FedEx's Indian CEO reveals how he cracked US job interview: Told them I didn't have a green card

Over thirty years, Raj Subramaniam rose through the ranks at FedEx under the mentorship of founder Fred Smith, whom he described as his 'CEO school' teacher. (Image credit: LinkedIn, Unsplash)

FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam’s three-decade journey at the logistics giant began with an unusual confession at a job interview: he did not have a green card.

Subramaniam, 58, who took over as FedEx’s second CEO in 2022, has said the moment was driven as much by necessity as honesty. A native of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, he had moved to the US after graduating from IIT Bombay with a degree in chemical engineering. Later, he studied engineering and business at Syracuse University and the University of Texas at Austin. When a roommate skipped a scheduled FedEx interview, Subramaniam showed up instead, aware that securing a job was critical to staying on in the country, Fortune reported.

“When I walked into the interview, I told them upfront that I didn’t have a green card,” Subramaniam recalled in a 2023 interview. “I asked if that would be an issue.”

The response, he said, set the tone for what would become a lifelong career at the company. “They said, ‘Son, let’s get through the interview first, then we can discuss a green card.’”

Subramaniam was hired as an associate analyst in Memphis 30 years ago. FedEx remains the only company he has ever worked for.

Over the years, he rose through the ranks under the mentorship of founder Fred Smith, whom Subramaniam has described as his “CEO school” teacher. Smith, who launched Federal Express in 1971 after conceiving the idea in an economics paper at Yale, ran the company for over five decades before handing over the reins to Subramaniam.

Smith died in June at the age of 80, leaving Subramaniam to lead FedEx through global trade disruptions, including tariff uncertainty and slowing demand.

Subramaniam said his long tenure gives him an edge. “A lot of people ask me how difficult it is to manage people in different parts of the world, with different cultures,” he said. “The language of the country may be different, but the language of FedEx is the same."