Field notes from India’s GCC talent market.
Written by the people carrying the mandates. Drawn from live placement data, not desk research. Published when we have something specific to say.
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Pay-transparency laws rewrote the senior offer
Posted-range laws moved the first number from the offer to the job post. The expensive fallout is internal, where the range is legible to the people already doing the job.
What a senior counteroffer really tells you
What a company will do only once you resign tells you what the relationship was really worth, and what a raise can’t fix.
Why senior external hires fail in year one
Most senior hires that fail were capable of the job. They fail on the gap between the role that was described and the role that exists, and no interview probes it.
The US executive hire whose team is mostly somewhere else
A growing share of US leadership seats run organisations that sit offshore. The brief still describes the smaller half of the job.
Most contract staffing decisions are made on the wrong number
Bill rate against salary prices two different instruments as though they were one. The question that decides it is whether the work has a real end date.
RPO gives you capacity. It can’t give you a decision.
RPO solves a capacity problem. Most stalled hiring is a decision problem, and adding capacity to that just makes the queue longer.
Most hiring compliance failures are process failures, not legal ones
The policy is usually right. What breaks is consistency across interviewers, a record nobody owns, and the exception granted verbally under time pressure.
A Director in the US and a Director in your India GCC aren't the same hire
US parents level India roles off their own org chart. The title travels; the span and the decision rights don’t, and the search inherits the difference.
The offer that reads generous in New York and thin in Bengaluru
Converting a US band by exchange rate, cost of living or a fixed ratio to headquarters all look rigorous. All three answer a question the candidate isn’t asking.
The ninety-day notice period is a planning input, not an inconvenience
US hiring plans are built on a 2-week notice assumption that doesn’t hold for senior India hires. Most of the damage happens after the offer is signed.
The roles AI is quietly creating inside GCCs
Not the ones in the headlines. The senior seats that appear when a function moves from doing the work to governing it.
The published band and the closed offer are two different numbers
One is written by people not running mandates. The other is what the candidate actually signs. Only one of them should set your budget.
The three-year outlook: what the GCC hiring market looks like in 2029
Our read on where seniority, scarcity, and location are heading, drawn from the demand shifts already showing up in live mandates.
What Director–VP hires actually want, in their own words
Ask a senior candidate why they’d move and the answer is rarely the perks. It’s scope, a real mandate, and a line of sight to impact.
Choosing the operating model before you choose the headcount
Whether the centre runs as a captive, a hub, or a shared-service backbone decides the roles you can even hire. Most plans skip the choice.
The best senior hire is rarely the one who’s looking
The candidates who apply are self-selecting for availability, not calibre. Sachith Rai on why the market’s obsession with the active funnel quietly costs you the best seats.
Most GCC AI pilots stall at the same place. Here's why.
We've mapped GenAI rollouts across the GCCs we work with. The failure mode is consistent, and it isn't the technology.
What Bengaluru GCC heads actually do in their first 90 days
We spoke to GCC heads who have been in role under a year. The published playbook and the actual playbook diverge sharply.
Hiring for judgment when everyone can use the tools
When the skill is commodity, the differentiator is knowing where to apply it. How to assess for that.
The AI/ML band split in two
Traditional ML sits where it was a year ago. The GenAI end has pulled away. Price them as one band and you lose the top while over-paying the bottom.
The tier-2 city is something else entirely
Coimbatore, Indore, Kochi are winning specific charters, not becoming smaller versions of the metros. Reading which is which changes the plan.
Counter-offers are biting again, but which ones actually hold?
The “80% leave within six months” figure is folklore. The real number is about a third, and the ones who go are the people whose reason for leaving was never pay.
Manager quality is the real experience lever
People don’t leave companies, they leave managers, and at senior levels, one good leader outweighs a floor of amenities.
Span of control is where GCC org design quietly breaks
Too flat and managers drown; too deep and the centre calcifies. The right span is a hiring decision made a year in advance.
The consultancies are selling you a benchmark. You need a decision.
A published band tells you where the market was six months ago. Sachith Rai on why the big firms stop exactly where the useful part begins.
The 18-month exit cliff is real. The cause isn't what HR thinks.
Across the GCCs we track, senior attrition clusters at a predictable point. The triggers group into four things, and only two are inside HR’s control.
Why your shortlist is worse than your candidate pool
Most GCC TA teams filter for the wrong signals. We ran an audit across our mandate book. The pattern is uncomfortable.
What keeps senior talent: the levers beyond pay
The seat is won at the offer. It’s kept in the quiet quarter after, where scope, authority and charter decide whether a senior leader stays or churns.
Hiring authority is the mandate conversation nobody has upfront
The charter says the GCC head owns the centre, yet senior hires still route through headquarters. That gap shows up as slow, compromised hiring.
