From a Wrong Turn to the Right Seat: How Swasti Built Her Place at Cyntexa

What do you do when the road everyone told you to take turns out not to be yours? Most of us keep walking, because turning back feels louder than staying lost. Meet Swasti, the HR Manager at Cyntexa, who pulled over, took stock, and chose a different destination. Her route had a drop year, night shifts, and a few phone calls that made her nervous. This is her story of finding the right seat by giving 100% to every task, big or small.

Swasti chose engineering the way many of us make big decisions early: by looking at which track everyone around her was on. It did not take long to find out that the track was not hers.

“And when you end up on the wrong track, everything falls apart. I mean, literally, because I never had any interest in maths.”

Engineering is hard to love when maths is simply not your thing. But here is what makes her story worth reading: she did not spiral. She took inventory. Coding was not her passion, yet she was good at communicating, solving problems, and understanding people. Those strengths pointed toward management, so she changed direction. At home, her father had one clear wish: that his daughter should never be married off without a job of her own

“My father never wanted me to get married without a job… The only pressure on me was that I prepare accordingly.”

She took a drop year for the CAT and prepared with a refreshing honesty. She said, “I knew I could not get into an IIM, but I knew I could definitely crack a good B-school”

Self-awareness, it turns out, is a pretty good exam strategy. She scored a 94 percentile and earned an MBA seat at IMT Hyderabad. Then placement season arrived with offers in high-volume sales and banking. Swasti said no to them and waited for what she actually wanted: HR. In 2018, the wait paid off. She was placed as a US HR recruiter, working on technology accounts.

Then real life sent its bill. After 9 months of night shifts in Hyderabad, her health began to give way, and an accident in Noida meant she had to rest. Plans do not always ask permission. In 2020, just as COVID pushed the world indoors, she came back to Jaipur with an MBA, a recruiter’s skills, and a dilemma: what does starting again look like in a tier-2 city?

The search was an education in itself. One role wanted an HR person who also looked after security cameras. Another blended admin work and sales into the job description. The pay, politely put, was nominal. She was not asking for much. She wanted a company that understood what HR is.

Then a photograph changed the mood. It was an online picture of Cyntexa’s office celebrations, and Swasti sensed a positive culture. She did what a good recruiter does: used her sourcing skills to find the contact details of Cyntexa’s HR lead and reached out directly. She also knew her last package was high for Jaipur and might make a company hesitate, so she addressed it before anyone else could.

“Money doesn’t matter to me right now; learning and exposure do. Growth is something I will achieve inside the company.”

Who writes like that? Someone who has already learned what a salary cannot buy. Cyntexa’s leadership, impressed by her conviction, held a deep-dive interview that lasted an hour and a half. In it, she heard CEO Shrey speak of building a world-class tech organisation in Jaipur, so that local talent would not have to leave their families to build high-growth careers. For someone who had just come home, it did not sound like a company pitch. It sounded personal. Saying yes still cost her something, and she says so plainly.

People discuss your career journey. Begin Here!

Join Now!

There was no office desk and no colleague nearby to ask a quick question; it was peak quarantine after all. What she got instead was demanding training from the HR leadership: daily sessions, mock calls, and FAQ tests. And her trainer had a habit that kept her on her toes. Imagine your phone ringing in the evening and hearing this.

“So the team that was training me… would call me sometimes in the evening saying, ‘Now I am the candidate, let’s rehearse the mock call’… initially I used to feel a little scared.”

The fear was never about the work. It was about being tested without warning and getting it wrong. Sometimes she did. “That one went very badly for me, extremely badly.”

For someone who was done with majors in HR, a bad mock can bruise the ego. She kept picking up the phone anyway, and that daily practice built the domain mastery no one hands over in a day.

Somewhere in those early days, she settled on a rule: no task is too small. Updating recruitment tracking sheets, organising candidate pools, drafting company announcements for the CEO- each one got her full attention, partly because she was free. She also hated sitting idle, and she turned that into a habit.

“I don’t like sitting idle… I always kept my data ready with me so that whenever a requirement came, I didn’t have to start from scratch.”

During low-demand hiring phases, she kept her talent sheets updated, so when a technical requirement landed, recruitment could begin right away. Nobody saw the preparation, but everyone felt the speed.

As Cyntexa moved back to physical offices and grew rapidly, the HR team, which began with three members, became a structured department. Swasti learned that you cannot do everything yourself. She hired team leads, delegated responsibilities, and shaped processes that could handle drives of 400 to 500 candidates. In high-pressure cycles, she asks for 100% accuracy and gives her team the autonomy to deliver. Her standard is simple, and she says it without apology.

“If I am giving you 100%, I expect 100% from you…” Then her work changed from doing tasks well to owning outcomes. She stepped into HR management, taking charge of cross-team communication, onboarding, offboarding, performance tracking, and internal resource management. Like the mock calls, this stage came with fear.

“Now suddenly I have to make the decisions… so I felt, what if I go wrong now! Because I never wanted to have a negative impact, that my own decision caused this to happen.”

In HR, the stakes are real. An offboarding decision changes a life, an executive hire shapes the company’s direction, and an appraisal conversation colours how a person feels about their work. Swasti did not let fear freeze her. During key growth phases, she took full ownership, communicating directly across technical teams, handling salary and appraisal discussions, and leading recruitment independently. She also began shaping how Cyntexa hires, looking at zeal to learn, coachability, and character before a perfect set of answers.

“In Cyntexa, we have done this. Not every person is a polished candidate… If somebody has the zeal to learn, and is coachable, why not invest in this person? And people who were very average candidates went on to reach higher positions.”

Notice the full circle. The woman who once asked a company not to judge her by her last salary is now the one deciding who gets that chance. She knows what a bet on potential feels like from the receiving end. It is also why she is clear about where technology stops. She values AI for its speed, but not for the heart of her work.

“When it comes to empathy or one-on-one conversation, AI cannot do that… Explaining the ups and downs is a personal, human tendency. AI does not carry the emotional part.”

A tool can screen a thousand resumes. It cannot sit with a nervous candidate, hear the hesitation in their voice, and decide they deserve a chance. She brings the same care to her writing, and the internal emails, policy announcements, and cultural communications at Cyntexa carry her polish.

Look back at the road. The wrong turn showed her what she did not want. The drop year gave her discipline, the night shifts showed her where her limits were, and the move back to Jaipur taught her that starting again is not the same as starting over. The salary she swallowed taught her that learning compounds, and the small tasks she refused to treat as small became the foundation for the large ones.

Remember what she wrote to Cyntexa before she had even walked through the door?

“Growth is something I will achieve inside this company.”

She meant it, and she built it, one fully owned task at a time. To anyone who feels they are on the wrong track right now: a wrong turn is not the end of the story. It can be the reason you finally know where you are going.

Swasti did not wait for a big assignment to become a leader. She became one by treating every assignment as big. Her wrong turn did not end her story. It led her to the right seat, and she has been building it ever since.