Company: Spectrum Marketing Solutions (fictitious), a digital marketing agency with 600 employees across India
Background
A Marketing Manager role has opened in Spectrum’s e-commerce practice, a fast-growing division handling major consumer brands in beauty, fashion, and mother-baby categories. The role requires deep knowledge of performance marketing, influencer campaigns, and real-time analytics. It is high-pressure, high-visibility, and critical to the agency’s growth.
Two candidates have made it to the final round.
The candidates
Anjali Rao worked at Spectrum for five years before taking maternity leave 18 months ago. She was a solid performer. Reliable, client-facing, and well-liked by her team. She is now ready to return and has applied for this role, which is one level above where she left.
But she is candid in her interview.
“I have been out of the loop. I know the landscape has changed. Reels is big now. Performance marketing has evolved. But I have not run a live campaign in over a year. I will need a few weeks to get back up to speed.”
Kabir Desai is a 24-year-old MBA graduate from a top-tier school. He interned at a leading agency and has fresh knowledge of the latest tools such as AI-driven attribution models, programmatic buying, and short-form video strategies. He is hungry, eager, and fully current.
HR now faces a difficult choice.
The dilemma
Should HR prioritise Anjali, giving her a pathway back after maternity leave and signalling that the company values loyalty and supports working mothers?
Or hire Kabir, choosing current knowledge and readiness over experience, but potentially reinforcing the motherhood penalty that keeps women from advancing?
What’s really at stake
If Spectrum chooses Kabir, Anjali will likely leave, and every woman in the organisation will notice. The message will be clear. Take a career break, fall behind.
If they choose Anjali, they risk slower ramp-up in a critical role, and Kabir, a high-potential candidate, goes to a competitor.
This is a test of whether merit is defined by what you can do today, or what you have proven you can do with the right support.
We asked three HR leaders how they would approach this dilemma.
What HR leaders said
Shailesh Singh, CPO, Axis Max Life
“When in doubt, go back to first principles. What does the organisation truly stand for?
In situations like these, I anchor decisions in organisational philosophy. If a company believes in meritocracy, the instinct is to choose the best candidate based on capability.
But this case introduces an important nuance. Anjali’s career break is not a professional lapse. It is a life event aligned with company policy and societal norms. If we claim to support such policies, we cannot penalise someone for using them. That would be contradictory.
From a principle standpoint, Anjali must not be disadvantaged because of her maternity break. She deserves a fair shot, like any other candidate. Beyond that, the organisation has an obligation to reintegrate her meaningfully, not just symbolically.
The second layer is messaging. Decisions like these are observed and internalised across the organisation. If the outcome suggests that taking maternity leave leads to stagnation, it will discourage both current and future talent. That cost is rarely quantified.
There will always be candidates like Kabir, current, skilled, and possibly stronger on paper at a given moment. But if we prioritise external readiness over internal commitment in such cases, we risk eroding trust.
Companies must honour their commitments first. Legal, moral, and cultural. Merit comes next, not the other way around.
In that sense, Anjali presents the stronger case. Not just as an individual, but as a reflection of what the organisation claims to stand for.
True meritocracy cannot ignore context. Organisations must honour their commitments before applying a purely performance-driven lens.”
Uma Rao, Senior HR leader
“The question is not whether to bring her back. You must. The real question is how you enable her to succeed once she returns.
From my perspective, the starting point is a clear organisational commitment. But the dilemma here is different. It is about whether she should step into a larger, high-pressure role immediately.
When a woman returns from maternity, she is not just returning to work. She is returning after a significant life transition. There is often a confidence gap. Not because of capability, but because of time away. The industry evolves, tools change, and she is aware of what she has missed. That creates natural hesitation.
This is where organisations must step in. Not just with opportunity, but with clarity and reassurance.
If Anjali has been a strong performer, there is no reason to doubt her ability to relearn and catch up. Skills can be rebuilt. What she needs is a clear understanding of expectations and an honest conversation about readiness and personal bandwidth.
If she says yes, the organisation must fully back her with structured training, mentorship, and a defined ramp-up plan. That support not only enables performance, it builds deep loyalty. People remember how they are treated at vulnerable moments.
If she says no, that is equally valid. In that case, place her in a role aligned with her current priorities and hire Kabir for this position. But communicate this clearly. The narrative must not become ‘she came back and was sidelined’. It should be that she made an informed choice and the organisation supported it.
Kabir, too, should not be lost. If he is high potential, explore alternative roles, projects, or future opportunities. Talent pipelines cannot be so fragile that one role defines everything.
Supporting returning employees is not just about offering roles. It is about enabling informed choice, building confidence, and communicating decisions transparently.”
Suchismita Burman, Senior HR leader
“If I look at this purely as a hiring decision, I miss the larger truth. This is a cultural decision disguised as a recruitment one.
The choice here will shape the organisation’s belief system. Psychological safety is not built through policies or town halls. It is built through decisions like these.
If we choose Kabir purely for his readiness today, we may get faster outcomes. But have we fully examined that assumption? What if he does not deliver? Risk does not disappear with fresh talent. It simply changes form. Even Kabir may carry silent pressure. He was chosen over someone returning from a career break. If he fails, that narrative follows him.
That is how shared belief works. It does not need to be your experience. It can be someone else’s.
If I were making this decision, I would lean towards Anjali. Not out of sympathy, and certainly not to play the woman card. That approach is short-sighted and can backfire. My reasoning is strategic. Merit is not just about what you can do today. It is about trajectory.
Anjali has demonstrated capability within the organisation. The real question is whether we can enable her to get back to speed without setting her up to fail. The answer is yes, if we design the role thoughtfully.
This is not a binary choice between performance and empathy. We have tools, AI-driven systems, and modular workflows today. Why not distribute immediate execution needs while Anjali ramps up in parallel? Provide oversight, mentorship, and clear expectations. Be transparent. This is a stretch, and support will be provided.
Leadership is not about eliminating risk. It is about managing it deliberately.
What we are really deciding is what kind of organisation we want to be. Do we reward only immediacy, or do we invest in people who have already invested in us?
Merit must include trajectory, not just immediacy. And organisations must design support systems if they want inclusion to be real, not rhetorical.”
If you were the CHRO at Spectrum
You have been asked to recommend a course of action to the leadership team.
Do you:
- Hire Anjali and design a structured ramp-up plan with mentorship and support, accepting short-term adjustment while signalling commitment to working mothers?
- Hire Kabir for immediate readiness, but actively create a meaningful re-entry role for Anjali at her previous level to retain her in the organisation?
- Have a transparent conversation with Anjali about her readiness and personal bandwidth, then decide based on her informed choice rather than assumptions?
Or is the deeper question this:
If organisations claim to support maternity policies but penalise those who use them, is the policy itself just performative?
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