GCCs were once built around large teams doing cost-competitive work; they are now increasingly being built around smaller, high-impact teams focused on AI, data, digital engineering, and product innovation.

A recent study by digital recruitment platform Taggd terms this an operating model shift from headcount to capability, one that is taking GCCs “closer to core business strategy rather than peripheral delivery.”

This shift has wider implications, given that India is home to more than half of the global GCC activity. India now hosts 2,117 GCCs, up from 1,600 just five years ago. Revenues have jumped from Rs 5.9 lakh crore to Rs 9.4 lakh crore over the same period. Importantly, the workforce increased from 17 lakh to 23 lakh.

In India’s $300 billion IT industry, GCCs now hire more than traditional IT services companies. This has been the case since FY24, says a study by Xpheno, a specialist recruitment firm. In FY25, GCCs recruited 110,000 candidates, 10,000 more than the IT services companies. In FY26, GCCs hired 180,000 candidates (60,000 more).

How exactly is this transition playing out, given that it’s happening in the increasingly disruptive presence of AI?

The question of talent

Importantly, the shift is not reducing hiring across the board; it is instead creating “a two-speed GCC reality,” according to the Taggd study titled ‘From Intent to Predictable Scale: The Future of GCCs in India.’

Yet, this does not mean GCC hiring is slowing going forward. More than half of the GCCs surveyed (52%) plan to increase hiring in FY27, up from 47% a year earlier. Net hiring intent has risen to around 17% from 14%, while the share expecting headcount reductions has fallen from 36% to 26%. Taggd estimates GCCs could add another 1.5 lakh roles in FY27.

The study says, “By every directional indicator, India’s GCC hiring market is entering FY27 with more conviction than it had twelve months ago.”

So, what exactly is changing? Taggd says the ecosystem is undergoing “a skill pivot.” Routine operational roles are increasingly being absorbed into AI-led workflows, even as demand rises for AI governance, model training, data architecture and intelligent operations. Traditional GCC strengths such as process excellence and back-office operations are plateauing, while investment is shifting towards AI, cybersecurity, product thinking and platform engineering.

AI and data science now account for nearly one in three skill mentions in the Taggd study. Nearly half of respondents say that more than a quarter of their open roles require AI-related capabilities, while one in four GCCs say most of their positions are already AI-adjacent.

The big challenge, though, is the quality of talent.

Taggd says, “Confidence and conditions are moving in opposite directions. The same organizations signaling stronger hiring intent are simultaneously navigating a quality mismatch in the talent they can source, compensation inflation that is outpacing budget forecasts, and a leadership pipeline that is thinning precisely when it is needed most.”

It adds: “Understanding the FY27 hiring pulse means holding both truths at once: the sector is growing, and growing well is getting harder.”

This demand for talent also translates to higher compensation. Already, as the study points out, GCC salaries averaged 20% higher than equivalent non-GCC roles. The projected salary increase in 2026 is 10.4%, as against an average of 9.9% in 2025.

The expected hiring mix across GCCs in FY27 is skewed toward early-career talent: half of all new hires are expected to have less than five years of experience, with freshers accounting for 16% of the mix.

Today, with a slew of free trade agreements, India is no longer negotiating solely on cost. “It is negotiating as a country the world actively needs, for its talent depth, its scale, and its strategic reliability.”

Given this, the study notes, “The policy, regulatory, and institutional architecture required to sustain the next phase of growth, a national talent framework, Tier-2 infrastructure investment, and a predictable regulatory environment, remains unbuilt.”

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That’s why recruiters are placing greater emphasis on interviews, work samples and human validation, said Devashish Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Taggd, an AI-powered hiring platform headquartered in Gurgaon.

“AI is helping genuinely strong candidates who aren’t strong resume-writers present themselves better,” Sharma told Moneycontrol. He, however, cautioned that the same tools are also being used by candidates whose experience may not align with job requirements.

“Candidates without relevant experience are also using AI to make profiles look more credible or better-matched than they are,” he said.

