Kalaiselvi Ponnurangam
Fifteen years inside one organisation. The kind of earned perspective that only comes from time, not from reading about it.
Connect on LinkedIn ↗Kalai has spent fifteen years at Recruise, one of the longest tenures on the team, rising from senior executive to Practice Head, Talent Consulting & Advisory. She has managed teams of two and teams of forty, and built much of the operational infrastructure the firm runs on. She specialises in management consulting, analytics, and technology hiring.
She writes with the settled perspective of someone who has watched one organisation change over a very long time: on building teams for the long term, reading people before the performance data does, and where AI and analytics genuinely help recruitment operations.
Read more from Kalaiselvi.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where a workforce plan breaks first
Walk a headcount model to find the single assumption, attrition, ramp time or supply, most likely to fail.
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.
One hiring pattern worth knowing, every ten days.
The Mandate Desk is our read on the senior GCC talent market — one signal that moved, the read behind it, and one thing worth doing. Written from live placement data.