Catalyst for HR Talent in Kerala - www.ssconsult.in

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Five years into my first ever entrepreneurial venture (www.ssconsult.in) has given me a lot of opportunities to ponder over the state of HR profession in my country. For those wondering how someone based out of a small corner of the diverse country that India is, can claim this – read on to know more about me via my LinkedIn profile.  Since Jan 2015, I've been to have been called upon by IT SME / Techie CXO's across Kerala, starting with Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram to Cyberpark(s) (UL and Govt.) and most recently the Malabar Innovation Zone, which my Co-founder almost silently set up last year. 

It was serendipity that got me connected to the HR profession back in 1996-97.  However, I had not imagined then that life and career events will help me refine those serendipitous moments into what looks to be closing in on a purpose journey. 

From 2008, I was responsible for building and scaling HR teams and this meant that I will need to be taking decisions which will have longer term career impacts on HR professionals.  I realised that none of the hiring experience, which I gathered in the past, made me confident around that risk – and hence it was not a surprise that the first two hiring decisions, which I had made, ended up as disasters in my own definition. As I look back to those misses and learnings it gave me, I feel confident to write this post and dedicate this to all young HR professionals who I’m sure will be seeking to learn from chartered paths as they go about designing their own HR career paths. 

Having spent over a decade in Kerala, I’m very optimistic about the opportunities for HR folks in my home state.  I’m also glad that I’ve been getting to play pivotal roles in crafting HR careers for many professionals - not just ones with HR qualifications.  Heres what a very special person who I found from Rajagiri MHRM batch (aka the Symbiosis of Kerala) wrote this in her blog some years back. 

Having spent over 8 years outside Kerala working for 4 companies in HR roles that took me to many parts of my diverse country.  I’m a huge fan of diversity of roles as a determinant of the level of refinement in any HR professional.  The more diverse the roles get, the more deeper the professional gets to traverse in HR / People / Behaviour related concepts – especially for the business needs of a diverse (and dynamic) country like India. 

So when time is scarce and I’m required to find an HR role player for my retainer clients in Kerala, I rely on the following criteria:

1.     Referrals from friends who know me and have followed my HR career as friends, colleagues, class/batch mates, business owners who I added value to / coached without the title.

2.     Seek out professionals who have worked outside Kerala in a diverse company or sector. Diversity increases the challenges that they would have faced.

3.     Seek out professionals including beginners who are curious about exploring possibilities around business and people enablement as expressed by their questions social media or internet in general – This I consider unique as my interests as a volunteer to SHRM, NIPM and NHRDN help me connect to a wide spectrum of professionals from all over the globe. This has been giving me a an opportunity to get a closer look into HR Talent ecosystem.
Select HR whatsapp groups from among the many that have mushroomed from 2013 onwards. 
Such connections have always helped me connect to a very different kind of people in general and HR folks in particular. 

Signing off with this Fast Company article about HR profession itself by my friend Lars - pasting the part which connects best to this post of mine - below: 
These 21st-century HR teams bring a much broader skill set to their role. People leading these functions possess business acumen on par with their peers across the C-suite. Their teams leverage data that inform their strategy and allow them to address people challenges before they become a crisis. They’re embedded in the business and embraced as part of the teams they support. Rather than striving for ownership with centralized command and control structures, their decentralized business partner models focus on empowering and enabling.

If you know an HR professional who is seeking to connect to IT SME Ecosystem and you feel they fits the above description – do connect them with me for initiating a conversation.