Ankita Das

Joined The Walt Disney Company as a Founding Recruiter to help establish and scale the India Product & Engineering organization. Partner closely with engineering and product leadership to build high-performing teams while driving strategic hiring initiatives and recruitment process improvements.

Key Achievements

• Founding Recruiter, helping build Disney's India Product & Engineering organization from the ground up.
• Partnered with business leaders to scale the Ads Engineering organization from 100+ employees across Software Engineering, SRE, Product Management, TPM, Data Engineering, and Engineering Leadership roles.
• Acted as a strategic Talent Advisor, driving hiring strategy, workforce planning, talent mapping, and market intelligence for niche technical hiring.
• Worked closely with the Project Titanium leadership team to support business expansion and largCorrect ze-scale hiring initiatives.
• Led end-to-end recruitment for critical Product & Engineering roles while delivering an exceptional candidate and stakeholder experience.
• Streamlined the offer management process by identifying gaps and implementing process improvements that enhanced operational efficiency.
• Supported the design and rollout of a new Employee Referral Program to strengthen internal hiring and employee engagement.
• Partnered with GHRO, Compensation, HR Operations, and business leaders to ensure seamless offer approvals and onboarding.
• Leveraged recruitment analytics and market insights to influence hiring decisions and continuously improve recruitment outcomes.

• Currently working as a Senior Talent Acquisition Partner for the Warner Bros Discovery Product(R&D) -TA team.
• Recruiting leadership positions for WBD's technology center in India and Singapore, including roles such as Director of Engineering, Product Management, SRE, Chief architect, Principal Engineer, Engineering Manager, Sr SDMs etc.
• Collaborated with hiring managers and stakeholders to define requirements and expectations for technical positions.
• Engaged hiring teams in data-driven hiring to address challenges using insights from interviews, selections, and market trends.
• Proactively seek diverse candidates and uphold an inclusive recruitment process that fosters diversity within the organization.
• Contributed to talent acquisition projects such as DEI initiatives, Brown Bag sessions, post-offer engagement strategies, Workday implementation, and question bank development.
• Successfully executed Tech-talk event for WBD in the same year and was recognized and rewarded by the APAC leadership team.
• Participated in process changes and identified gaps in the interview funnel and recommended proactive changes and improved average hire time by 22%

• Talent Acquisition Partner for the VMware's Product(R&D) -TA team.
• Closed 150+ positions since April 2021, including diverse candidates, enhancing team representation.
• Onboarded 3 women candidates through D&I programs like Nakshatra-Women Back to Work in India for C#/Dot Net skill set, supporting inclusion efforts.
• Engaged hiring teams to address hiring challenges by providing data on interviews, selections, and market insights.
• Bootstrapped VMware's MAPBU team and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) team in India and onboarded 100+ engineers/Managers/Senior Managers till date.
• Conducting Behavioral HR interviews from Junior Engineer, Architects to Senior Managers.
• Successfully executed two tech talks for and diversity and inclusion program.
• Created workflow documents and templates (offer checklist/internal job transfer) utilized by new and existing team members for streamlined onboarding.
• Utilized various recruitment tools including Workday, Beamery, SeekOut, LinkedIn, Naukri, and Instahyre to enhance hiring processes.

• Sourced, identified, interviewed, reference checked, negotiated salaries, and closed hard-to-find candidates.
• Planned and executed hiring drives across multiple locations to meet engineering recruitment needs.
• Attended job fairs and tech conferences to connect with potential candidates.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills and ability to collaborate effectively with people at various levels.
• Expertise in handling multiple and Niche skill sets.
• Prepared and maintained hiring dashboards, intelligence reports, and candidate trackers using tools like Workday, Eightfold, SuccessFactors, Zwayam, and HackerRank.
• Acquired in-depth understanding of the end to end recruitment process.

• Conducted talent research, market mapping, and diversity hiring initiatives, improving recruitment processes.
• Leveraged ATS, recruitment analytics, and market intelligence to support business hiring goals.
• Managed end-to-end technical hiring, enhancing stakeholder collaboration and candidate experience.