Being a Learner, with Raji Arasu

5 Minute Mentor

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Raji has been working in the technology industry since the early 2000s. Most recently she’s held various executive roles. Raji is passionate about applying technology innovations to create great product experiences. Raji is Senior Vice President at Intuit.

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Transcript:

ES: This is 5 Minute Mentor, a podcast where you’ll get advice from prominent engineers, authors, artists, and more in 5 minutes or less.

ES: Today’s mentor is Raji Arasu, Senior Vice President at Intuit. Raji has been working in the technology industry since the early 2000s. Most recently she’s held various executive roles. Raji is passionate about applying technology innovations to create great product experiences.

ES: This is their advice.

RA: One of the key things that I can share is, that, you know, sort of chartered my journey was leaning in as I go, and learning as I go. It’s a key part of it because of the fact that you, you know, technology is changing rapidly. It changes every day, and I learn every single day. Even to this days. I go into meetings and I meet with people, and I learn so much from my engineers and new ways of doing things. And, it’s actually creating that learning mindset and being open towards it and constantly being a learner. And people have different ways of learning.

RA: I am a visual learner, you know, I, pictures and diagrams stick with me. I also learn through coffee chats, because it’s casual, and I tend to remember those conversations really well. Some people learn, they read books, they read blogs and they can, you know, some of that material can stick really well. But find whatever tool that is in your arsenal that you want to use towards learning but use that very effectively, because this is a field that changes, rapidly changing every single day.

RA: The second one is really sign up for hard jobs. Take the risk. Take the risk, lean in, and do that because the opportunity will come at you, that, when it happens, don’t second guess, don’t doubt yourself but go take the risk. The worst thing that can happen is you can fail but you’re going to have learnings out of that that will actually shape your life. And I’ve done a few of those in my background where I’ve said: wow this is not what I’m good at, but I’m still going to take it and do this because I think I’m going to learn something out of it. And you know, thankfully, 50% of those have actually worked out to my favor where I was successful but 50% didn’t. And I’ve had the biggest learnings from those failures. So, especially for people who are starting early in their career, there’s nothing to lose.

RA: So just go sign up, you’re going to learn. And you’re going to create that unique path which is yours. And so, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it just go try it. That would be my advice.

Raji Arasu, Senior Vice President at Intuit