Mugdha Karanjekar (Intro to the world of HR + Talking about Diversity and Inclusion)

Often in our line of work as Tech Recruiters, we tend to work with HR professionals but we mainly see them as “interview coordinators” or the ones who eventually come up with the salaries after all the interviews are done. But, there’s plenty more to HR and today on the podcast, we have Mugdha Karanjekar who was an HR business partner with Nomura. In the first part of our podcast, she’s going to talk to us about various functions within HR.

We’re also going to touch upon another topic in the second part of the podcast which we often brush off as a formality when it comes to tech recruitment. This is the need for diversity within technology. We are often told that we need to source more “diversity profiles” but seldom do we realize the importance of doing so. Today, we’re going to discuss all this and more in a candid conversation with Mugdha.

So first of all, let me welcome Mugdha to the Pinpoint Asia podcast. Welcome Mugdha!

Questions:

1. Could you please introduce yourself in your own words?

2. What got you interested in HR and can you please talk about the various roles you've held in this space?

3. When someone hears the term "HR", they might conjure up an image of a boring desk job with plenty of admin work. Can you please correct that perception?

   
   

Getting more in-depth into HR:

1. What are some of the key functions in HR?

   1. Let's start off with the HR BP. What does a HR Business Partner do?

   2. What is Learning and Development and can you talk more about it?

   3. What about Compensations and Benefits?

   4. Please talk about Talent Acquisition

   5. What about the Mobility Team? What do they do?

   6. What about CSR?

   7. What about Conflict Management?

2. What's your take on psychometric tests like the Myers Briggs test? Some swear by it while others claim that it deprives some of the same opportunity. What's your take on it?
   

Getting into diversity now:

1. What is diversity and why is it important?

2. What sparked your interest in this topic and why is it important to you?

3. Often, we are simply asked to look for female candidates for tech roles. Whether a male does the coding or a female, what difference does that make?

4. When diversity is hard to come by for tech roles, why should one still force the issue?

5. Is it not true that a particular gender is suited for a particular task? Say, fashion for females and IT for males? What would be the benefit of getting more males into (say) fashion?

6. Couldn't one argue that these "diversity candidates" are getting preferential treatment which defeats the whole purpose of everything being fair and equal?
   

Future of HR:

1. With the advent of this new tech age, how can HR benefit as a result of all this advancement in technology?
   

Winding up:

1. Is there anything else you'd like to say that I haven't already asked?