Turning everyday adversities to opportunities: Akshay Siroya, Head of Alliances at EntHire
By: Ashana Sachan
Tags: Startup Life, Technology, Business Development, Sales, Interview

Turning everyday adversities to opportunities: Akshay Siroya, Head of Alliances at EntHire

This pandemic has made all our conversations virtual! Everyone misses those coffee machine gossips that include me. Being socially active, sometimes it brings to my curiosity to know about the other employees who are working in the company.

One afternoon I caught hold of Akshay, after our work discussions and we started to chit-chat on each other’s work ex and so. Akshay completed six months recently with EntHire and being the earliest member of their growing team he majorly handles all the Sales & Communication side of the Business.

Here are a few snippets of my conversations with him :)

Me: Akshay, tell me about your education, past work experiences?

Akshay: I started my professional career in the New York office of KPMG in their Advisory practice assisting in financial and commercial diligence. After completing a year, I moved to India, where I worked at an early stage FinTech start-up that provided credit access to micro-businesses.

My responsibilities involved working directly with the CEO to provide operating support across financial planning, new product development, marketing, fundraising and recruiting.

Having worked for 3+ years in various roles in the financial services space, I pursued an MBA in Marketing and Finance from ISB.

My most recent stint at Bizongo has provided me with valuable insights into the grassroots level functioning of a company.

That sounds so great!! (my eyes wide open)

Me: Akshay, so how came across EntHire? Who introduced you to this start-up?

Akshay: I found out about EntHire through a friend at ISB. They were looking to hire someone who could be a part of their Growth team. The opportunity seemed exciting, and I approached one of the co-founders to understand in more detail about the opportunity.

The idea of building a world’s first global & interpretable candidate scoring platform caught my eye.

Here at EntHire, they are starting with targeting the Talent Acquisition industry by building the world’s first global & interpretable candidate scoring platform- an analogue of credit score from the recruiting world.

Just like Credit scores are broken attribute wise and updated with various credit-related events like buying a house, signing up credit card; the recruiting score will consist of different attributes like background, career progress, problem-solving skills, communication etc. and will be updated regularly based on interviews, online assessments, promotions, performance reviews, job changes, etc.

Things moved quickly — Had a couple of discussions with them and joined them in a week — soon it was all hands on deck.

Me: Okay! so, What interests you the most while working with EntHire?

Akshay: Mostly importantly the best part which we find in many startups is ‘Organised Chaos’. And, I love to channel the chaos to increase my productivity at work and improve my course of action.

I want to make it simple for the companies who are looking to source great tech talent — love to bring efficiency in the process, saving time and money on both sides of the ecosystem. Job seekers are expected to somehow find the right job on a careers website with thousands of open jobs. But the technology on most career sites makes that very difficult.

Job seekers are left with a poor impression when they can’t find the right open job, and again when they can’t apply quickly. Also, when they do not receive any kind of feedback on their interview performance.

We are building a product to cater to the needs of the recruiter, candidates and the companies. We have a pool of interviewers whom we call our BarRaisers who are calibrated to take interviews & help candidates overcome the shortcomings during technical interviews.

The product will drive efficiency — makes it a smarter and faster way to source better talent.

Me: What’s the most exciting part of your job?

Akshay: It is my first time working in the talent space. As I get to speak to many start-ups in the Indian and US ecosystem — it is always exciting to know about the journey of various founders working to find the optimum solution, building new products to solve the problems.

Me: Are there any challenges you face while working on a daily basis, and how do you manage to overcome them?

Akshay: At an early-stage start-up, it is always about finding out the avenues for non-linear growth, non-conventional sales and marketing channels which could potentially help in the growing a business. As a sales professional, you probably know your product inside and out. But success in sales requires more than just technical know-how.

Regular brainstorming on ideas with the team, co-founders, interns and even fellow growth managers at other companies help me ease my work.

Me: How do you find the culture of the company and experience with your team?

Akshay: I won’t brag here, but the team consists of people from diverse expertise and are masters in their own subjects.

Anuraag — Out of the box thinker — brings up innovative ideas to reach out to potential clients. Can share his knowledge about equities, innovative start-ups to core engineering principles. Abhishek — All things tech — helps break things down very well for non-engineers too. Nikunj — Emphasis on processes and always willing to help with his Facebook or Bay Area connections!

Last, not the least Sagar can help you with everything :)

Me: For me, it is difficult to manage the work from home, how has working remotely helped you with your productivity?

Akshay: I have the flexibility to spend time with my family. No commute and workout is something that would be difficult if this was not a work from home job.

Catching up regularly through virtual meets and timely reporting about each other work updates makes it easier. We also conduct online gaming sessions once in a week which builds the energy in the team.

Also, we share our festivities by virtually celebrating it in a 30 mins video calls, this infuses more homely vibes in the team. (We may not be able to hug one another, high-five or shake hands, but we know that by pulling together, we will come out of this stronger and more connected!)

Me: Got it, this is quite intriguing! One last one- What motivated you to join a start-up rather than a Corporate?

Akshay: I am an inquisitive person — I love learning about new start-ups, the founder’s journey, and their desire to make an influence.

Every day is different. Everything I do here makes an impact on the organization, and working in a start-up gives me ample opportunity to drive the change and create an impression in the talent space.

As a vision, we want to aggregate all the information about candidates (interview feedback, candidate’s profile, career journey) at any point in time as a recruiting score. This recruiting score will help the candidates in fast-tracking their application without any bias of resumes and pedigree.

Well! Well! Well!

Akshay Siroya

This is Akshay Siroya- Head of Alliances at EntHire, helping us in building the business from its core and driving the sales of our product.

Kudos to him for all his efforts in onboarding eminent clients to the table!

If you also have the same zeal and are willing to work with an early-stage start-up like us shoot us a mail at business@enthire.co.

If you are a candidate seeking for opportunities in engineering roles with top tech start-ups and companies, signup now link.

You can also take FREE assessments with our experts, who we call BarRaisers by scheduling your interview in the same link.

Or, if you are a company and looking to build a tech team with extremely vetted candidates signup here and let us know your requirements!