The three-year hiring plan nobody asked for, that the CFO ended up presenting to the board.
We stopped re-litigating headcount every quarter. There was finally a number everyone had agreed to, and the market data behind it.
The outcome, in numbers.
The situation
The centre was growing well but planning in three-month increments. Every budget cycle reopened the same argument with HQ about headcount, cost, and whether the India centre was scaling on plan — because there was no plan, just a run rate.
What was missing wasn’t ambition; it was a model that tied hiring to capacity, cost, and the realities of the local talent market over a multi-year horizon.
What we did
We built a three-year workforce model from the ground up: role families, ramp curves, and attrition assumptions grounded in what the Bengaluru market actually does, not a flat growth percentage applied to today’s org.
Then we pressure-tested it against live compensation and availability data, so the cost projections and hiring pace were defensible rather than aspirational.
- 01 A role-family model with realistic ramp and attrition curves for the local market.
- 02 Cost projections tied to live compensation data, not last year’s averages.
- 03 Availability checks so the plan matched what the market could actually supply.
- 04 A scenario view (base / stretch) the leadership team could steer against.
The outcome
The model gave the centre a plan it could defend and steer against, and turned the quarterly headcount argument with HQ into a set of agreed numbers. The CFO took it to the board as the India scaling case.
The unplanned benefit: with a credible three-year view, the centre could make anchor senior hires ahead of need instead of always chasing the current quarter.
If a case like this looks like your problem, that's usually a sign.
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