Parul Singh

There are two or three things that have really helped me be successful in my career. First, I don't skip the small stuff - I always ensure that I dot my I's and cross my T's. From the start, that has been my habit. I always try to ensure that whatever I do, I keep a check of all the systems and the processes, and I think that nuance has helped me out a lot to be really successful in my career. The second part is I've always been really lucky to be able to work with some really good managers who have actually helped me grow in my path. I have learned a lot from their different styles that I have seen, and I have just absorbed the best qualities that they have and try to apply that in my own way with how I manage my team. So I think those two different things have helped me out a lot.

The best career advice I received, and I tell this to my team always, is to always look at the small stuff. When you are growing, control the facts that you can control. Always look for your scope of control and be your best in that scope of control. There are a lot of external factors that you may not be able to change, but at the same time, if you can control your own space where you have to perform, I think 50% of the problem is already solved there. The rest of the things - it's a collaborative world, right? So it's not only you that has to be successful. If you are successful, that means the entire team has to work together. So be best at what you can, and then try to figure out how we can identify the best way to move ahead with the collaborative approach.

Especially into the IT industry, I would say learn the concepts. It's very, very important to understand the industry nuances. It's a really male-dominating industry, right? But women are making headways in technology a lot these days. One challenge that I have always faced is how to bring women leaders into the team, and that has been a challenge across everywhere, especially on the technology side. So know your stuff - I think that's definitely going to help us take the next steps in our career. I would love to see more and more women in our leadership team, and we always work towards that, but somehow that's always been a challenge.

I am part of leadership hiring, and I would say the biggest challenge is always how to identify the right talent. At that level, especially somebody who has worked 20 years, 25 years in the industry, it's not about whether they know their stuff. It's always about how do you see them being successful in the environment that you have, what is the culture of it, how they can actually create that value. It's never 'do you know this or not?' - it's always about whether they can actually implement this or not. So identifying the right kind of talent, especially when these people are really, really senior, is the most important part of my job. When I talk to them, I always try to understand, looking at it while wearing the hat of my organization, whether this person will be able to add value to the team that we are adding them to. Identification of the right kind of talent is the most important part here, and that is the biggest challenge as well. Right now, data and AI is one of the hot topics - everybody is looking into it, everybody's getting into it, so identifying the right kind of talent in that space is definitely a really, really important aspect of it.

In my personal life, I would say loyalty is the most important value for me. Professionally, I definitely think loyalty is one part, but at the same time, I also think there are a lot of other factors in how I'm treating my team, like fairness. Am I helping them out to grow? Am I helping them out to be at their highest potential? I think those are the few things that I always like to inculcate in my team, and I help them out to get the best out of them.