From Dentistry to HR: The unconventional career shift of a doctor

It’s the clarity of ‘what he doesn’t wish his life to be!’ that challenged <a id=” captionrendered=”1″ data-src=”https://etimg.etb2bimg.com/photo/122900761.cms” height=”442″ href=”http://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tag/amit+singh” keywordseo=”Amit-Singh” loading=”eager” source=”Orion” src=”https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/images/default.jpg” type=”General” weightage=”20″ width=”590″>Amit Singh, Chief Human Resources Officer, Care Hospitals, to redraw his career trajectory. Anticipating a bigger picture in life, Singh refused to settle for a conventional career that he could step into with his dental degree.

“The typical careers were restricted to defined pathways like medicine and engineering in the 1990s. Having been brought up in that era, I always looked up to doctors, thinking this could be an interesting profession. However, when I went into medical school, I was very clear that I wanted to do something beyond it,” Singh says.

Though Singh didn’t know what it was, he realised that he needed a larger space. He felt that Dentistry was not exciting enough for a lifetime. He saw himself beyond a clinic and a waiting room. Also, he was not just inspired by earning money, which dentists would make in those days, compared to the current competitive times.

Singh always had a natural inclination to psychology. He was very delved into why human beings behave in a certain way, what they do, and why they do certain things. And he often tries to read as much as possible about people—their learnings, failures, excitements, etc.

“There were a few things that came naturally to me. Understanding people and human psychology is something that I like as a domain. I started analysing the domains where I can utilise that. Exploring the options, I realised that the world of business interests me. Businesses are driven by human passion at the end of the day, and every organisation has a set of behaviours and a culture of how things are done,” he says.

Transitioning phase

After completing BDS, Singh applied to an NGO funded by UNDP. He ventured into the training and education domain there, where he had done a lot of campaigns around that. It was his boss who again asked him if he would be interested in a career in HR after reviewing his performance for that year.

HR wasn’t that mainstream in the early 2000s, and as a stream, it was completely unknown to Singh at that point. His first question to his boss was, “What does HR do?!”

His boss replied, “HR would involve the realm of activities beyond the personnel department; it extends to helping people learn new skills, hiring the right people, inspiring the right people, taking care of the organisation in the right and wrongs, etc.”

The detailing of the HR role made Singh instantly say ‘yes’ to the offered role, as all of that has to deal with human behaviour.

After his second year of work, Singh felt the need to equip himself with something more in business management. That’s when he pursued an executive programme in management with a specialisation in Marketing and Organisational Behaviour from IIM, Calcutta.

Post that he joined Moser Baer India as Deputy Manager – Human Resources. “It was a wonderful place in terms of taking up the HR role as the first complete assignment,” he says.

How dentistry complemented his management skills

Singh says dentistry and management complemented his thinking at the macro and micro levels. He opines that Dentistry is a specialised skill that requires a lot of patience and perseverance. “Everything about the tooth is in millimetres and microns. You get to learn about stillness while operating on the microdetails. And the procedure is equally painful. I also learned to think strategically from a life perspective at a macro level. I think leadership is about managing things from a micro and macro level. We call them Zoom in and Zoom out.”

Singh thinks that management is a blend of both science and art. “Management itself does not have a background from an academic subject point of view. Anyone from any field can choose to manage things. The science part of it is to think logically, and the art side of it is to think emotionally and non-logically,” he says.

“Management is about achieving outcomes by leveraging resources like people and money. Some people leverage management from a very innovative perspective, some from a large coordination perspective, and some others from a collaboration perspective,” he adds.

According to Singh, anyone who’s willing to get into management needs some essential factors:

• A clear view of the product or service that one wants to get into.
• Getting along with people, understanding the talent, and scale.
• Understanding where the business wants to go (like, whether to manage the status quo, become the largest employer, etc.)
• Aligning the resources to enable and drive the strategy of the path.

To be successful in the HR domain is challenging

Singh says it’s very easy to start within the HR career, as it’s more like an open door, and people with any qualification can join the HR domain. However, it’s competitive to be successful in HR, as there is a wider pool that opts for HR from different backgrounds, be it tech, finance, law, etc.

“There are different career layers when an HR professional starts evolving. The ground is building professional HR capabilities, whether it’s a certification, understanding or knowledge. The second part is building the business capabilities. The third part is leadership and influence. It is influencing the business and C-suite to adopt newer ways, mindsets and drive for impact and outcomes,” he says.

“The transition from middle to senior levels becomes very crucial in HR, because that’s when businesses start leveraging HR, where one becomes a functional leader to a business HR leader,” he points out.

According to him, finding a seat at the table, influencing senior leadership about things that are not just about today, is another challenging aspect, as HRs are driving long-term decisions and aspirations along with the current short-term needs.

