Rohit Prasad is one of the most influential figures at Amazon right now. He jumped from being Alexa’s head scientist to running its AI team and reporting directly to the CEO Andy Jassy.
And it’s all thanks to a random phone call he received in 2013.
“When Amazon called to build Alexa, I had no idea what that was going to be, and if I hadn’t picked up the call, then I may not have gotten that opportunity,” Prasad exclusively told Fortune at the VivaTech in Paris.
“They reached out and they said, ‘There’s a project that (former CEO) Jeff Bezos’ driving,’ and I said, ‘really, Amazon wants to get into AI?’ I was just intrigued, it was a very green field opportunity.”
Of course, Prasad took the job—and today, over 12 years later, he’s still not entirely sure how Amazon’s hiring team got a hold of his number.
But he knows what inspired the call: “I learned later that someone had come across a research paper of mine on far-field speech recognition,” he added. “They were particularly interested in my background leading cutting-edge R&D projects in the DARPA space, which aligned well with Amazon’s ambitions.”
It’s why he there’s some amount of luck to career success. His advice to Gen Z? Control the controlables, sharpen your skills and when opportunity rings, say yes.
“I don’t think I’m smarter than anyone else. I think the smartest person in the room recognizes that he or she has something to learn. So I will always say, be curious all the time, be true to your passion and of course, I picked up the call.”
Gen Z’s telephobia is so bad that they’re ghosting employers—colleges are stepping in
While Prasad’s career advice is more metaphorical, Gen Z really could be missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime if they don’t learn to pick up their phones.
In fact, research shows that a quarter of the youngest generation of workers are too anxious to answer any type of phone call—even if it’s from someone they know, but it’s out of the blue. And the statistics are even more dire when it comes to actual business-related calls: A separate study found that 67% of office workers under 34 avoid answering work calls because of anxiety. Despite millions of Gen Zers being unemployed, they’ve even gained a reputation for ghosting potential employers.
Gen Z’s telephobia is so bad that Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) was forced to scrap key employment data because young people just would not pick up their phones. Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics production and analysis at the Office for National Statistics, blamed the internet and social media for stealing young people’s attention while emphasising that it appears to be a global phenomenon.
Meanwhile, a college in the U.K. has now stepped up and started offering classes on making and taking phone calls to help Gen Z overcome this fear. After all, not every call is bad news—despite what the surveys suggest Gen Z might assume.
Amazon’s Prasad isn’t the only exec whose big break came thanks to an unexpected phone call. GHD boss Jeroen Temmerman told Fortune he wasn’t even job hunting when the haircare giant rang out of the blue with an offer. And Bob Iger never thought he’d return to Disney—until the call came, and his wife convinced him to say yes.
Opportunity doesn’t always arrive with a calendar invite. Sometimes, it just rings.
Are you anxious of picking up the phone? Has it impacted your employment opportunities? Fortune wants to hear from you. Get in touch: orianna.royle@fortune.com
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