Chandra Shekhar Ram Kumar

• Talent Engineered: Scaled frontline capacity by delivering 60+ Sales Officer & ASM hires within SLA, ensuring market coverage and depth.
• Leadership Impact: Drove Cluster Head hiring and led territory restructuring post GT realignment, strengthening leadership bench.
• Governance Excellence: Designed and institutionalized the Pan-India GT Onboarding Tracker and HR Dashboard, now benchmarks for visibility, governance, and performance hygiene across zones.
• HRBP Program Management: Co-led capability OKRs for the GT function, driving structured training, succession pipelines, and performance enablers aligned with business outcomes.
• Process Transformation: Re-engineered HR workflows with sales leadership, embedding governance systems that positioned GT HR as a strategic enabler rather than a support function.
• Continuity & Stability: Closed systemic gaps in transfer, backfill, and exit governance, securing workforce continuity and minimizing business disruption.
• Capability Building: Partnered with National Project Heads to design and implement a Competency Roadmap for frontline roles and created a standardized Interview Feedback Framework to ensure structured, bias-free, and competency-driven hiring decisions.
• Field Productivity: Rolled out field-centric programs for SOs & ASMs (order-taking, distributor engagement, market execution) that directly lifted productivity and execution standards.
• Retention & Engagement: Anchored the first GT Wellness & Retention Pilot, now embedded into the GT engagement framework, linking well-being with attrition reduction.

• Strategic Hiring Delivery: Closed 40+ niche roles (Data Science, Analytics, Product, Leadership) in 8 months, directly enabling business-critical growth.
• Process Innovation: Introduced AI-based screening & sourcing automation, reducing shortlisting time by 35% and improving recruiter efficiency.
• Workforce Planning: Partnered with business heads to scope roles and forecast workforce needs, reducing mismatches in critical hiring.
• OKR Implementation: Co-piloted the rollout of the Peoplebox OKR platform with the Director–HR, aligning hiring, retention, and engagement with organizational scorecards.
• Governance & Feedback: Designed Interview Feedback Sheets and hiring playbooks, improving decision quality and reducing bias.
• Employer Branding: Drove targeted LinkedIn branding campaigns, scaling redBus’s following from 2 lakh to 3.5 lakh within 10 months and doubling candidate engagement.
• Capability & L&D: Co-created RedLearn (internal learning ecosystem) to build functional skills, drive cross-team knowledge sharing, and create mobility pipelines.
• Diversity Impact: Expanded sourcing into underrepresented talent pools, strengthening leadership diversity representation.
• Retention Focus: Built structured candidate engagement & onboarding journeys, cutting post-offer dropouts and improving Day-1 readiness.

• Talent Strategy & Scaling: Built structured hiring frameworks that cut time-to-fill by 20% and ensured business continuity during aggressive retail expansion.
• COVID Resilience: Survived the pandemic’s business disruption by implementing cost-saving HR measures, productivity levers, and redeployment models, keeping operations lean yet functional.
• Revenue-Linked HR: Designed manpower productivity models linking sales per employee to HR scorecards, aligning HR outcomes with revenue growth.
• Employer Value Proposition (EVP): Launched targeted campaigns that improved candidate quality and enhanced the brand’s positioning in a competitive talent market.
• Diversity & Inclusion: Introduced inclusive hiring practices, strengthening gender diversity in customer-facing retail roles.
• Employee Retention: Rolled out store engagement programs and structured performance management, cutting attrition by 15% across key stores.
• Productivity Uplift: Partnered with sales leaders to align KPIs with performance management, embedding accountability and efficiency across retail operations.

• Strategic Workforce Planning: Partnered with leadership on organization design & manpower forecasting, aligning headcount plans with expansion priorities.
• Talent Acquisition Leadership: Directed hiring across 3 verticals, reducing agency dependency and cutting external recruitment costs by 40% through in-house capability building.
• Policy & Governance: Designed and rolled out group-wide HR policies, performance management systems, and compliance frameworks, creating consistency across businesses.
• Retention & Engagement: Launched structured employee engagement and retention programs, directly improving stability during a period of rapid expansion.
• L&D & Capability: Designed leadership development & functional training initiatives, building a sustainable pipeline for middle and senior management.
• Change Management: Drove succession planning and cultural integration programs during diversification and scale-up, enabling smooth business transitions.

• C-Level & Leadership Hiring: Successfully closed CXO and senior leadership mandates across corporate functions without using external consultants, establishing in-house credibility.
• High-Volume Ramp-Up: Spearheaded bulk recruitment for IMG Worlds of Adventure, delivering talent pipelines for retail, hospitality, and operations in record timelines.
• Cost Optimization: Designed direct sourcing strategies that cut agency dependency and reduced recruitment spend significantly.
• Corporate Hiring Excellence: Closed all corporate roles across Finance, HR, Projects, and Operations through structured talent mapping and headhunting.
• Process & Governance: Introduced structured recruitment playbooks, standardized assessments, and candidate experience frameworks.
• Strategic Talent Partner: Acted as a trusted advisor to business heads on manpower planning, role scoping, and succession pipelines during expansion.

• Retail Hiring Delivery: Closed high-volume frontline roles, ensuring smooth manpower ramp-ups during new store launches.
• Onboarding Excellence: Designed and rolled out structured onboarding practices, later adopted across zones as the group standard.
• HR Operations & Compliance: Managed end-to-end HR ops including payroll, transfers, exits, and statutory compliance for retail units.
• Engagement & Retention: Implemented localized employee engagement activities that improved morale and reduced early attrition.
• Process Discipline: Introduced governance practices for documentation, audits, and store-level HR hygiene.
• Business Partnership: Acted as the HR touchpoint for store managers, ensuring manpower continuity and quick resolution of people-related issues.

Managed HR consulting and business development mandates for mid-sized clients, working across recruitment, client delivery, and sales. Built early exposure to HR operations and consulting models in a boutique environment.