#CoffeeWithHR: Fulsmita tells us why Company Culture is #1 Priority at Get My Parking

Fulsmita Bhattacharjee, HR manager at Get My Parking told Instahyre how she naturally takes care of everything from office inventory to the employees – all while ensuring company culture fit. Here is the meeting in the text.

Tell us about a typical day at work?

First thing I do after entering the door is to check if the office is in order. I fetch the housekeeping or the cook if some work is left to be done. The reason I do this is because we serve breakfast to employees who arrive before 10:30 AM (although our hours are flexible), things need to be in order for everyone. I also check if inventory (chips, coffee, biscuits and stuff) is stacked to run through the day.
After that, I go through my task list to see if candidates are coming in for interviews and then touch base with my manager to inform him of the same. Afterwards, I check which employees are on sick leave that day and who is handling their responsibility.
Once that’s done, I get back to my regular work – calling, sourcing, fixing interviews and such. Then at 6.30 PM everybody stops working and we all play games such as table tennis, dart boards and more. So basically, 50% of my time is spent interacting with employees and recruiting activities, 10% on documentation and policy work, and the rest is running through the office to manage things.

You mentioned you take care of a lot of activities in your daily work. What are the challenges you face in your role?

So, we have a rule that no matter how skilled a candidate is, he/she must be a culture fit. We learned this lesson when we let some high performing employees go because they couldn’t fit in the culture – it brought the team morale down. During screenings, I have to be on my toes to judge if a candidate matches our culture and it’s not an easy task.
Second, you know startup culture is very different from the corporate one. So, my other challenge is to strike the perfect balance in office for people with 6-8 years experience as well young workforce that we have.

So, how do you conduct team building and employee engagement activities?

Well, team building comes pretty easy here. It’s incredible to see people who never played TT before turn into TT lovers after a few days. Plus, we play cricket and soccer tournaments regularly. You could say we’re a sporty bunch.

Plus, we have town hall meetings every month after which we go out for movies and team lunches. We also have an extensive range of board games in office which the team absolutely loves!
Also, each week we plan some fun thing to do like the last week when we had a CS night (from 9 PM to 5 AM). Add to that our regular outings on special days for fun activities like paintball and excursions each year for around 3 days. All of this combines to provide a great experience and an incredible boost to employee engagement and morale!

How has your role changed or evolved in all the years you’ve been in the industry?

Personally, I’ve seen a great shift in my role. Actually, I’m a CS graduate and I joined a company as a software engineer. The major part of the role was coding but a minor part was also handling clients and the management team. That’s when I realised I loved that tiny role more than coding and now it’s been 2 years since I joined Get My Parking in an HR role. Here, I get to interact with many people. Even investors!
For instance, we are in talks with multiple foreign companies and I get to interact with them when they visit the office. There was even a Harvard professor who visited us and I interacted with him too. Changing to a people facing role was my best decision.

Any apps you can’t work without or that help your recruiting efforts immensely?

The Google calendar is really something I can’t work without. Then come Excel and Asana. You can find me on one of these apps in office at any given time.

Share some of your best time-saving hacks for recruiting with us?

Definitely, effective screening. I have a process for it that goes like this – I get 100 resumes, I shortlist around 30. Then I call these 30 with some specific set of questions we’ve designed. All of this is to make sure we don’t waste our plus candidate’s time by calling in a wrong match.

How do you unwind after work? Tell us about your happy place.

I dance. Actually, I teach Kathak to a bunch of kids. Also, I’m a big foodie, which means I explore Delhi for the best restaurants and best cuisines. I’ve explored around 50 new places in past 6 months.

That’s amazing! Now our last question. One word or phrase that’ll describe your work?

Good decision maker. In startup world, this quality is the most important one. I have to take a decision in situations that I never faced or choose something over other when it’s really conflicting. So I learned this in my startup journey.