Compensation Index: IT & BFSI edition, Q2 2026
Band-by-band movement across senior IT and BFSI GCC roles, drawn from the placements we closed this quarter rather than survey aggregates.
GCCs are de-coupling from the parent, and hiring hasn’t caught up
When the centre starts owning charters instead of executing them, you need leaders who decide, not leaders who run. That’s a scarcer hire.
Assessing for judgment over skill
Skill is easy to test and a weak predictor of whether a senior hire holds. Where the signal actually lives, and how to read it in an interview.
Which retention interventions actually move the numbers
We sorted the levers GCCs reach for into what held people and what didn’t. Most of the budget goes to the ones that don’t.
The hybrid reality no policy document admits
The debate isn’t days in office. It’s whether the time together does anything the rest of the week can’t.
Strategic workforce planning: the gap between the plan and the market
We read a year of GCC workforce plans against live availability. Where the annual plan holds, and where it drifts inside two quarters.
‘Culture fit’ is how good centres talk themselves out of great leaders
The most cited reason a senior candidate gets passed over is the one nobody can define. A contrarian read on the orthodoxy most GCC panels never question.
GenAI and AI/ML are two different hires. Most JDs miss it.
Three distinct profiles are being confused for one. The mis-hire rate is predictable. The fix is upstream of recruitment.
What the 75th percentile is actually buying you
It sounds rigorous. In the senior segment it’s a way to avoid taking a position, and it loses to the 90th-percentile counter every time.
The pyramid is flattening. Volume recruiting is optimising for a shrinking market.
The charter that needed 100 now needs 60, but the 60 are harder to find and matter more. What that does to how you staff a desk.
The best people leave first. Here’s why that’s predictable.
Your strongest seniors have the most options and the least patience for a seat that under-delivers on its promise. They exit while the median stays.
Deepening capability means hiring ahead of the charter
Centres that plan for the work they run today stay execution shops. Owning judgment next means hiring for it before the mandate arrives.
In three years, the ‘cost centre’ framing will read like a mistake
A prediction. The GCCs writing today’s savings decks are hiring the wrong leaders for the mandate they’ll actually be handed. Sachith Rai on the shift already underway.
The proximity trap: when a GCC leader can’t let go of the work
As span grows, the best builders lose the distance the role now needs, staying too close to the work they used to do. A leadership-psychology read, distinct from the org-design side of span of control.
Base, variable, ESOP, and the one most committees under-weight
At VP level the parent ESOP can carry more of the deal than the cash. If you’re competing without one, splitting the difference loses the candidate.
What sourcing signals actually predict a hire
We looked back across a run of closed senior searches to see which early signals separated the candidates who converted from the ones who didn’t.
Onboarding a senior hire is a ninety-day trust exercise
The first quarter decides whether a leader you fought to land stays engaged or quietly starts taking calls again.
What we hear in the last conversation before a leader says yes
It’s almost never the money. From hundreds of senior closes, the one thing the winning offer got right that the runner-up didn’t.
How centres earn their next charter
The parent grants ownership to the centre it has stopped checking. We mapped the leadership behaviours behind that quiet handover.
New operating models: how ER&D centres are restructuring the leadership bench
We mapped how engineering centres are moving from staff-augmentation to product ownership, and the seniority shift underneath it.
Designing an interview process that measures the right thing
Most loops test whether a candidate can survive the loop. A few extra rounds rarely add signal, they add drop-off. What to cut, and what to keep.
Location strategy is really a talent-supply decision
The tier-2 city that looks cheaper on rent can be dearer on time-to-fill. Where the capability actually lives is the number that matters.
Hiring fast and hiring well are two different things, and the market keeps confusing them
Speed is easy to measure, so it’s the thing everyone optimises. Rajesh Pandian on what a rushed senior hire actually costs you two years out, when the bill finally lands.
The reference check is the new skills test
When a senior candidate’s portfolio is AI-assisted, it stops proving their judgment. Verification becomes the hard part of the hire.
The 90-day regret window on accepted counter-offers
Acceptance masks the reasons someone was leaving. Here’s the decay curve, and the early signs a ‘retained’ senior hire is already looking again.
The capability you bought a vendor for is the one you should have hired
There’s a moment a maturing GCC should pull a capability in-house. The hiring signals that say ‘now’, and the cost of missing them.
Retention is a sourcing problem
The bench you fought to build leaves in year two because expectations were mis-set at hire. The durable fix lives in the search, not the retention program.
The charter decisions that lock in your hiring cost for five years
Three operating-model choices, made at charter stage, silently pre-commit your future hiring cost and flexibility.
Some seats should never see a recruiter, including ours
Against our own commercial interest: the executive seats a company should never outsource to any search firm.
