The high price of a wrong hire: Why Navi’s HR head refuses to cut corners

Few industries expose the cost of a bad hire as brutally as fintech. A single misstep can mean a botched product launch, regulatory risk, or a talent drain that ripples across teams. Yet the race for talent is relentless. The tension between speed and rigour in hiring is not just an HR puzzle — it’s a business-critical question.

Subeer Bakshi, HR Group Head at Navi Limited, believes the answer lies in design. “Speed and rigour don’t have to compete,” he says. “If the process is structured well, they can reinforce one another.”

At Navi, rigour begins with clarity: the non-negotiables are integrity, cultural alignment, and the ability to break down complex problems with data, technology, and judgement. Agility, meanwhile, is built into structured formats and decisive timelines. “The cost of slowing down is that top candidates walk away. The cost of compromising on quality is even worse — one wrong hire can derail a critical project.”

Beyond the Brand Name

In India’s tech ecosystem, elite schools still dominate the hiring pipeline. Navi recruits actively from top institutions, but Bakshi is quick to draw a line. “A great institution might get you into the room, but it’s never the reason you’re hired.”

The company leans on structured rubrics, multiple interviewers, and deliberate bias training. The focus is not prestige but qualities like resilience, adaptability, and clarity of thought. That approach echoes global research: Harvard Business Review has reported that companies relying too heavily on credentials risk narrowing their talent pool and stifling diversity of perspective.

Technical skills, Bakshi argues, are the easy part. What matters is how people respond when the ground shifts. Candidates are tested in scenarios drawn from Navi’s own reality: making decisions with incomplete data, weighing risk against growth, or juggling conflicting priorities under pressure.

For leadership roles, the lens widens to include how candidates carry others with them. “It’s one thing to solve a problem,” Bakshi says. “It’s another to inspire confidence in a room where not everyone agrees.” Those situations, he believes, reveal more about leadership potential than polished interview answers ever could.

Looking Past the Surface

Interviews and case studies, while useful, only skim the surface. At Navi, evaluators probe deeper: how candidates have handled setbacks, ethical dilemmas, or moments of major change. Senior candidates are often put through cross-functional interactions, sometimes informal, to see how they adapt to multiple perspectives.

Crucially, the company prizes “culture add” over “culture fit.” The idea is not to hire clones, but to strengthen the organisation by bringing in new perspectives that align with shared principles of ownership and customer-first thinking. McKinsey has found that firms embracing culture add, rather than enforcing rigid fit, outperform peers in innovation and adaptability — an edge that matters in volatile markets.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping recruitment worldwide. For Navi, AI is an ally, not a threat. “If used thoughtfully, AI enhances rigour,” Bakshi says. The company uses it to widen the funnel, screen at scale, and strip out human error.

But there are limits. “AI is an enabler, not a substitute. The danger lies in outsourcing judgment to a tool,” he warns. The balance lies in letting machines do the heavy lifting on efficiency and fairness, while humans make the nuanced calls about resilience, ambition, and cultural alignment.

This cautious embrace mirrors wider industry sentiment. A recent Deloitte survey found that while nearly half of companies plan to expand AI in hiring, most remain wary of losing the human judgement that underpins leadership selection.

Towards a Hybrid Future

Looking ahead, Bakshi sees a hybrid model becoming the norm. The front end of hiring — sourcing, screening, analytics — will be almost entirely automated within five years. But the back end will become “even more human,” with HR leaders devoting more time to judgment and candidate experience.

“The role of HR will shift from administration to evaluation,” he predicts. “Rigour will come not from choosing human or data, but from combining both seamlessly.”

What advice does he have for younger HR leaders trying to balance toughness with fairness? Anchor in business outcomes, not job descriptions. Define success and failure clearly before setting filters. Bake fairness into the process with rubrics and multiple perspectives.

He stresses long-term traits — intellect, agency, integrity — as anchors of high potential. And he cautions never to lose sight of the candidate experience. “A rigorous process can still be respectful, transparent, and engaging. In fact, that’s what sets you apart.”

Why It Matters

Navi’s approach is not just about filling roles faster. It reflects a shift in how high-growth companies see hiring: as a strategic lever rather than an operational task. In a sector where talent moves quickly and the margin for error is slim, rigorous hiring is less about gatekeeping than about ensuring survival.

As competition for skills intensifies, the future may well belong to organisations that can master the paradox Bakshi describes: moving fast without cutting corners, and holding the line on standards without losing the race for talent.