AI-polished resumes are becoming harder to differentiate

Speaking about an unintended consequence of widespread AI adoption, Sharma told Moneycontrol that resumes are becoming less useful as standalone indicators of a candidate’s suitability. When applicants use AI to optimise wording, highlight achievements and mirror job descriptions, recruiters are finding it increasingly difficult to separate signal from noise.

“The net effect is that AI-polished resumes reduce differentiation, making resumes less reliable as standalone signals,” Sharma said.

The shift marks a new phase in recruitment. Earlier, candidates focused on adding keywords to pass ATS filters. Today, AI can rewrite an entire resume, create tailored cover letters and position candidates as strong matches for multiple roles.

As a result, recruiters are changing how they evaluate talent, the Taggd CEO said.

Interviews and work samples are gaining importance

To counter the rise of AI-enhanced applications, the AI-powered hiring platform is placing greater emphasis on structured interviews, evidence of work and recruiter-led verification.

“Taggd’s countermeasure is shifting weight to structured interviews, evidence of work, and FDR-led validation,” Sharma said.

FDR refers to Taggd’s “Forward Deployed Recruiters”, human recruiters who review candidate profiles, validate experience claims and assess depth of expertise beyond what appears on a resume.

According to Sharma, AI does not make final hiring decisions. Even if Taggd’s AI platform does not recommend a candidate, recruiters can still review the profile and move the applicant forward based on their judgement.

Betting on human-AI hiring model

Sharma’s comments come weeks after Taggd launched TARA, an agentic AI recruitment assistant designed to support enterprise hiring at scale.

The company, which describes itself as India’s largest AI-powered talent fulfilment partner, said TARA works alongside human recruiters to improve hiring speed, talent matching and recruitment efficiency.

According to the company, nearly 80 percent of enterprise organisations today use AI tools in at least one part of the recruitment process. But, only about 20 percent report seeing measurable impact from those investments.

Sharma said the company’s approach is not fully automated.

“Our model is ‘humantic,’ not fully automated. AI drives volume and speed, humans stay in charge of relationships, governance, and guardrails,” he said.

The company uses AI for functions such as candidate outreach and screening, while recruiters remain responsible for trust-building, answering questions and making judgement calls.

Human recruiters still have the final say

Elaborating on the company’s hiring process, Sharma said it includes multiple human checkpoints.

If a candidate does not respond to initial AI-led outreach, a recruiter steps in to explain the process, address concerns and build trust, he said. Human recruiters also review AI-generated recommendations later in the hiring funnel and conduct deeper assessments of shortlisted candidates.

The company also allows candidates to request a human review if they believe they were screened out incorrectly. Such requests can be raised through a WhatsApp support channel and are routed to recruiters for reassessment.

For Sharma, the future of hiring is unlikely to be an AI-only process. Instead, he sees recruitment evolving into an AI-versus-AI environment, where candidates use artificial intelligence to optimise applications and employers use AI to screen at scale, with human recruiters stepping in to verify skills, experience and fit before making hiring decisions.

“The net effect is that AI-polished resumes reduce differentiation,” Sharma said. “Making resumes less reliable as standalone signals.”

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That is not to say AI has vanished from the talent narrative. Traditional engineers are building automation into their projects, data scientists are scrambling to master new tools, all while firms are racing to build the right skills a modern AI-driven workplace would demand.

A recent foundit report said that the global capability centre (GCC) sector is now an AI talent engine, with nearly two in three new roles created in 2026 requiring AI skills, particularly in data science or intelligent automation.

But as GCCs take on crucial business-focused mandates, that talent focus is starting to look different on the ground. The capability a centre owns is no longer defined only by the technology stack it runs, but is majorly defined by the discipline it serves.

Moreover, roles well beyond the traditional tech remit has been the strong lever for the fast growth of GCCs, which majorly spans R&D and engineering, governance, finance, supply chain, and strategy functions across multiple sectors.

And India, for now, remains uniquely placed to fill them. It’s a market still sitting on a surplus of talent abundance, deep enough to staff practically every one of those disciplines in large numbers.“

I don’t think it’s about newer roles. It’s newer profiles that we’re looking at for similar jobs,” Gangapriya Chakraverti, India site head and managing director, Ford Business Solutions told ETGCCWorld.

