Benedict VezhotoChief Human Resources Officer · Essays & perspective
Field notes / Benedict Vezhoto
Chief Human Resources Officer · India
Dispatch 01 / India
Practical recruitment evidence5 min read
Let skilled work shape the employment promise
A degree filter can make recruitment easier while excluding the very evidence a workshop needs. Changing the filter requires a paid, supervised way to assess the work, not a lower standard.
Centralising a technician team looked straightforward until its travel and relocation assumptions became explicit. A regional alternative cost more, and that cost belonged in the decision.
03
Outside work and proportionate employment decisions5 min read
I proposed a broad outside-work restriction before examining the activities it would cover. Individual review protected real business interests more clearly than treating every professional commitment alike.
A leadership conviction
A people policy should survive a conversation with the person whose work it describes. I want the company to name the capability it needs, pay for the arrangements it chooses and leave room for a professional life that does not fit one convenient form.
Instrument retail estate
24 shops
Fictional Dorqani Music Rooms, with workshop and regional field services
Company workforce
480 people
FY ending March 2026; distinct from the CHRO's function
People function
30 colleagues
Four managers and ₹4.8 crore annual function expense
Let skilled work shape the employment promise
I am Benedict Vezhoto, chief human resources officer of the fictional Dorqani Music Rooms in Shillong. Our colleagues sell musical instruments, restore them and travel to customers whose instruments cannot easily come to a workshop. I grew up in Kohima and began in hospitality service. That first career taught me to watch somebody perform a task before deciding what a certificate or a confident interview could tell me about their ability to do it.
Dorqani has twenty-four shops and 480 employees. It recorded ₹188 crore revenue and ₹13.7 crore operating profit for the financial year ending March 2026. The fictional Irish private parent Elzavern Sound Holdings owns 65%, with Indian founders holding 35%. I lead thirty people-function colleagues through four managers within ₹4.8 crore annual function expense; that is not the company's payroll. I report to CEO Maya Khervali and present to the board without holding a statutory seat. Workshop head Rohan Tevzuri owns technical assessment and repair standards, which HR must support without pretending to certify the craft.
My work has challenged several convenient assumptions. A degree requirement was excluding applicants before anyone saw their practical ability. A central service plan assumed technicians could all travel or relocate in the same way. A proposed ban on outside work would have treated a weekend music lesson like a competing commercial commitment. A sales incentive made a new instrument easier to reward than careful repair advice. None of those problems was solved by a declaration that we valued people. Each required a different employment arrangement, an explicit cost and a way to check what changed for colleagues and customers.
A practical route into workshop employment
Sixty-two adults completed a paid assessment process. Ten were hired, including seven without degrees; technical assessors retained the decision about demonstrated workshop ability.
A service network with an affordable human commitment
Four regional bases replaced a central proposal. Fourteen existing technicians chose regional roles, four took local workshop vacancies and two additional field technicians were recruited.
Outside work reviewed for its actual conflict
Of forty-eight disclosed activities, thirty-six continued unchanged, eleven were modified and one conflicting booking arrangement stopped after individual review. No employment termination is claimed.
Current focus
Testing whether pay, practical selection and travel commitments help skilled colleagues give customers advice they can trust.
Conversations I welcome
A first outside board conversation after governance preparation, employer consent and a realistic assessment of the role's demands.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
Formation
Bachelor of Business Administration in hospitality managementNerzali School of Business · 1999
Postgraduate Diploma in Human Resources, part-timeBelvori Personnel Institute · 2010
Benedict put the relocation and travel assumptions beside the service proposal before we approved it. The regional alternative cost more, and he made sure we understood that choice.
Maya KhervaliCEO, Dorqani Music Rooms; fictional colleagueThe full record ↗
Contact
A first outside board conversation after governance preparation, employer consent and a realistic assessment of the role's demands.
