Most people fail an interview before they ever answer a question.
For 38 years, I was the person on the other side of the interview table.
I’ve watched deserving people lose roles they should have won — not for lack of ability, but because no one ever told them how the decision is really made.
So I wrote it down.
Seven things that quietly decide senior-level hires, from someone who used to make those calls.
If you’re a professional in transition — or an officer making the leap to corporate — this is the unfair advantage I wish I could hand everyone.
I spent five years as an officer in the Indian Army. Then I took off the uniform and started again — from nothing.
With ₹1.5 lakh and no business background, I built what became the Chaque Jour Group: a bootstrapped, pan-India company in staffing and facility management that today turns over more than ₹150 crore and serves clients who have stayed with us for 10, 15, even 20 years.
I wasn't given any of it. I built it.
That phrase — built, not given — runs through everything I do now. After three decades of leading teams, closing deals, surviving downturns, and learning the hard way what separates the founders who last from the ones who fold, I've turned to what matters most to me at this stage of life: passing it on.
Today I mentor first-generation entrepreneurs and emerging leaders — not with theory from a textbook, but with what the Army and the market actually taught me: discipline, execution, resilience, and the composure to think clearly when everything is on fire. I also help professionals master something most leaders neglect — staying calm under pressure, through simple practices of breath and stillness.
I write for the same reason I mentor: knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied.
If you're building something — a business, a team, or a stronger version of yourself — you're in the right place. Let's build it. Not wait to be given it.
Capt. Shaji Kumar 