Are AI skills really enough?

While AI and automation have emerged as central themes, organisations are also looking beyond purely technology-led skills as they take on more difficult and business-critical mandates.

While a centre supporting drug trials needs clinical data expertise as much as it needs AI engineers, a firm designing electric vehicle components needs battery and materials specialists. Same goes for a global insurer, who needs actuaries who understand regulation as well as the latest AI models.

Simply put, AI may be the underneath layer or the foundational engine behind all of this work, but it is not the core principle guiding the mandates.

At Ford Business Solutions, the company’s technology and business services hub supporting automobile major Ford’s global operations, this work spans both digital and functional areas. It currently houses over 12,000 employees focused on these areas.

“It’s not just technology professionals that we are saying need functional skills. That is certainly happening. But we are also seeing finance, accounting, materials planning people who have technology skills or digital skills and experience,” she added.

While the GCC is focused on software engineering, AI and product engineering, the larger focus is also on areas spanning finance, manufacturing engineering, logistics and supply chain management.

The GCC sector in India, which now employs around 2.36 million professionals, is drawing on the country’s talent beyond its traditional technology workforce.

According to Rajiv Gajria, vice president & managing director, Blackbaud India, global organisations across industries are expanding the scope of work led from India, with teams taking greater ownership of products and working more closely toward customer outcomes.

“India is particularly well positioned for this shift because organizations can draw not only on deep technology talent, but also on the business understanding and leadership capability required to take on increasingly complex global responsibilities,” Gajria said.

At present, teams support technology used across fundraising, education, financial management, customer experience, and other mission-driven areas.

“In these environments, knowing how to build technology is only part of the equation. What increasingly sets strong teams apart is their ability to understand context, collaborate across disciplines and global teams, and exercise the judgment needed to deliver meaningful outcomes,” Gajria added.

Firms are prioritising several capabilities spanning specialised domains such as healthcare, finance, engineering, supply chain, risk and advisory.

For Manish Goyal, managing director and head-GCC at Alvarez & Marsal, the larger question is what capabilities the country can own for the wider enterprise.

“Companies are no longer asking only, ‘What technology work can we move to India?’ They are asking, ‘What capabilities can India own for the enterprise?’” Goyal said.

He added how this is creating demand across R&D, data infrastructure, as well as risk, regulatory and controls capabilities.

“We are also seeing growth in market intelligence and analytics, finance, supply chain and procurement, and business strategy and transformation roles. The larger story is that the boundary of what companies believe can be owned from India is steadily expanding,” Goyal said.

This widening mandate is also changing the nature of work GCCs are bringing into India. Engineering and R&D, in particular, are emerging as major areas of focus, with centres increasingly taking on work ranging from product R&D and semiconductor design to EV battery and powertrain engineering, ADAS and sensor fusion.

“GCCs are shifting from execution hubs to owners of intellectual property,” said Devashish Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Taggd, a staffing firm that works closely with GCCs.

“Engineering and R&D is a major focus for GCCs right now, whether it is product R&D, semiconductor design, EV battery and powertrain engineering, ADAS or sensor fusion. This is where we are seeing that shift happen,” Sharma added.

For professional services firm Baker Tilly One India, this opportunity lies in another large talent pool that India has always offered. This majorly comprises accountants, auditors and advisory professionals.

The organisation was built as a capability and transformation hub spanning assurance, tax, consulting, risk advisory, managed services and enterprise services.

“We are growing as a firm, and we expect India to continue to grow with it. But rather than anchor that growth to a specific headcount number, we are focused on the capabilities we need for the future and how AI will reshape both the work we do and our talent mix,” explained Balaji Iyer, India managing principal at Baker Tilly One India.

The talent model reflects the same shift towards professionals who can bring together specialised knowledge, technology fluency and a deeper understanding of the business context.

“The focus is certainly towards getting talent which has deep domain expertise, is AI fluent, is keen to deliver client delight, which means the ability to be trusted advisors to our clients,” Iyer said.

