Deepti KS

Crucial Success Skills Forged Through My Journey

As a curious child who wanted to be just anything under the sun, ranging from a celebrity to a poet to a teacher, I always believed that the sky's the limit. As I look back on my journey as an HR professional in the corporate world, I can see some skills clearly connecting the dots of success for me. These have been skills of perseverance, lifelong learning, being ambitious and being compassionate towards fellow human beings. There are some prominent events in my life which have helped me to put these skills to use. Let's start with perseverance. When I was not accepted into the role of HR via an IJP as I was a software developer, I persevered to get into MBA to open the box of HR roles for myself. 

As an HR professional, I not only believe in doing courses but now, as a mom of a toddler, I feel I am learning how to learn the skills of parenting. Hence, lifelong learning is something that I strongly believe in. In 2009, I was declared as one of the top 10 gamers in the country by Zapak.com. Similarly, when I passed out of my MBA, I had bagged the highest package from my college. These are some examples of how being ambitious has helped me take risks, explore newer paths and get rewarded in the longer run. 

Coming to being compassionate towards fellow human beings, I have volunteered with a couple of NGOs and also, being in the profession of HR, it becomes important that we understand the other person's point of view before arriving at a conclusion about their actions and/or lives. Of course there are other skills at play such as interpersonal skills, being ethical, collaboration and teamwork etc. But I believe if I have progressed in life, it is primarily because of the 4 skills that I have cited at the beginning.

Crafting Creative Opportunities from Every Challenge

Having grown from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, the way I view adversity today vs. how I viewed it 5 years ago has completely changed. Since my childhood, my family always inculcated the abundance mindset in me. However, my thought process got skewed once I got inside the corporate world and witnessed some of the major hurdles of layoffs, office politics, unkindness from leaders etc. As a result, for quite some part of my life, I thought I should run away from the hurdles and not face them head on. That's the biggest mistake that I made. For someone who always believed in taking risks (calculated or not, it didn't matter), I stopped taking risks altogether. 

That's when an inner voice said 'wake up! Do what you were born to do'. Voila! I transformed again. I again started looking at things from an abundance mindset which said there is always something for everyone, should you seek answers in the right direction. That's how I grew in my professional career. I said 'yes' to many things, before deciding to say 'no' to the ones which didn't add value. I believe anyone can navigate through difficult times if they have patience, perseverance, resilience and the willingness to come out of the situation.

My Impact

As a HR professional who has positively impacted the lives of thousands of people, both internally (within the organization that I have been associated with) and externally, I feel fortunate that HR chose me. Currently I lead 2 HR communities - one which has 80+ HR leaders who are exclusively invited and the other with 750+ HR professionals across all levels. When people benefit tangibly from these communities in the form of landing jobs, creating impactful HR initiatives after interacting amongst the community etc., my heart swells with pride. I feel that not only am I doing a great job as a HR and a community manager enabling meaningful conversations, but in the process there are other HR professionals being molded who would lead the country of tomorrow. I also stay in touch with ex-colleagues (some of whom I call friends now) and remain approachable so that I can help them land opportunities whenever needed.

Scaling New Heights in Personal and Professional Triumphs

The way I measure success for myself is to see for how many people (including myself) I have been able to move the needle in terms of compensation, designation, organization, opportunities etc. based on what they needed and when they needed. I measure my accomplishments based on how many known people call me up in real life (as opposed to reaching out only via LinkedIn) to help solve a HR challenge/query for them. I measure my accomplishments based on how well am I able to sleep at night knowing that I did well and I did no one any harm intentionally. I measure success based on how many people think of me as their go-to HR person if they see an opportunity where they think someone with a good blend of strategy + execution is needed. I also measure my accomplishments based on how my spouse and my parents react, when I say I am doing 'x' in my job. I now need to soon include my toddler in that list too.

The Synergy Between My Path and Recognition Values

I think that when I started my journey as a naïve, young college pass out, I didn't think much in terms of what growth, success and accomplishments meant to me. Today when I look back from who I was 14 years ago, I feel I have come a long way. I have gained recognition as a 'cool, understanding, walk-the-talk, and friendly HR' amongst all the employees that I have worked with. I have set up meaningful HR processes in startups which would benefit the existing and new employees in a long time to come. As a HR in startups, which still don't understand the value of HR, I have been able to drive a mindset of RoI to business via HR initiatives. With a data driven mindset, I have encouraged leadership to look at a mix of people and data to make decisions that impact the workforce. 

From setting up an HRIS for 2500 employees in a MNC to setting up HR processes for 40 employees in a startup, I have never shied away from starting from scratch and setting up the example of execution is more important than mere strategy to the younger workforce via my own actions. I have also invited my team members to take a close look at how they'd like to grow in their career in the longer run and have coached them to become the best version of themselves.