From Numbers to People: My Journey from CA to CHRO

From crunching numbers to cultivating workplace culture, my career journey is proof that following your passion can lead to surprising, fulfilling paths. Starting out as a Chartered Accountant in 1994, I was deeply entrenched in business roles before discovering my true calling in Human Resources. This shift wasn’t just a career change—it was a leap of faith powered by adaptability and lifelong learning. Join me as I reflect on the motivations, challenges, and invaluable lessons from this journey, and maybe inspire others to pursue what truly excites them.

The Business Foundation

My career started at Escorts Finance, an NBFC in Delhi, where I joined as an industrial trainee in their accounts team. Upon completing my training, I was offered a full-time role in Accounts, but I expressed interest in other areas. Fortunately, my managers recognized my potential and offered me an opportunity in Investment Banking, managing unlisted equity investments for SMEs in the Delhi-NCR area. This role, coupled with the Harshad Mehta scandal’s impact on the market, sparked my interest in finance and the stock market.

Exploring New Horizons

After a couple of years, I moved to Foremost Factors, a company pioneering non-recourse factoring in India, where I spent two-and-a-half years in trade finance sales. Here, I gained invaluable experience in sales and relationship building. After that, I joined American Express Financial Resource Center, as a Team Leader for a year, working on process migration from Phoenix to India. Despite these muti-sector and multi-functional experiences, I found myself uncertain about my career direction.

The McKinsey Transformation

My journey took a significant turn when I joined McKinsey’s Knowledge Center (McKC) as a team manager. I spent 16 years there, assuming various roles and ultimately discovering a passion for Human Resources. I started in McKC as a team manager and played that role for many years – managing operations, shift handovers, new McK offices to be added, database training, etc. However, given the remote working we had poor quality rating for this service, so I took initiative and set-up a Quality Desk and help improve rating of McKC many notches. In McKinsey a popular phrase is ‘Make Your Own McKinsey’ – with Quality Desk I had done exactly that. When McKC’s training manager role became vacant, I took on the additional responsibility of looking after center’s trainings and introduced many new relevant programs based on my learning from both operations and quality roles.

While I was able to create a lot of relevant programs, let me highlight one that had a very high impact. We’d set-up Data Analytics desk in McKC to serve the emerging needs of McKinsey’s clients. All the employees on this team were SMEs and technical experts who lacked typical consulting skills like top-down communication, problem solving, speaking up, etc. I created a ‘Building Gravitas’ workshop with some engagement managers from India office to teach these consulting readiness skills. This was my first foray into human resources, and it made me realize how much I enjoyed this work.

Embracing Human Resources

Transitioning from a business role to a senior HR role wasn’t straightforward, given my CA background. Although I had a solid understanding of business and leadership, HR requires specialized knowledge that goes beyond those areas. After much discussion and advocacy, I secured an HR role, driven by a strong interest in talent development and organizational culture. I faced a steep learning curve in HR practices, employment laws, and compliance standards but found that my business experience provided a unique advantage.

Advantages of Moving from Business to HR

This transition brought several advantages. My business background allowed me to bring:

• Broad Business Insight: My familiarity with business dynamics enriched HR functions, including recruitment, performance management, and learning and development. By aligning HR processes closely with business impact, I could foster better collaboration between HR and other departments. For example, on recruitment and onboarding we made some key operational changes to onboard new hires much more quickly making the business more efficient in market. We moved from 48 hours to get the ID, accesses, and laptop to 10 minutes after the operational changes.
• Financial Acumen: My CA background proved beneficial for HR functions involving budgeting, compensation planning, and workforce analytics, making HR processes more measurable and effective. Cost to Income Ratio, a very common metric used to track efficiency of a NBFC, has a major element of people cost. Under my leadership @ Tata Motors Finance (TMF), a large NBFC of Tata Group, it kept steadily declining making the company more profitable and giving it competitive advantage.
• Strategic Perspective: As a former business professional, I approached HR with a strategic focus, ensuring that talent initiatives supported organizational goals. For example, ‘The Complete Banker’ program @ TMF in collaboration with IIM-Ahmedabad, was a 12 months custom designed multiple touch program that not only covered the theory of latest best practices, but also peer company’s CEOs and board members experience sharing to get out-side in view also.

Challenges of the Transition

Despite the benefits, this journey had its challenges:

• Building Credibility in HR: Convincing my leaders of my suitability for the HR role wasn’t easy, especially with concerns about my lack of experience in labour laws and HR compliance. To address these, I highlighted my business understanding and assured them that existing HR team members could cover compliance needs.
• Learning HR’s Unique Aspects: I needed to quickly adapt to HR-specific knowledge, from employment regulations to talent management practices, and navigate the fast-paced environment of hiring, retention, and employee engagement under high pressure.

Adding Unique Value in HR

Throughout my HR career, I leveraged my business acumen to focus on talent development and manage HR with a more strategic mindset. At McKC and later at TMF as a CHRO, I prioritized initiatives that balanced business objectives with employee growth. I redesigned learning and development programs, enhanced career path clarity, ran high-potential programs, and managed performance reviews and promotions with a balanced perspective on people and business. My approach helped reduce attrition of high-potential employees, provide value-added MIS to leadership, and advise on senior talent matters.

Closing Thoughts and Advice

One of my former bosses often said, “HR is about Heart Rate.” If you’re passionate about talent, people development, and culture and have strong empathy, a transition to HR can be highly fulfilling. However, be prepared for a challenging journey. There may be skeptics, a steep learning curve, and limited job mobility if you decide to switch industries. But if you’re driven by a desire to make a difference in people’s careers, the journey is rewarding.

In the end, go after what truly excites you—life’s too short to walk someone else’s path!