Going ahead, nearly one in four client service hours is expected to be delivered from the India center over the next four to five years, Iyer added.

“AI is not a technology play alone, it is a business play, so that it becomes a way of working in our firm. It’s not something a team does within our organization, it is what everyone embraces, and it’s how we go to market, it’s how we deliver value to clients, it’s how we scale ourselves,” Iyer said.

For US-based insurance major Hartford, the India center primarily focuses on building the capabilities needed for a technology-led organisation, along with nurturing employees with the right skills to take on global responsibilities.

“As the nature of work evolves, the emphasis will increasingly be on people who can combine strong functional expertise with the ability to learn, adapt and make sound decisions in complex environments,” said Padmavati Rallapalli, head of HR, The Hartford India.

Today, the GCC is building capabilities across digital engineering, including customer-facing insurance applications and digital platforms, alongside areas such as cloud engineering, enterprise architecture, and fraud detection.

Domain expertise meets technology

As GCCs move up the value chain, the talent they require is changing.

Organisations are looking beyond conventional technology or functional expertise, looking for professionals who can bring deep domain knowledge while also making the best use of digital tools.

“Increasingly, the value lies in combining technology with deep domain expertise rather than treating them as separate capabilities.AI and automation will continue to reduce manual and repeatable work. As that happens, the opportunity shifts towards bringing together technology, domain expertise, business judgement, and complex problem-solving,” Goyal said.

This is playing out across industries, from finance and healthcare to industrials and supply chain.

“An engineer who understands technology is valuable. An engineer who also understands the economics of the business, the regulatory environment, and the customer problem is significantly more valuable. The same principle applies across finance, healthcare, industrials, supply chain and financial services,” Goyal explained.

The same shift can be seen in the life sciences sector, especially in cities such as Hyderabad, where GCCs are taking on specialised scientific, analytical and regulatory work.

Swiss-based pharmaceutical major Novartis, which set up one of the earliest GCCs in India nearly 25 years ago, has since grown its Hyderabad centre into its largest global hub.

“From its humble beginnings as a support hub, the Novartis Corporate Center Hyderabad uniquely houses biomedical research, drug development, manufacturing and supply operations, and other corporate functions,” explained Ganpat Anchaliya, site head, Novartis Corporate Center, India.

The center works closely across the company’s global drug development programmes, requiring capabilities that extend beyond just AI.

“India is deeply embedded in our global development of medicines model, so it’s less about ‘India-only’ programmes and more about global assets where India plays an important enabling role across chemistry, analytics, biostatistics, data science and clinical operations,” added Anchaliya.

The Hyderabad centre currently supports multiple Phase-II and Phase-III programmes across therapeutic areas such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, oncology, immunology and neuroscience.

“Nearly every molecule that reaches late-stage development in Novartis has some contribution from teams in India, whether that is through technical development work at Genome Valley, global clinical trial support, advanced analytics, or regulatory documentation,” Anchaliya noted.

This becomes one of the finest examples of how the GCC talent pool includes highly specialised expertise that is closely tied to the core business of the organisation.

Sharma added how healthcare-linked talent is growing fast without getting equivalent attention. India already has 150+ healthcare-linked GCCs working in biopharma, health-tech, and AI-driven clinical platforms, yet this rarely comes up in conversations about GCC hiring.

“Manufacturing-adjacent capability is another area with real headroom, embedded systems, hardware design, precision engineering. As global supply chains shift, GCCs are starting to co-locate capability development alongside manufacturing, but this remains early-stage in India,” he noted.

Addressing the skill gap

As GCCs build a wider range of capabilities, they are also becoming more cautious about where they find talent.

“GCCs are becoming more thoughtful about where they find talent and how they build access to it,” Goyal said.

Peer GCCs remain an important source, given that these professionals already understand the industry context and the workings of a global organisation. Technology and IT services companies offer another pool of leaders accustomed to managing large teams across geographies, while consulting firms are becoming increasingly relevant for strategy and transformation roles, he added.

Campuses also remain important, particularly engineering and business schools, alongside experienced Indian professionals returning after careers in the US and Europe.

At the same time, companies are expanding their search beyond the traditional talent hubs.

