Pune District, Maharashtra, India
I fell into recruiting from tech support eleven years ago, because finding the right person for a role is fundamentally a research problem. That is what I am built for. The habit that's defined everything since: understand the role deeply first, then find precisely the right person. Not the most available person. The right one. At Collabera, I hit submission and hire targets with a fraction of the calls my peers made. My manager cut my daily quota because the output spoke for itself. At Waymo, when a hiring manager mentioned needing a UI/UX designer, I asked which art style. He talked for ten minutes. My team had two shortlisted candidates in before other vendors finished their intake call. At Clipboard, I joined as the first recruiter across two departments with no inherited process — built Greenhouse reporting, redesigned the funnel, automated the ATS. Took inbound waste from 1:1000 to 1:400. Hired 170+ Verification agents in under five months by running first rounds myself to keep velocity up. Also caught candidates using deepfake video to proxy-interview, and found others leaking assessment keys online. I tracked them down and closed both exploits. Nobody asked me to do either. The hardest fill: an SDN Engineer brief that was mis-specified. Real SDN engineers worked federal contracts solo and wouldn't touch it. What the hiring manager actually needed was a Java developer with legacy telecom exposure. Found one at Nepal Telecom, negotiated with her university to hold her profile until she was visa-eligible, and had her start on time. Two types of recruiters fail at startups: the bureaucrat with spreadsheets at Series A, and the vibes recruiter who calls instinct a strategy. The job is knowing which mode the hire actually needs, and switching accordingly. That's what we build at Ascension Lumsden. Own the full hiring journey! Available for the right founders. US EST • Valid US B1/B2 Visa for strategic meetings
• Joined as the first recruiter across two separate departments. No inherited process in either. • Client Ops: Set up pipeline reporting in Greenhouse, redesigned JD intent and qualification filters, automated rejection flows. Improved funnel efficiency from 1:1000 to 1:400. Delivered 50+ Client Support Expert hires. • Compliance / Verification: Took over from a trainer who had been running interviews. Closed a Knowledge Ops role open for 12 months. Built White Glove Services hiring from zero: 6-7 hires within a month. Then hired 170+ Verification and Onboarding Associates in 4-5 months, including running HM first-rounds personally to maintain throughput. • Automated the full hiring lifecycle in Greenhouse then Ashby via inbuilt ATS functions and Zapier: intent gates, case study dispatch, scoring, scheduling. Replaced manual stage movements, follow-ups, and qualification checks. • Caught candidates using deepfake video to proxy-interview for friends. Developed stress-test interview techniques to expose them. Problem identified and solved without being asked. • Found candidates posting assessment answer keys online to game screening. Tracked them using manual search and AI tools, redesigned the assessments to close the exploit. • Partnered with department heads, WFM, and L&D on headcount planning, cohort sizing, and offer pacing. Ran 10-15 interviews per day at peak hiring cycles.
• 500+ stakeholder-mapped candidates in 6 months for distributed engineering teams across US, EU, and APAC. 80%+ qualified submission rate, 40-50% engagement via precision outbound. • Identified GoodTime as redundant: same core functionality as vanilla Greenhouse at $16K/year extra. Led migration, standardised templates and interview loops, eliminated the overhead. • Aligned talent roadmap sequencing with leadership, connecting pipeline priorities to engineering growth milestones.
• Typical bootstrapped environment: hiring responsibility rotating between whoever had bandwidth, interns roped in, no defined process, job titles handed out based on what candidates asked for. • Built the TA function from zero. Stabilised titles, introduced comp bands based on actual market data (initiated and led that project before ownership shifted to HR), designed a streamlined hiring process, built an incentive structure, assembled a 10+ recruiter team. • Hired most of the team from campus. Selected for people who could sit in front of a live role and explain a realistic plan to fill it. Not the ones who led with spreadsheets, not the ones who led with vibes. • Outcomes: 30% faster time-to-hire, 40% improvement in candidate quality, 50% reduction in turnover, 25% reduction in tooling costs, +15 TA NPS.
• Turing's bar: FAANG/MAANG pedigree only. The ask was not "find a Staff Engineer." It was "convince a Staff Engineer at Google to leave for a startup." • Built a 3,000+ global pipeline via LinkedIn Recruiter, GitHub, and talent mapping across US, LATAM, EU, and APAC. Global scope: Staff Engineers, Senior Software Engineers, Cloud/ML/Infra/DevOps Technical Leads. US scope extended to Engineering Managers and Directors as well. • 50%+ InMail acceptance. 20% interview-to-hire conversion. Intake design and comp calibration done directly with US engineering leadership. • Also ran a graduate hiring initiative alongside the senior IC pipeline, onboarding approximately 70-80 early-career hires for non-technical teams.