Neha Bagaria: A Visionary Leader Helping Women Acquire Better Career Opportunities

JobsForHer was founded in 2015 to enable women to start, restart, and rise in their careers by connecting them with job opportunities, reskilling, mentorship, networking, and community. Today, JobsForHer connects 2 million career women registered on the platform to 7,500+ companies across India.

The platform also has over 500+ reskilling partners to assist women in reskilling/upskilling themselves. JobsForHer organizes networking events in association with companies on board and provides an online community of like-minded women on Groups. The platform has launched Profile Plus, the only profile that showcases the work and life experiences of women as they accelerate their career journeys.

Only 27% of women constitute the Indian workforce, a number which has actually declined from 35% in 2013, making the country one of the lowest in the world in gender parity rankings, at par with Saudi Arabia and even lower than Bangladesh. It's a sad reality that out of 100 college graduates in India, 40 are women, and only 8 of them enter the paid workforce. Among the ones who get a job, 50% drop out within three years, registering the country with 20 million women who have quit work over the last eight years, according to the World Bank.

On the flip side, the potential for impact is immense. If India can bring the next 68 million women into the workforce by 2025, the country's GDP can increase by US$700 billion, a raise that is unmatched in any other country in the world. The increase in diversity in the workforce will also have a direct impact on the bottom lines of companies, with research showing an increased ROI that benefits from the diverse perspectives and capabilities that the two genders bring.

However, this change can only happen if India changes the mindsets of the entire ecosystem. And that has been the biggest role of JobsForHer for the past five years.

A Strengthened Leader

Neha Bagaria is the Founder and CEO of JobsForHer. JobsForHer is not Neha's first entrepreneurial venture. Right after she graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Neha founded her first company Paragon, an educational startup to bring the Advanced Placement Program to India. When Neha's married life shifted her to Bangalore, she started working with Kemwell, a biopharmaceutical manufacturing company. Neha worked in the fields of HR, Finance and Marketing strategy in the company.

Neha took a three-and-a-half-year break in her career when she had her children. During her personal journey, she became aware of the various difficulties women face in order to re-enter the workforce. Neha then became committed to the cause of enabling women to accelerate their careers and launched JobsForHer.com on International Women's Day in 2015.

Today, Neha has broken many glass ceilings – she has been listed in Forbes India's WPower Trailblazers list of 25 groundbreaking women achievers as a game-changer and innovator, who is shattering stereotypes. She was also featured in Deccan Herald's list of '19 Changemakers to Watch Out For in 2019′.

A Future with Increased Diversity in Workforce

Neha thinks that the increase in workforce diversity will directly impact the bottom lines with research showing an increased ROI for companies that benefit from the diverse perspectives and capabilities that women bring. A spike in women's participation in the workforce will also have a huge impact on society and families in bringing more gender balance and equity, with women truly being empowered to make their own decisions and carve their own paths.

Neha is confident that JobsForHer will continue working with companies across India to unlock more and more opportunities for women by creating strong women-friendly brand identities and engaging with high-potential women through mentorship and events and find ways to reskill and recruit them using online and offline channels.

Embracing Virtual Assistants for Recruitment Process

Neha opines that the traditional recruitment process has always been a complex activity. But thanks to the digital world, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have enabled organisations to get rid of this manual process by bringing in virtual assistants to do the job more efficiently.

Neha mentions that around 70% of the workforce is not actively searching for jobs but would be willing to accept an offer if the job was a good fit. Henceforth, recruiters need to find these candidates and connect with them to discuss the position further. She adds that AI helps to source these hidden talents to scan online resumes and profiles to send valuable leads to recruiters.

Neha affirms that if they talk about jobseekers, ML and AI systems can help them optimize their profiles to be more searchable by recruiters and headhunters. AI-powered recruiting tools can play a positive role in reducing human bias. She believes that it can help make the hiring process fairer for women professionals by opting for gender-blinding CVs to remove recruiter bias and eliminates gender biases.

Neha insists that using big data can extract all the information from a candidate's profile, analyze the data, understand, interpret and match algorithms to match the job with the right candidate. She implies that recruitment automation can automate the entire recruitment process such as sourcing, screening, interviewing and onboarding, which can help increase recruiter productivity and improve the overall talent profile of the organisation.

Why Fit in When You're Born to Stand Out

Neha's advise to emerging women leaders is to e their unique leadership skills to their advantage.  Time management, crisis management, critical thinking, problem-solving, negotiation skills, empathy, compassion, and appreciation are the skills that women can use to bring out their leadership qualities.