“There is also a greater focus on building talent rather than simply hiring it.The broader point is that India’s talent advantage is no longer just about scale. It is also about how thoughtfully GCCs access, develop and deploy that talent,” Goyal said.

GCCs are developing deeper partnerships with universities and helping shape curricula around the skills they expect to need. They are also working with consulting firms, technology services companies and outsourcing providers to access specialised capabilities that may take longer to build internally.

“Today’s workforce is also seeking opportunities to contribute strategically, solve meaningful problems, and create impact regardless of location. As AI becomes embedded into everyday workflows, the ability to learn continuously, adapt quickly, and make informed decisions will be essential for long-term success,” added Gajria.

According to Taggd’s Sharma, companies are mapping skill clusters to locations before opening roles, while expanding their search beyond the established hubs to emerging talent centres.

“GCCs are mapping skill clusters against location before opening a requisition. Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Mumbai, and Pune remain the primary hubs. But emerging clusters, Kochi, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Indore, are seeing 21 per cent year-on-year growth in GCC demand,” he noted.

India’s advantage is not just the scale of its technology talent. Over the years, the growth of GCCs has also created deep pools of people with experience in specific industries.

That was an important factor in Under Armour’s own decision to set up its center in Bangalore this year.

“We evaluated locations globally before choosing India and eventually Bangalore. One of the major reasons was the depth of retail talent available here. Bangalore has a significant concentration of retail GCCs, which has created a strong pool of professionals who understand both technology and the retail business,” explained Madhu Natesan, vice president and managing director, at Under Armour India.

He added the firm has consciously looked for that combination in its hiring.

“Our leadership team brings strong retail experience, and we have also focused on retail context while building engineering and AI teams. The conversation around India talent has traditionally been very technology-led. But years of GCC growth have also created people with deep knowledge of specific industries and business functions,” Natesan added.

From a sector perspective,he added how GCCs are building deeper capabilities across data and platform engineering, consumer technology, decision products, cloud and infrastructure, and enterprise applications.

Moreover, skills such as creativity, independent thinking, communication and the ability to navigate ambiguity are becoming important.

“These skills become more important as GCCs move from executing defined processes to shaping decisions and owning business outcomes.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply increasing the talent pool. It is developing a larger base of enterprise leaders and problem-solvers. That will play an important role in determining how far up the value chain GCCs in India can move,” Goyal said.

One of India’s potential advantages, according to Iyer, comes from the vantage point its teams have across the broader organisation.

“There’s a very intuitive intelligence that the team in India has. It’s to be able to bring standardisation, it’s able to bring the client context and surface it up as a connected intelligence,” he said.

Because the India team works across US offices, clients, service lines and functions, it has the ability to identify common patterns and bring together insights from different parts of the business.

“India has an abundance of strong technical talent. But as GCCs take on larger mandates, knowing how to build something is only one part of the requirement. People also need to understand the business problem and why it matters,” Natesan said.

AI and automation will undoubtedly continue to shape the GCC talent playbook.

As these centres take on work that is closer to the core of the business, the skills they need are changing too. And that will depend on how well that expertise can be combined with the latest tools and understanding of their business.

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More than half of global capability centres plan to expand their workforce in 2026-27, while 22 per cent expect stable headcount and 26 per cent anticipate cuts, according to the second edition of Taggd’s annual GCC report released in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Taggd is a digital recruitment and talent fulfilment company. The report is based on inputs from over 100 CHROs and talent acquisition leaders, along with closed-door roundtables across major GCC hubs.

It said that despite stronger hiring sentiment in FY27 than the previous year, quality mismatch has emerged as the top hiring challenge for GCCs, surpassing compensation pressure and talent availability, signalling a shift from hiring for volume to finding the right fit.

This signals a shift in India’s GCC hiring challenge, from a shortage of candidates to finding talent that meets the skill standards demanded by skill-first hiring, the report added.

According to the findings, 52 per cent of GCCs are planning to increase headcount in FY27, against 48 per cent a year ago.

