Technical lead, program manager, public relations lead, product strategist and content creator — these are just some of the titles that can be found on Jahnavi Shah’s MEng ’23 resume.
With over 70,000 LinkedIn followers, Shah has become a LinkedIn Top Voice — a title the networking platform gives to content creators with at least 10,000 followers. Shah documents her professional and academic accomplishments on her account, sharing her strategies for reaching success.
During her sophomore year of college at Pandit Deendayal Energy University in Gandhinagar, India, Shah began creating content on LinkedIn by sharing her academic and personal projects, including a patented mood-based lighting sensing system. Eventually, her posts started gaining traction and she committed to developing her account as a content creator.
“I was there as a student, just sharing my work [and] the projects I was doing, and sometimes there were really cool opportunities, so I would share [those],” Shah said. “That started building my brand. And then slowly I started pivoting to networking, [how to build] your brand as a student and also studying abroad or getting into an Ivy League.”
Shah achieved her goal of becoming a LinkedIn top voice in August 2024, providing advice to other students as someone who got into an Ivy League master’s program from a “non-target” undergraduate university.
“I picked a niche that I saw a lot of people were not talking about,” Shah said. “I post on LinkedIn [consistently] — almost two to three times a week, and I think I had 100 posts last year. So it definitely takes a lot of time. And I think when you consistently do it and build up a good following, the LinkedIn team notices.”
Shah’s status as a content creator on LinkedIn gave her visibility — opening more opportunities. Shah sent a “cold email” to the product officer at LinkedIn and was invited to their headquarters in New York after a research project she worked on at Cornell caught the eyes of LinkedIn employees.
Her research studied how Generation Z interacted with hiring apps such as LinkedIn, allowing her to be recognized by the LinkedIn executive and chief product officer.
Through it all, Shah said that the job market was “super competitive” and emphasized the importance of persistence despite rejection. She recalled applying to a position with the New York Times that she formed an “attachment” to but ultimately received a frustrating rejection. And yet — she landed a job that she loved two weeks after that rejection.
“Don't care about the rejections. Just keep applying and just know that your job search is your own journey,” Shah said. “Have a plan for yourself and find ways and how we can succeed in that plan alone, and don't compare it with what everyone else around you is doing.”
Shah also credits her success in the job market to the connections she made at Cornell, where she completed a master of engineering management. Shah explained that the kindness of the Cornell community shone through her journey looking for a job, as she was able to reach out to multiple University alumni who helped her along the way.
“Even if [Cornell alumni did] not know me, just because I studied at the same university, they would vouch for me,” Shah said. “That kindness and that attitude to help people … stood out to me so much.”
Today, Shah seeks to continue sharing the same kindness that she’d received from Cornell alumni herself. She said after she got her current job as a product deployment strategist at Persona — a company that helps businesses verify user identities and avoid fraud — she helped connect more Cornellians to Persona as the company continued to recruit. “It feels really nice when someone you know from Cornell … [is] interested in your company and you get a chance to refer them,” she said.
Shah leaves Cornellians with the message that getting yourself out there and committing the time to talk about your achievements will open so many doors after graduation.
“Start applying to internships. … Start reaching out to people. Build a list of companies you want to work at or intern at,” Shah said. “You don't know where your next job is going to come from, and you need that visibility, and getting that as a student would accelerate your career.”
Theodora Curtin is a Sun contributor and can be reached at tac232@cornell.edu.
