Sachith Rai
Sachith ran quality systems at Tata Group, HP and HGS before he ran a search firm, and he still asks the same question of every senior hire: did it hold.
Connect on LinkedIn ↗Sachith founded Recruise in Bengaluru in 2006. Before that he led quality and operational excellence at Tata Group, HP and HGS: Six Sigma, ISO audits, SLA management. He brought that lens to hiring. What is this system meant to produce, what does the data show, and where does it fail?
From 2014 he began tracking every senior leader Recruise placed, for years after they joined, against one question: did they stay. That record became the Rare-Hire Record. His work now runs to talent intelligence, skill benchmarking and GCC feasibility, and to helping organisations move from cost-led GCCs to innovation-led ones. He writes on GCC leadership, the economics of senior hiring, and where judgement and data meet.
Read more from Sachith.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.