The mandate test: five questions that reveal whether a GCC head owns hiring
Before you accept or scope the role, five questions expose whether a GCC head’s hiring authority is real or nominal.
Pharma GCC pay is moving for a reason IT isn’t
While IT and BFSI bands have steadied, senior pharma roles are climbing. The driver is regulatory-side, not technology-side.
The close starts at the first call
The three objections that kill senior offers are all predictable. Surface them at the first conversation, not at offer.
Counter-offers work because your process gave the leader time to have doubts
The market blames the counter-offer. We think that’s the wrong culprit. A contrarian view on where senior mandates really lose the candidate.
Succession is a seat you fill years before it’s empty
The centres that survive a leader’s exit named the next two names quietly, long before the transition became urgent.
The first roles a GCC should stop hiring, and the one it should over-hire
Which GCC seats are shrinking in headcount, which single capability to over-invest in now, and the re-org sequencing.
The managers people follow out the door
The strong manager everyone loves is also a concentration risk, and when they leave, the team follows. How to de-risk single-manager loyalty.
Hire for the org chart AI is drawing
Most senior reqs describe a role that’s already changing shape. Sachith Rai on what the market gets wrong about future-proofing a leadership bench.
A GCC head and a site manager differ by what they can say no to
Real ownership shows up in veto rights. What the mandate looks like once the first 90 days are over.
A curated shortlist hides the two candidates who’d have said yes
Over-curation filters out the highest-intent candidates. A loss-analysis, and how to re-open the pool.
Where the twelve-month attrition actually landed this quarter
Retention read across sectors and seniority bands, drawn from placements followed past the start date rather than to the offer.
Where a workforce plan breaks first
Walk a headcount model to find the single assumption, attrition, ramp time or supply, most likely to fail.
The three things every GCC gets wrong about senior hiring
Three inherited HQ assumptions that fail in-market, and why cloning the parent company’s playbook is the fatal one.
The skills index: what GCCs actually paid for AI talent this quarter
Band-by-band movement across IT and AI & Data roles, drawn from placements closed in Q1.
The leadership assessment we run before a GCC head hire closes
The four dimensions that predict whether a leader will grow with the centre or plateau with it, drawn from two decades of placements.
How to read a salary benchmark without being misled
The method note. Every published benchmark carries a lag and a basket bias; here’s what to inspect before you set a band from one.
Three parts of your hiring playbook that won’t survive a headcount freeze
Which sourcing and closing assumptions collapse under a freeze, and what replaces them when reqs disappear.
Three signals a senior hire has already decided to leave
An observable-behaviour early-warning checklist for managers: scope withdrawal, network reactivation, the quiet handoff.
The retention problem is a selection problem you didn’t notice
By the time a leader is leaving, the mistake is eighteen months old. A hard truth about why the best retention work happens before the offer.
AI changes the tasks first, the titles last
The role looks the same on the org chart. The work inside it doesn’t. Reading that gap early is the whole game.
The most expensive GCC mistake is keeping a great delivery leader too long
The skills that build a centre aren’t always the ones that run it at scale. Recognising that early is far cheaper than the slow cost of leaving it.
Why your comp bands break at the VP line
Banded comp fails at senior levels. The off-band levers, scope, title, equity-equivalents, that close without a bidding war.
The two experience levers worth funding this year
Ranking EX spend by retention impact for senior staff, and the perks to stop paying for.
The title inflation nobody wants to name
‘Head of’ means less every year, and it’s distorting how leaders are hired and paid. What we see when the label and the mandate stop matching.
Eight things we’re tracking, week in, week out.
Each topic has its own editorial point of view. Click any of them for the full archive and our position on what the rest of the market is missing.
AI in the workplace
What's actually changing in how work gets done — separated from what consulting firms claim is changing.
GCC leadership
What it actually takes to run a Global Capability Centre in India — and where most leadership models break.
Pay & compensation transparency
Salary intelligence drawn from live placements. What roles pay, what bands look like, where they're moving.
The future of GCC hiring
Where this market is going — and which parts of the current playbook won't survive the next three years.
Talent & recruitment
The mechanics of hiring well in a market that rewards speed over judgment. The judgment part.
Attrition & retention
Why people leave, why people stay, and which interventions actually move the numbers.
Employee experience
What senior professionals actually want from work in 2026. Where companies meet it. Where they don't.
Workforce management
How GCCs build, structure, and re-shape teams. Operating models, span of control, location strategy.
One number that moved. One read on what it means. One ask for the week ahead.
Five minutes, every ten days. Built from live placement data and the conversations we’re having with GCC leaders right now. No pitch. No recap of the news you’ve already seen.
Hiring senior talent? Planning your next move?