Sandeep Sood

Sandeep Sood

Director, Talent Acquisition, AWS Product & Engineering Services - Amazon Web Services

For Sandeep Sood, recruiting wasn't part of the original career plan.

With an engineering background and experience in pre-sales and solutions architecture, Sandeep began his career in Dubai, where he expected to continue building technical and customer-facing solutions.

When he relocated to the United States, however, his company presented him with a different opportunity.

Rather than moving directly into solution sales, they asked if he would first learn the recruiting side of the business, supporting Fortune 500 clients while gaining experience in talent acquisition.

Within a year, Sandeep realized he had found the right career.

"I liked what I was doing in recruiting. I was understanding what my customers were looking for, understanding what candidates had, and I became a good matchmaker."

His engineering mindset, combined with his customer-facing experience, proved to be a natural fit for recruiting, allowing him to bridge technical expertise with relationship-building.

Learning From Leaders Who Shaped His Career

Looking back, Sandeep credits three leaders with fundamentally shaping the way he approaches recruiting today.

The first was his very first recruiting manager, Subha Rao Badeti.

Although Subha rarely taught through formal instruction, Sandeep learned simply by observing him every day.

Watching how he spoke with customers, built relationships, and closed searches taught Sandeep that recruiting success begins with building a strong professional network.

"He was the perfect closer, the perfect finder, and a huge networker."

The second leader was Sean Kelly, whom Sandeep worked with at Microsoft.

While Subha taught him the art of recruiting, Sean demonstrated what exceptional leadership looked like.

Sean showed him how to lead with empathy, build scalable teams, and consistently deliver results while maintaining a genuine human connection with both employees and customers.

The third leader was Jay Shankar during Sandeep's journey at Amazon Web Services.

Jay's influence came through her highly analytical approach to talent acquisition.

Although she did not come from a traditional recruiting background, she demonstrated how data could become one of a recruiter's strongest strategic advantages.

Her ability to translate recruiting metrics into business outcomes inspired Sandeep to become a more data-driven leader who could communicate effectively with executives and hiring managers alike.

AI Is Accelerating Recruiting

Having worked at Amazon, Sandeep's team began experimenting with AI long before it became mainstream.

Their AI adoption started nearly two years before the recent surge in generative AI, giving recruiters time to understand how these technologies could improve their day-to-day work.

Today, he sees AI creating measurable improvements across nearly every stage of recruiting.

Recruiters can evaluate candidate fit faster, generate personalized outreach, prepare candidates with customized interview guidance, and leverage AI assistants to answer everyday questions that previously required support from teammates.

As a result, recruiting teams are becoming significantly more productive.

"We're able to do more with fewer team members and deliver more hires because of the impact of AI."

Beyond automation, Sandeep believes recruiters themselves are becoming more creative in how they apply AI, whether through sourcing strategies, candidate communication, LinkedIn content, or workflow optimization.

The Human Review Still Matters

Despite AI's rapid progress, Sandeep believes one critical responsibility cannot be automated: human judgment.

He points to candidate communication as an example.

Rather than sending generic interview preparation emails, recruiters can now generate highly personalized guidance tailored to each candidate and role.

However, that personalization comes with responsibility.

Recruiters must carefully review every AI-generated message to ensure accuracy, eliminate hallucinations, and maintain quality before anything reaches a candidate.

"The human audit is still necessary."

For Sandeep, AI should enhance quality—not replace accountability.

Advice for Talent Leaders Heading into 2026

Sandeep's advice to talent leaders is simple: be patient.

While executives often expect immediate returns from AI investments, meaningful adoption takes time.

Recruiters need space to learn new tools, validate outputs, refine workflows, and build trust in AI before organizations realize its full value.

The return doesn't come from simply deploying AI.

It comes from thoughtfully integrating it into everyday recruiting while maintaining high standards for candidate experience and hiring quality.

For Sandeep, the future belongs to recruiting organizations that combine technological innovation with human oversight.

By balancing engineering precision, customer focus, data-driven decision-making, and empathetic leadership, Sandeep Sood represents the type of talent leader helping organizations embrace AI without losing the people-first mindset that has always defined great recruiting.