While 22 per cent expect the hiring to hold at current levels, 26 per cent anticipate a reduction, a caveat that did not feature as prominently in last year’s outlook, it added.

The report further said that India’s GCCs are entering FY27 with early-career talent continuing to anchor hiring, with freshers at 16 per cent and professionals with 1-5 years of experience at 30 per cent, which overall accounts for 46 per cent of expected hiring.

It indicated that GCCs are sustaining early-career hiring, even as the mix within it shifts slightly toward those with some prior exposure.

“GCCs are driving India’s next phase of global leadership, but the rules of engagement are shifting. Our research with CII confirms that FY27 growth will be defined by precision rather than sheer volume. As AI integrates across every function, the GCCs that lead tomorrow will be those that transition from broad-based intake to targeted, skill-first capability building,” Taggd co-founder and CEO Devashish Sharma said.

The report also found that GCCs rely heavily on external hiring, with 78 per cent of talent sourced externally versus 22 per cent developed in-house, leaving them vulnerable to rising wages and intense competition for specialised skills.

Among externally sourced GCC talent, IT services continued to be the single largest contributor at 41 per cent, followed by talent moving between GCCs at 32 per cent, and hires from startups and product companies at 27 per cent, it added.

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As artificial intelligence reshapes the way businesses operate, questions around which jobs will grow, which will shrink, and how the workforce should prepare for this shift are becoming urgent. We spoke to four experts across recruitment, finance education, AV technology, and higher education to get their perspective.

Which jobs are likely to grow, and which are at risk?

Devashish Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Taggd, says AI will boost demand for roles that “build, govern and apply technology to business problems,” while work built around repeatable logic and routine execution will be “fundamentally redefined” rather than eliminated outright.

CFA Sanjay Saraf, Founder of Sanjay Saraf Educational Institute (SSEI), Kolkata, points to growth in AI, data analytics, cybersecurity, risk management, investment research and fraud detection, along with strong demand for professionals who combine domain knowledge with technology.

Roles at greater risk, he says, include routine data entry, standard reporting, reconciliation, and templated research. His sharper warning: the real risk isn’t AI replacing people — it’s professionals who use AI well replacing those who don’t.

Vijay Sharma, Managing Director of Optoma Technology (India), expects a considerable boost in demand for AI integration, automation, data science, cybersecurity, software development, and intelligent AV systems, while manual data entry, administrative functions and customer service will be automated to a large extent.

Dr. Lovi Raj Gupta, Pro Vice-Chancellor of LPU, frames it historically: every technological shift, from computers entering banks and railways, changed the nature of work rather than eliminating it altogether. The roles most at risk, he says, are those “built around repetitive and predictable work.”

Sidharth Thakur, Director, Grassik Search, says, “Professionals today need AI literacy, sound judgment to question AI’s often-flawed outputs, and strong human skills like relationship-building that AI can’t replicate.”

What skills should students and professionals build?

Sharma of Taggd lists AI and Generative AI, machine learning, data science, Python and SQL, cloud engineering, cybersecurity, and full-stack development as key technical skills but adds that critical thinking, judgement, adaptability, empathy and stakeholder management will increasingly determine effectiveness, since “AI can accelerate the process,” but “human judgement, context, and relationships will determine the outcome.”

Saraf identifies three capabilities for finance professionals: strong fundamentals in accounting and valuation, technology and data literacy including Excel, SQL, Python and AI tools, and independent judgement the ability to question assumptions and separate information from insight.

Vijay Sharma emphasises continuous learning over a fixed skill set digital literacy, AI competency, critical thinking and creativity, alongside communication and teamwork.

Dr. Gupta says the most valuable skill isn’t knowing how to use AI tools, but knowing how to apply them to real-world problems, alongside analytical ability, ethical judgment and business understanding.

He notes recruiters are increasingly assessing capability over credentials, favouring live projects, internships and portfolios over theoretical knowledge alone.

Thankur of Grassik Search says “CXOs must get hands-on with AI themselves, since it now touches strategy, capital allocation and customer experience all at once.”

