Here's some advice from the CEO of a $61 billion company: Raise your hand for opportunities you might not be ready for yet.

Volunteering for a task — or applying to a job — without proper preparation or qualifications may feel like a mistake waiting to happen. But it's a great strategy for your career growth and personal development, according to Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of cloud storage company Snowflake.

″All of my success in my life has come from people giving me jobs that I didn't think I deserved or qualified for," Ramaswamy, 57, recently told LinkedIn's "This Is Working" video series. "The more you take responsibility and the more you're broad about what defines 'team' and 'success,' the more likely it is that somebody is going to say, 'You know, this is the person I want leading the next rung of the organization.'"

Ramaswamy got a PhD in computer science from Brown University in 1994, according to his LinkedIn profile, and worked in the tech industry for nearly a decade before joining Google as a software engineer in 2003. He worked his way up to a senior vice president role within eight years, and left the company to co-found a startup called Neeva — an AI-powered search engine meant to compete with Google — in 2019.

Over that time, Ramaswamy repeatedly took on roles and assumed job responsibilities he'd never had before. Neeva was acquired by Snowflake in 2023, Ramaswamy became their SVP of AI that same year, and was promoted to CEO in 2024, another role he had no prior experience in.

"Sometimes you can say: 'Think ridiculously ambitious,'" he said, adding: "It doesn't work everywhere, and sometimes you fall flat on your face. You've got to play the game of averages. If you try enough ambitious things, a bunch of them work out."

To show he was ready to take on the role of CEO, Ramaswamy gave Snowflake's founder an in-depth spreadsheet detailing how AI will be incorporated into Snowflake's mission and offerings. He also spent months conducting weekly "war room" meetings with employees, from marketing reps to engineers, to help demystify AI for them, he said.

The Bozeman, Montana-based company currently has a $61.22 billion market cap, as of Friday morning, up from about $50 billion the year before he took over.

How to boost your ambition and EQ

Ridiculous ambition requires emotional intelligence, Ramaswamy said. You need to be highly aware of your own strengths and weaknesses when tackling something new, have the self-management skills to adapt to new environments, and be resilient enough to pick yourself up after a failure.

Billionaire LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman agrees: A CEO's ambition is the No. 1 trait he looks for when deciding to invest in a company, he said in a recent podcast episode of "The Diary Of A CEO." The No. 2 trait, he added, is a combination of awareness and emotional intelligence.

You can sharpen your emotional intelligence with practice, Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at careers platform Handshake, said earlier this month.

One strategy she recommends: In meetings, take notes about how the other participants comport themselves. Then ask yourself questions like: What's their body language showing? What cues made you think they were comfortable or uncomfortable? Who appeared to have the most influence in the room, and why?

Your observations can help you "gather a fuller picture of the discussion" and train yourself on the types of cues that help people interact well with each other, said Cruzvergara.

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