Tell us about yourself, your background and what you do currently
While I was not born in Mumbai, I was educated and lived for more years than I can remember in Bombay (now Mumbai). My father started working at the age of 18 and went on to complete his engineering while working. On the other hand, my mother – a Masters in Arts – is and has always been passionate about literature, music and dance. While my father travelled the world due to his work, my mother stayed at home and brought my brother and myself up. The hard work that my parents put in became the essence of my life from the very beginning and that there is no substitute to hard work is a lesson learnt. I started my career in developing IT systems for most manual processes (which was the case at point of time) and later on moved to the education and training Industry. Since then, there is no looking back. I am passionate about providing skills to people, counselling them to the right career and guiding them when needed. I have been part of TeamLease Services Limited for the last 13 years and this has enabled me to reach out to many people who we can help change lives of.
Tell us about any current projects or initiatives you wish to promote
Over 10 Lakh youth join the labour workforce every month in India. Most of them are first time formal job seekers from their families. By 2025, one in every four global workforces would be an Indian. It is up to us to decide whether we want to be part of the unskilled unproductive workforce or be skilled and productive, thereby changing the livelihoods of this workforce as well as their families.
What has been your biggest challenge in achieving your success?
Life is full of challenges and obstacles, which is why it is called life. How we turn each of these challenges to learning steps and come out stronger is up to us. And yes of course there have been many challenges. Professionally, the signalling value of vocational skilling is still very low in India and to get people to learn a skill before employment is challenging. Providing good quality vocational skills at low cost but at high scale is something we have been working on.
What has been your greatest achievement personally?
I would say the best is yet to come and small achievements provide me the motivation I need to keep pushing myself for. But, when people I have guided with through their education, learning and work come back to me saying that it is because of the guidance provided they are doing well for themselves, I believe is the biggest achievement for me. There have been many influencers in my life who have and continue to guide me to doing what I do, so if I can become a positive influence to some people, I believe it would be a big achievement for me.
If you weren’t doing what you do now, what would you be doing?
Surely something related to people and pets
Who has been your biggest inspiration?
It is difficult to pick one; I believe one can learn from almost everyone you come across with on a day-to-day basis. Starting from my parents, my spouse, family to some of the leaders I have worked with, some whom I continue to work with along with few others such as Nelson Mandela, Sheryl Sandberg, Ellen Degeneres , Aung San Suu Kyi to name a few.
What does the future hold for you?
“Kal kisne dekha hain”, but I always pray that I am able to be sensitive, just, caring and fair towards whatever and whoever comes to me.
About Neeti Sharma –
Neeti currently manages the Learning Services at TeamLease, which includes Public Private Partnerships with various State & Central Government initiatives in the areas of Employability and Employment across the country as well as managing a network of Learning Centers pan India.
Have over 25 years of diverse experience in the domain of Outsourcing including Employment, Employability, Human Resources, Hybrid learning, Customer Relationship, Operations and International Business Development.
Her current focus is to set up self-sustaining Employability and Employment models with various network of centers that profile, assess, train and certify job seekers across all profiles and cities / towns linking various stakeholders like Government, Educational Institutes, NGOs and Training Centers to cater to the manpower requirements (entry and middle level) of the organized and unorganized corporate sectors.
She is also the Member Secretary of the Skills Task Force under the Karnataka Knowledge Commission, Government of Karnataka.
She has been very actively been involved in various state government initiatives to increase the employability of tribal, rural and urban youth in various states such as Karnataka, Rajasthan, Orissa, Kerala, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, West Bengal, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana etc.
Neeti has previously been associated with organizations such as Aptech Limited, Mittal Group of Companies & Goodearth Organics.
She holds a Masters in Economics & Statistics and a Masters in Marketing Management from Symbiosis Institute of Management.
Contacting Neeti Sharma –
