How to land a job at an AI company: Stanford professor and AI startup founder shares advice

To stand out, Leskovec recommended launching real projects using public datasets, deploying a demo, and posting your work on GitHub or a blog. Participating in hackathons is also a great way to demonstrate initiative and teamwork, he said. Even if you fail, you are showing curiosity and proactivity. By the second or third project or hackathon, you will have gained valuable experience.

He pointed to a recent hire at his company who impressed the team by building a generative AI tool for analyzing customer purchase data. "It showed ambition, curiosity, and problem-solving, which are qualities we really value," Leskovec said.

Lucy Guo, the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, echoed this advice. In an interview with Forbes, Guo shared that she left Carnegie Mellon University after realizing she learned more from hackathons than from classes. She added that she won many prizes at these hackathons, had job offers lined up and believed she could always return to college if things did not work out. "I never really viewed it as a risk," she said. "This is very low risk and it's high reward, so why not just drop out?"

Jure Leskovec, a computer science professor at Stanford University and co-founder of AI tool company Kumo. Photo courtesy of The Web Conference

Leskovec’s second recommendation is to demonstrate adaptability. He emphasized that AI evolves at a pace that even experts find surprising. "There's no playbook for AI. We're writing it right now".

The best job candidates, according to him, are those who are always experimenting with new tools and learning quickly. Candidates who have taught themselves frameworks like PyTorch, JAX, or LLM tooling, and stay current on trends like GenAI, multimodal models, diffusion, and reinforcement learning, are highly valued.

He stressed that while attending a top school or earning a credential may get your application noticed, it will not guarantee you a job. "Curiosity and flexibility matter more than having a fixed set of skills, because the skills in demand today may look very different tomorrow," he said.

Leskovec’s next piece of advice is to sharpen thinking by questioning assumptions, solving problems without relying on familiar tools, and deliberately exploring new domains. He advised brainstorming multiple solutions to the same problem, including unconventional ones, to develop the ability to spot possibilities others might miss.

Finally, Leskovec stressed the importance of human qualities. While technical skills are essential, he emphasized that communication, teamwork, and a strong sense of ethics and social awareness are just as important. "Collaboration, empathy, and awareness of bias matter just as much as knowing how to code."