He suggests three habits that could make a real difference: “Block real weekly time for hands-on learning, set up reverse mentorship with the youngest people in your organisation, and study how AI is being deployed outside your own sector; cross-industry pattern recognition matters more than depth in any single tool.”

How should governments, institutions and companies prepare the workforce?

“Sharma of Taggd points to companies mapping skill taxonomies to identify workforce gaps, and highlights TARA Insights, the talent intelligence layer within Taggd’s agentic AI recruitment engine, TARA, as helping bring visibility into talent supply, skill availability and emerging capability needs.”

Saraf calls for a three-way effort: governments investing in affordable reskilling and vocational training, institutions moving beyond exam-focused learning toward AI literacy and live projects, and companies redesigning entry-level roles to give young professionals earlier exposure to analysis and decision-making.

Vijay Sharma stresses collaboration on lifelong learning and modular credentialing, with governments funding subsidised training and companies embedding upskilling into regular workflows.

For the AV sector specifically, he flags network engineering, IoT cybersecurity and AI system integration as priority skills.

Dr. Gupta says curricula must stay dynamic through continuous industry engagement a practice he says LPU follows in line with the National Education Policy but adds that curriculum alone isn’t enough.

Students need internships, live industry projects and multidisciplinary exposure before graduation, with institutions treating employability “as a continuous process rather than a placement outcome.”

Thakur of Graphic Search says governments, institutions and companies must fast-track reskilling toward high-growth areas like AI/ML and cybersecurity, while building transition pathways for at-risk roles like entry-level coders, testers and BPO staff.

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New Delhi [India], August 6 (ANI): Despite widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in recruitment, only one in ten enterprise organisations have seen measurable improvements in hiring outcomes, highlighting a significant gap between technology investments and actual recruitment results, according to a study by AI-powered digital recruitment company Taggd.

The study found that nearly 80 per cent of organisations are using AI tools in at least one function, either directly or indirectly, across different stages of the recruitment process. However, only 10 per cent reported measurable improvements in hiring outcomes.

According to the study, the findings highlight a persistent disconnect between investments in human resource technology and the ability of organisations to achieve better hiring results, which remains a key challenge for enterprises.

The study was released during the launch of Taggd’s new AI-native recruitment delivery model powered by its agentic AI recruitment assistant, TARA.

Taggd said the new operating model combines its AI recruitment assistant with expert recruiters, known as Forward-Deployed Recruiters, to improve recruitment efficiency, reduce hiring timelines and deliver more predictable hiring outcomes.

Kiran Kumar, President, Platform, Taggd, said AI alone is not sufficient to solve complex hiring challenges.

“Data, agents, and domain put together gives an entirely different dimension in solving complex recruitment challenges, elevating our Forward-Deployed Recruiters to direct execution at a scale that simply wasn’t possible before,” Kumar said.

According to Taggd, the model is designed to combine AI with human expertise instead of relying solely on automation.

The company believes this approach can help enterprises bridge the gap between AI adoption and measurable hiring performance.

Devashish Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Taggd, said organisations using the platform have already witnessed improvements across several recruitment metrics.

He said the model has shown improvements in hiring speed, talent fit, real-time market intelligence and stakeholder satisfaction, while continuing to meet hiring commitments.

Sharma added that “Agentic AI architecture will also allow the company to expand its recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services to mid-sized, high-growth businesses, enabling them to access enterprise-grade hiring capabilities.”

The study suggests that while AI adoption in recruitment has become widespread, enterprises may need to combine technology with domain expertise and human intervention to translate AI investments into measurable hiring outcomes.

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Yet, despite access to one of the world’s deepest talent pools, hiring has become less predictable. Roles are evolving faster than job descriptions can keep pace with. Skills are emerging and being superseded in increasingly compressed cycles. Candidates are making career decisions differently. Across the GCC ecosystem, one challenge is surfacing with increasing frequency: whether the right talent can be discovered, engaged meaningfully, and retained long enough to create business value.

AI is now becoming the catalyst of hiring models in GCCs. AI reshapes job architectures and automates routine work; traditional hiring models are beginning to lose relevance. The traditional “zero-to-two-years” hiring category is being reimagined around capability, and not tenure. This evolution is creating entirely new talent requirements.

