time I fix up the meeting, 5 minutes later I had an invite from the senior executive from the startup on my LinkedIn. The first thing people check is what is your professional journey, right? They may not check you on Insta or Twitter, but they will definitely check you. Who are you on LinkedIn? What have you done? What is your background? Who what value you add, right, what are skills you have. So this is basically your professional persona. So one need to be on LinkedIn, that's one thing. Second, in last few years, I have got several opportunities for speaking, judging, mentoring on LinkedIn. Personally, I believe, I mean, a big believer of positive psychology or talking about things which are positive nature, which can take people forward, youngsters forward in a positive way. And sharing from my own experiences, not from a book. That has been my philosophy on LinkedIn. So I've been creating content constantly. I've had 40+ posts last year. This year I plan to do 100+ almost twice a week. I also motivated my group of fellow coaches to have 100,000 connects in 3 months. So they reached 1 lakh connects and they all moved from 500 connects to 10,000 connects in few months, 5 months. Impressive. And they realize that this is a platform where if you are genuine, if you have something valuable to offer to people, people will connect to you, people will relate to you, and you will get opportunities. But it's more about giving back rather than expecting if I posted, someone should like, comment, or give me something.
Yeah, thank you so much. I think, yeah, this is very important for any professional to say. Yeah, Facebook, Instagram have their own place and nobody is denying that, but yeah, LinkedIn has become a professional network which you have to be if you are a professional. There's no— and yeah, for people's kind attention, yeah, I connected with Gaurav through LinkedIn even though I could connect with TCS, uh, nothing like that, but yeah, I thought it is more convenient for me to reach out to Gaurav For this interview.
