Product companies operate under different imperatives than services firms. They build intellectual property rather than deliver projects, design for global markets rather than individual clients, and compete on innovation velocity rather than cost efficiency. This creates unique talent challenges: hire for capabilities that don’t yet exist, build cultures where experimentation is valued over certainty, and maintain institutional memory whilst encouraging rapid iteration.
Rajnish Kumar, Vice President – Human Resources at Newgen Software, navigates these tensions daily. In conversation, he articulates why the question has shifted from “Can this person do the job today?” to “Can this person learn faster than the job will change?”, why leadership homogeneity is a lag indicator of workforce homogeneity, and why true impact lies with those who can move the organisation forward without increasing risk.
Adjacent capability over exact matches
Are you hiring for skills that exist today or capabilities to learn what doesn’t exist yet? What does future-ready talent mean at Newgen?
We have fundamentally reframed talent acquisition from “Can this person do the job today?” to “Can this person learn faster than the job will change?” Hiring only for today’s skills is not just short-sighted; it’s a structural risk.
Earlier, job descriptions and interviews evaluated skills around fixed stacks, number of clients or value managed. Now these decisions are made with capability in mind for the future. Candidates with high scores on learning approach and inquisitiveness are given clear preference over result orientation or ambition alone. Employees hired with “adjacent capability”, rather than exact skill matches, reach productivity much faster and outperform peers.
We seek candidates’ perspectives on how they approached learning something completely new or handled an ambiguous problem with incomplete data, whilst evaluating communication, reasoning and collaboration skills. As a product organisation, we ensure that our hiring systems, assessments and career models reward adaptability over certainty and learning over legacy expertise.
“Learning cultures aren’t created by training calendars, but by how everyday work is designed”
Leadership diversity begins earlier
What’s the one systemic barrier to diversity in your organisation that you’re actively trying to dismantle?
If I look at diversity honestly in the industry, the issue does not begin at leadership—it starts much earlier. Leadership homogeneity is a lag indicator of workforce homogeneity. Your overall workforce composition, particularly those levers that impact it across levels and specifically at senior levels, determines leadership diversity.
We have widened our hiring aperture to 50+ engineering and management campuses across Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities with clear focus on diversity in education, gender and income groups. In lateral hiring, for every referral hire, at least one non-referral candidate must be interviewed.
We have also introduced transparent performance and skill-based progression criteria. At certain levels and above, a diverse panel makes progression decisions with consensus alongside managers. As a result of these and several other initiatives, the attrition gap between men and women over the last 12 months has reduced by 100 basis points.
“Leadership diversity doesn’t begin in the corner office—it begins with who you hire, promote, and retain across levels”
Learning embedded in work design
How do you create a culture where continuous learning is embedded in daily work, where failure is seen as feedback, and curiosity is rewarded?
In our experience, organisations do not become learning-oriented by adding more courses, but by understanding how work is designed, reviewed and delivered in everyday life. This includes offering targeted interventions to those employees who desire and need to make improvements. Learning sticks only when it’s part of real work.
In the IT world, failure is inevitable. That’s why we have institutionalised mandatory post-mortems and retrospectives that spotlight system gaps rather than individuals. When failure is discussed without blame, people experiment more responsibly.
“Future-ready organisations are built by hiring for adjacent capability, not perfect skill matches”
Business-facing, not support-oriented
For young HR professionals aspiring to work in the IT sector, what’s misunderstood about HR in this industry? What skills differentiate a great HR leader from someone who’s just competent?
HR in every company should be deeply business-facing instead of merely support-oriented. This is the reality for the IT sector, given its people-centric nature and direct impact on revenue delivery, client satisfaction, product velocity, and risk and compliance.
One of the most common misunderstandings is that HR is largely about employee experience alone. In an environment marked by short talent cycles, continuously rising customer and employee expectations, and an increasingly competitive workforce market, talent-related decisions have become a genuine make-or-break factor for every organisation.
Having strong business and delivery understanding may no longer be glamorous but is indispensable. In today’s unpredictable environment, one of the most demanding skills is the ability to work with ambiguity and speed. Effective HR leaders ought to take informed risks, iterate policies instead of perfecting them, and adapt frameworks to context rather than enforcing them rigidly.
“The question is no longer whether someone can do the job today—but whether they can learn faster than the job will change”
Institutional memory as competitive advantage
What’s one unwritten rule in your organisation or industry that you wish more people understood earlier in their careers?
At Newgen, we believe in building products that regulators, risk teams and customers can trust. To achieve this, we encourage our employees to build and preserve institutional memory through strong documentation, change logs and clear design rationales.
We enable faster progression for those who can design controls, understand deep customer pain points and recognise that no release is ever just a technology decision. True impact lies with those who can move the organisation forward without increasing risk.