FIWE: Restructuring Assessor Data to Fix a Regional Coverage Gap

Dhruv joined the Federation of Indian Women Entrepreneurs as an Operations Executive managing government assessment projects across four states: Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. At any given time, he was coordinating more than fifty live projects, scheduling assessors, aligning project timelines, managing stakeholder communication with training center coordinators and ministry contacts, and maintaining MIS reporting.

When the team noticed underperformance in Karnataka and Kerala, the initial assumption was that the problem was a shortage of assessors. Dhruv pulled the operational data to investigate, but found that the existing dataset was not segmented by region within each state. He restructured the assessor listing by region, which revealed that the assessors in Karnataka were concentrated in Bangalore, while the incoming projects were increasingly located in northern Karnataka.

The finding reframed the problem. It was not a headcount issue; it was a geographic distribution issue. Dhruv presented this to leadership, making the case that hiring more assessors in Bangalore would not fix the performance gap. The team hired assessors specifically in northern Karnataka, and performance in the state improved.

A similar pattern emerged in Kerala, where the issue was not assessor count but assessor skill mix: the available assessors were qualified in sectors different from the projects being assigned. Dhruv surfaced this finding and recommended targeted hiring by sector rather than by volume. Leadership accepted the recommendation and acted on it.