In the previous organisation he worked for, Singh introduced the ‘Great manager programme’ and ‘Personal effective programme’ (for supervisors) as he believed the real execution work in a firm happens at the middle layer. The company had about 500 managers to lead the staff of 20,000 people. He could see visible changes when managers could inspire their team by being a role model. Every manager is given a scorecard which reflects his/her managerial capabilities.

Comparing the work culture

Sharing his experience of working across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia countries, Singh says, “HRs have to consider the cultural sensitivities and local environment of each country while designing programmes. In general, there is a saying that eastern cultures are more helpful and less polite, while western cultures are less helpful and more polite. It is important for HR to see different dimensions and ethical dilemmas of human beings in a broader way.”

A striking comparison that he found in western work culture is that their ability to follow processes, rules and guidelines is far greater than in India. “Sending an email communication in India may not work like western culture. We would need multiple communication programmes, as people here take time to implement things in one go, and there is a need for multiple follow-through campaigns. But the catch is that the adoption and adaptation here would be even more significant than in many countries,” Singh says.

“I am yet to see a country that’s as large, vast and as adaptive as India. Indians are far more aspiring and may be okay to compromise the work-life balance as compared to most western cultures,” he adds.

HR strategy in the healthcare sector is different

Singh points out that the amount of stress that the healthcare industry perceives is significantly higher. Thus, engaging the talents needs some alternative ways. “This is a crisis industry. People don’t walk into a hospital simply. They are forced to come in compared to other industries, which makes the healthcare industry more complex. Hospitals offer services, not products. And the idea of service is ultimately the talent. For instance, the doctors in the hospital are the service offered, and they are also the talent. How they feel, their view, expertise and wellbeing are even more complex. The traditional HR may not typically work in healthcare. And it’s not necessary that a townhall is the best way to engage these talents,” he says.

Singh puts forward that India is one of the fastest-growing markets for hospitals and healthcare. “There is a huge influx of technology that’s bringing efficiency in the healthcare industry. It has to be geared up with a new learning model on making doctors learn and implement technology. Healthcare is becoming more cost-conscious now, and we’ll have to also look at new models of pay for doctors and nurses,” he says.

According to Singh, leadership is now not just a set of expected activities. It could be about the unique ways that people leverage their capabilities. Talking about the evolving models of HR strategies, he says, “There are multiple ways for collaboration. Career paths have become different now. There was a defined career path 30 years ago. Today, it’s interchanging with board crossover skills. Even nurses can become a hospital head in the current scenario. When people see that talent is delivering disproportionate results in an industry like ours, they immediately build more and more because the outcome is the test. When you start winning, you become a credible business partner who knows how to get business outcomes through people,” he says.

Life in Hyderabad

Singh stays with his family in Hyderabad now. Sharing his life in Hyderabad, he says, “The weather is usually pleasant. And people are polite here. Hyderabad has a cosmopolitan culture, yet it’s not as chaotic as many other cities like Mumbai or Delhi. Hyderabad has a lot more to offer compared to many of the cities that have now started becoming very saturated, crowded and extremely polluted. The contrast that you see within the same city is extremely different. Some parts could even look like Singapore or Dubai, while other parts look like laid-back old schools.”

“There’s a lot of cultural and heritage significance about this city. I love the areas like Golconda and Charminar. It reminds me of a very old school world. The new Hyderabad areas are very interesting, with upcoming malls adding a new world flavour. There are great eateries and food joints in Hyderabad, where you can relish Andhra and Telangana food. There are a lot of new areas for jogging and cycling built in newer parts of Hyderabad. I find time for physical fitness and mental peace there,” he says.

Travelled to 30 countries!

“I am a very lively and social person who is very passionate about everything. I eat with passion, play with passion, build friendships and relationships with passion, and work with passion,” Singh says.

Singh is also a passionate traveller. He tries to find breaks every four to six months for five to seven/ten days. For him, travel is about experiencing the local culture, local cuisine and local food. “I try to fully ingrain myself in the culture that I’m traveling to,” he says.

Singh has travelled to at least 30 countries till now. Among the countries travelled to, he is most into the places that are not on the popular map. “I love parts of eastern Europe like Armenia and Georgia for their natural beauty and Lebanon for its heritage & culture, the wilderness. I am fascinated by Rotterdam, a city in the Netherlands, for its ability to build itself, so modern and pristine,” he says.

His last trip was about six months ago to Vietnam.

Book suggestions

Singh reads on a range of subjects, from innovation to business transformation to people and human psychology to financial intelligence.

The latest book that he read is ‘Think Again’ by Adam Grant. His favourite picks from his reading list are ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran, ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins’, and ‘Games People Play’ by Eric Berne.

His other reading suggestions are ‘Vipassana Meditation – The Art of Living’ as taught by S N Goenka, ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel and ‘Sapiens – A brief history of Humankind’ by Yuval Noah Harari.