Varun Vijayakumar

Leading full-stack HR for Media.net, with ownership across organisation design, performance architecture, leadership development, total rewards, HR technology, people operations, and culture-building. Partner closely with senior business leaders on scale, restructuring, leadership effectiveness, and evolving people systems for a technology business operating across India, UAE, and US stakeholder environments. - Partnered with senior leadership through a major organisation redesign, aligning structure, role clarity, capability needs, and performance expectations to support the company’s next phase of growth. - Reimagined performance calibration to create stronger differentiation, clearer accountability, and a more structured link between performance, potential, rewards, and progression. - Designed compensation and rewards frameworks using external market benchmarks to improve competitiveness, retain critical talent, and support a high-performance culture. - Built leadership development journeys for managers and senior leaders, focused on execution discipline, team ownership, managerial effectiveness, and reduced escalation dependency. - Created people operating models for emerging Group’s ventures, including independent values, hiring strategies, leadership rhythms, and performance systems suited to startup-style teams. - Led implementation and adoption of people technology platforms across learning, engagement, and HR operations to improve scalability and employee experience. - Partnered with senior stakeholders across India, UAE, and the US on cross-border people operations, leadership alignment, compensation, compliance, and organisation effectiveness.

Served as the first standalone HR leader for a high-growth fintech company during a rapid scale-up phase. Reported to the founders and built the people function across leadership hiring, organisation design, rewards, ESOP architecture, HR operations, HR technology, and goal-setting systems. - Built the HR function during a period of accelerated growth, creating the structure, operating cadence, and leadership support needed for a fast-scaling fintech environment. - Led senior leadership hiring across technology, finance, product, and design, partnering with founders, search firms, and referral networks to close business-critical mandates. - Designed ESOP and rewards architecture across job families, aligning role level, performance, tenure, and market competitiveness. - Implemented HR technology platforms to bring structure, visibility, and process discipline to HR operations and talent acquisition. - Introduced OKR-led goal setting to translate founder priorities into clearer team-level execution and accountability. - Built and led a high-performing HR team across talent acquisition, operations, rewards, and business partnering.

Progressed through expanding HR leadership roles as Media.net moved from early growth into a much larger, more complex technology organisation. Built foundational HR systems across talent acquisition, campus hiring, leadership hiring, role architecture, rewards, HR operations, and India-UAE people processes. - Built scalable talent acquisition engines across technology, product, business, campus, and leadership hiring. - Designed role classification, levelling, and compensation structures to bring clarity to career paths, benchmarking, internal equity, and leadership spans. - Built campus hiring pipelines across premier engineering and management institutions, helping strengthen the company’s access to early-career technology and product talent. - Supported senior technology leadership hiring for strategic business areas, including emerging product and engineering functions. - Managed India-UAE people operations, including international compensation, relocation support, employment compliance, and CXO-level stakeholder coordination. = Implemented HR systems and process workflows across India and UAE operations, improving data quality, operational consistency, and HR scalability. - Partnered with business heads to support talent planning, performance management, leadership capability, and organisation effectiveness across technology and product teams.

Led technical recruitment for Microsoft’s Bing Ads R&D centre in Bengaluru, hiring across engineering, product, research, and applied technology roles. Built sourcing strategies for niche, hard-to-find talent in areas where the market was still developing. - Hired across software engineering, product management, applied research, and search technology roles for a fast-growing R&D centre. - Built sourcing channels for scarce machine learning, research, and engineering talent across technology companies, research labs, and academic institutions. - Supported early product management hiring for Bing Ads India. - Designed returnship hiring pathways for women returning to work, helping convert strong talent into full-time engineering and product roles. - Ran internal mobility campaigns to bring experienced global engineering talent into Bengaluru-based roles.

Worked across HR advisory, market research, CXO roundtables, and client engagement, supporting consulting conversations around talent trends, compensation, attrition, and industry best practices. - Supported HR market studies across compensation, benefits, attrition, talent availability, and location strategy. - Anchored HR advisory events and CXO roundtables, contributing to client acquisition and consulting engagement development. - Built early exposure to HR research, talent intelligence, and business-facing advisory work.

Handled leadership hiring for the BFSI IT vertical, supporting senior mandates across delivery, programme management, project management, and infrastructure leadership. - Managed senior hiring mandates for BFSI technology teams. - Built candidate pipelines for leadership roles across delivery, programme, project, and infrastructure management. - Partnered with business stakeholders to understand role requirements and hiring priorities.

Started career in specialist recruitment, working with BFSI, professional services, technology captives, and ITeS clients. Built strong grounding in sourcing, assessment, stakeholder management, and niche talent mapping. - Specialised in hiring for investment banking, financial services, audit, advisory, technology, and information security roles. - Supported clients across global banks, consulting firms, and technology-led organisations. - Built early expertise in candidate research, market mapping, senior stakeholder management, and specialist talent acquisition.

*Informal Influence *Leading with Persuasive Communication *Strenghthening Leadership presence *Cultivating Informal Networks *Persuasion Framework *Persuasively communicating your vision and strategy