- Sonakshi Pandey switched roles at Amazon, then moved to Google to be a customer engineer.
- Pandey credits mentorship with transitioning her career and growing more confident.
- Pandey's résumé includes company blogs and a section on her volunteering and mentorship projects.
Sonakshi Pandey did not always feel prepared for the role she is in today.
She landed a job as a software engineer at Amazon straight out of her master's degree in computer science. For three years, she did what she loved: writing code.
"I was very shy, very introverted," she told Business Insider. "I used to wear my headphones and code for eight hours straight."
One day, she came across a YouTube video, where a tech expert was speaking about databases in depth. She admired how confident he sounded.
"I want to exactly do what this guy is doing: I want to go on a stage and I want to talk confidently in front of a bunch of people," she said.
It triggered her journey to change roles from software development to solution architecture at Amazon Web Services, a job that required more public speaking and client presentations.
After five years at Amazon, Pandey wanted to try working at other FAANG companies and applied to Microsoft and Google in 2021.
She shared the résumé that helped her land an offer at Microsoft as well as the one she accepted at Google, a customer engineering position.
Looking back on her 2021 résumé, Pandey said that there are two unique things about the document that worked in her favor.
1. Writing for company blogs
During her time at AWS, she wrote blogs for Amazon's cloud computing page.
Blogs reflect thought leadership — so if you want to build a brand as an expert in any industry, she said having blog posts on a bigger medium like a company website helps underline your expertise.
Pandey said she would not include some of her other public work, such as her career advice pages on Instagram and YouTube.
"I don't want that to deflect attention from my product manager skills," she said.
2. A section on volunteering — even though it makes her résumé 2 pages long
Pandey's section on volunteering, which discusses her mentorship projects, make her résumé exceed the typically recommended one-page rule. But adding that section is a non-negotiable for Pandey, she said.
For her, the section reflects an important part of her journey in tech — she dealt with imposter syndrome and hesitated with public speaking, and now she helps other women overcome the same issues. Pandey credits her transition to having a mentor at Amazon. "She recommended books to read, podcasts to listen to, and it eventually got me to killing it at my job."
The projects she founded and led are her way of paying it forward.
"I feel this is very important to have and is a piece of me that I want to share with everyone wherever I go," she said. "And that's why I was like: It doesn't matter if it's two pages, this needs to be here."
She said it also helped her in interviews. Pandey talks about her mentorship experiences when hiring managers ask scenario-based questions and discusses her initiatives when the interviewers give her time to introduce herself.
If she were to update the document today, she said she would only add her certifications and recent blogs at Google, and beef up her volunteering section with more recent diversity and mentorship projects.
Pandey is currently a data and product manager at Google's Seattle office. BI has verified her employment history.