Prathima Pai

I lead end-to-end Tech and Non-Tech hiring at Interview Kickstart, working closely with founders, CXOs, and business leaders to make sure hiring keeps pace with growth. Over the last few years, I’ve helped scale teams across India and the US, delivering 300+ hires annually across 15 functions, while keeping hiring fast, high-quality, and cost-effective. Along the way, I’ve hired senior leaders and scaled core teams across engineering, marketing, and business functions. Beyond delivery, I focus on making hiring scalable—designing smarter recruiter incentives, introducing hiring optimisation tools, and building repeatable pipelines so hiring never becomes a bottleneck.

At Unacademy, I led hiring for core platform and business teams during a rapid scale-up, partnering closely with senior leaders to support growth. I built teams from 0–1 and through scale, hiring almost 900+ folks across leadership, mid-level, and early-career roles, while also driving initiatives like campus hiring and creating new-hire information guides to help incoming talent quickly understand team charters, leadership context, and how different functions worked together. It was an ever-changing, fast-paced environment that demanded mental agility, sharp prioritisation, and clear decision-making, and my focus was always on balancing speed with quality so hiring could keep up with the business.

At Headout, I supported hiring for domestic and international teams across Marketing, Analytics, and Operations while working as part of a unified People Ops team. Alongside hiring, I also took ownership of employee engagement initiatives—from driving the engagement charter to organising team events and programs that helped build culture during scale. The role required juggling multiple priorities and collaborating with people across the board, providing me with strong exposure to building people practices alongside hiring in a growing global startup.

At Bounce, I was responsible for hiring across Operations, Marketing, Finance, and Government Relations during a hyper-growth phase. I single-handedly drove expansion hiring for Hyderabad, supporting the company’s first city launch outside Karnataka, and delivered high-volume hiring under tight timelines. The environment was fast, scrappy, and constantly evolving, requiring quick decision-making, strong stakeholder alignment, and the ability to prioritise sharply while keeping hiring quality intact.

BankBazaar was my first stint in recruitment, and also where I found my calling. I single-handedly built much of the Content and SEO teams, hiring within tight budgets and aggressive timelines, while also supporting product design and marketing hires. Despite being new to the role, I earned multiple excellence awards, driven by strong stakeholder partnerships, sharp understanding of what teams truly needed, and accurate candidate screening. This phase helped me build my core strengths in stakeholder management, hiring judgment, and reliable delivery—skills that continue to anchor my approach to talent acquisition today.

My role with TCS was a very brief stint at designing and creating business-inducing content on the web for various small and medium businesses across the US. This role was part of a phase where I was finding my footing in a new city and exploring career directions. I gained a strong foundation in writing, grammar, content structuring, and quality standards, but also realised fairly quickly that this wasn’t where my strengths truly lay. The experience gave me clarity on what I wasn’t built for, which ultimately helped me pivot with intent toward talent acquisition.

This was my first role straight out of college and, in many ways, the best place I could have started my career. I began as a Process Associate working on Google Maps, and later transitioned into a Policy and Training Specialist, where we built and rolled out mapping guidelines for multiple countries. The role shaped me as a professional and taught me what strong stakeholder management really looks like, while also helping me identify my early strengths—communication, negotiation, prioritisation, and training. Just as importantly, it set high standards for how I show up at work, instilling a mindset of never getting complacent and constantly raising the bar.