Currently working as a People Operations Specialist at Oro, Vaishnavi completed her Bachelor in Commerce from Meenakshi College for Women in 2013.Â
Vaishnavi got hands-on learning about Indian Taxation and Litigation fights for Income Tax cases, getting trained under the best professionals. Unfortunately, this journey ended in 2017 Nov due to unforeseen personal circumstances, which forced her to leave the job. She was broken. Her mental health was derailed. She decided to take a break and analyse her interests thoroughly. Due to the gaps in career, it was hard to bounce back to certain roles – certain companies would hire people only within 26 or 27 years of age. This demotivated Vaishnavi. She decided to come down to two options towards her higher studies – Either take up Law (a three to four-year journey) or take up HR (a two-year full-time Master’s). This made her complete a Master of Social Work (HRM) in 2019.Â
MSW as a course has been beneficial for her professionally and therapeutically (an aid to her mental health journey). MSSW – Madras School of Social Work has been one of the best podiums and a huge stepping stone to what she is now. She took up a Master’s at the age of 27 and challenged herself to compete with the minds fresh out of under-graduation. Securing her first-ever internship with ITC Ltd. MSW as a course allows the students to explore social welfare and help them become facilitators and practice empathy as part of the profession. Vaishnavi graduated in First Class in April 2021.
She also holds a certification in Design Thinking from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
After the 2020 COVID hit, she had her internships online – but she was able to bag a couple of varied internship experiences that enabled her to have a holistic understanding of HR Operations. In this course, she found a mentor she could lean on – Ms Rachna Lulla, her fellow 30 under 30 HR awardee – what an honour to be on the same list as her!
It was Rachna who opened up Vaishanvi’s HR world and made the foundation stronger. Vaishnavi would also like to thank Yogesh from RecruitOn, without whose training sessions she would not have understood the depths of Talent Acquisition and Employer Branding.Â
She is a successful HRBP with almost two years of experience at Oro, a gold-loan start-up in Chennai. She got hired strictly due to her vast and varied internship experience. She has successfully helped in hiring 250 + employees in a span of four months, opened three additional branches other than HO, setup Payroll management and HRMS, undertook full Employee Life-Cycle Management, and trained two interns (one of them got placed recently for a six+ Lakh/annum CTC), bank liaisoning for employee benefits, Insurance partner tie-up etc.Â
Vaishnavi thanks HRAI for giving her this opportunity. She is humbled to have received it at the beginning of her HR career and promises to contribute more effectively to the HR community. This is truly an honour!
