The Bangalore tech veteran on why twenty years in software was not the end of the innings — and what a second one looks like when you choose it on your own terms.
Anurag Jain spent twenty years in the software industry. He began as a software engineer, moved through varied roles in MNCs, and built the kind of career that looks, from the outside, exactly like success. The challenge was the hours. The time zones. The meetings that started when his family was asleep and ended when they were already leaving for school.
What made the transition to recruitment less of a leap than it appeared was something most people do not know about Anurag's corporate career. For a significant part of those two decades, he was not only a software professional — he was a Hiring Manager in a technical capacity. He had sat on the other side of the table. He had felt the frustration of finding the right candidate — the right skills, the right experience, the right attitude — and the genuine satisfaction when it came together. "Having seen smiles on new team members' faces, it was very satisfying — something that I enjoyed," he says. When he began looking at what came next, that memory was the anchor.
The conversation with Rashesh Doshi that eventually led him to Talent Corner HR Services was not a sales pitch that convinced him. It was a recognition. "During the course of my interactions with Mr Rashesh Doshi, I realised there was a similarity in thoughts," Anurag says — understand the requirement clearly, help the client hire the right candidate with the right experience, technical skills, and attitude. Two men who had both spent careers inside the hiring process, asking exactly the same question: who is actually right for this role? That alignment was more persuasive than any brochure.
What Talent Corner gave him as a franchise partner was the thing twenty years in corporate had most consistently taken away: the freedom to focus on the work itself. The billing, the client follow-ups for payments, the operational infrastructure — all handled. A dedicated team leader for day-to-day support. Quarterly meetings with Rashesh for industry insights and feedback. "This gives me freedom to concentrate on what I do best," he says, "serving the client's needs." For a man who had spent two decades managing across functions, that simplicity was not a reduction. It was a relief.
The changes that matter most to Anurag are not the professional ones. They are quieter. Today, he says, he does what gives him happiness and contentment. He has more time for his family. He is able to take better care of his health. After twenty years of cross-timezone work — the early mornings, the late nights, the body quietly paying the price of decades of global corporate hours — that sentence is not small. It is the one that matters most. His son is at IIT. His wife holds a doctorate from a reputed Bangalore institution. His parents built a family on good education and honest values — his father a veterinary doctor, his mother a postgraduate in History. Anurag has carried those values forward. What he has added is the space to actually live by them.
He chose this at 49 — not from necessity, but from clarity. Two decades of software gave him financial security. He did not need to build something new. The fact that he is now expanding his team, deepening client relationships, and planning the next chapter of this business is not ambition. It is evidence. A man who did not have to be here would not still be building.
There is something Anurag can offer a candidate that most recruiters cannot.
He has been the interviewer. For years, he sat on the other side of the table — evaluating not just technical skills but the way someone carried themselves, the confidence in how they answered, the difference between a candidate who knew their material and one who knew how to communicate it. He knows what that person is looking for, because he was that person.
Now, when a candidate sits across from him, he gives them what he wishes someone had given him when he was evaluating others: an honest account of what the room is actually judging. How to carry yourself. How to speak about what you know without either underselling or overreaching. How to communicate the thing your resume cannot show.
"It is very satisfying," he says — understated, in the way of someone for whom satisfaction has always been in the doing rather than the describing. The candidate who gets the job because someone helped them see themselves the way the interviewer would — that is a different kind of result. And for Anurag Jain, at 49, building his second innings, it is exactly the kind of result that makes the work worth doing.
His advice to anyone considering the recruitment industry is characteristically measured: one piece of advice is not enough. Be open to new ideas. Keep moving, keep learning, stay flexible, persevere. From a man who gave twenty years to one industry and chose, at 49, to start again — that list is not a slogan. It is a practice.
Anurag Jain is a franchise partner at Talent Corner HR Services, based in Bangalore. He brings over two decades of experience in the software industry, including significant experience as a Hiring Manager in technical roles.
About Talent Corner HR Services: Talent Corner HR Services is India’s leading recruitment franchise network, with over 100 active franchise partners across more than 25 cities. Founded in 2002, the company has successfully filled over 30,000 positions for 3,800+ client companies across India.