Entry-level roles are being restructured, with many organisations complementing conventional campus hiring through apprenticeships, project-based learning, certifications, and skill-first pathways that emphasise demonstrable capability over credentials. In this new environment, success depends not merely on what professionals know but on how quickly they can learn, adapt, and create value.

Consider a GCC hiring 500 AI engineers across multiple locations. Traditional recruitment models often require teams to navigate thousands of candidate interactions while simultaneously tracking market conditions, stakeholder expectations, and evolving skill requirements. A modern agentic hiring architecture is designed to operate differently.

Through specialised AI agents, market intelligence, and real-time hiring analytics, organisations can support every stage of the talent journey. Talent intelligence agents continuously monitor skill availability, compensation movements, and emerging talent clusters. Sourcing and screening agents identify high-potential candidates based on capability fit rather than keyword matches. Interview agents conduct structured assessments and generate standardised insights, while engagement agents monitor candidate sentiment, anticipate offer-drop risks, and recommend interventions before they become hiring challenges.

This capability becomes particularly valuable in India’s GCC landscape.

According to the Cracking the Growth Code for GCCs in India 2025 report, more than 600,000 jobs were added by GCCs between 2019 and 2024, while nearly half of the surveyed organisations plan to increase hiring in FY26.

At the same time, 40% of GCCs are diversifying hiring strategies into Tier II and Tier III cities, creating more distributed and complex talent ecosystems. Managing this scale and diversity requires far greater visibility than traditional recruitment processes can offer.

With the help of Agentic AI, what emerges is not a faster recruitment process, but a more intelligent one. The promise of agentic AI is not automation for its own sake. It is the ability to move from activity to outcomes, from hindsight to foresight, and from recruitment as a process to talent acquisition as a strategic capability.

The objective is to improve hiring outcomes: stronger quality of hire, improved offer-to-join ratios, lower attrition, faster fulfilment, and greater workforce predictability. Yet the most profound impact of agentic AI may not be technological at all. It may be human.

As AI agents take over operational tasks across sourcing, screening, interview coordination, market intelligence, and candidate engagement, recruiters are freed to focus on higher-value strategic decision-making. Their role shifts from coordinating processes to influencing outcomes. They spend less time tracking pipelines and more time understanding business needs, calibrating talent priorities, engaging critical candidates, and advising hiring managers.

The shift is equally significant for hiring managers. The grunt work is eliminated, and with it, the bandwidth which was previously consumed by coordination and administrative screening is now redirected toward the decisions that genuinely require human judgment: evaluating cultural alignment, assessing leadership potential, and shaping the quality of the hire beyond what a scorecard can capture.

The result is a hiring model where technology amplifies human expertise, enabling recruiters to operate not as process managers but as strategic talent advisors. The future is defined by recruiters equipped with agentic intelligence delivering outcomes that were previously impossible to achieve at scale. That shift from reactive to predictable is what agentic AI makes possible. And for a GCC ecosystem building the future of global business, it is an advantage that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

But none of this works without intentional design. Agentic AI without guardrails, without hiring manager buy-in, and without a feedback loop connecting outcomes back to process will simply automate existing inefficiencies at greater speed.

The real opportunity for GCCs is about reaching a point where the outcome of a hiring quarter is not a surprise, where pipeline health is visible in real time, not pieced together at the end of a cycle. Where a TA leader walks into a business review and speaks in forecasts, not retrospectives. The shift, from reactive to predictable, is what agentic AI makes possible. And it is long overdue.

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With the deeper proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and growing maturity over certain functions, these centers are now building products from the ground up, leading projects that are innovative, and taking a step ahead of ‘following instructions’ from the headquarters.

While global giants are experimenting with their talent strategy, they are also making a major tweak in their pay philosophy, all while they try to scout for the perfect talent mix.

Some of the most attractive sets of hires in the industry are the mid-senior talent, which has risen sharply from 63 per cent in 2023 to 77 percent in 2025, shows a recent analysis by CIEL Works, a recruitment and staffing  company.

For similar experience levels, GCC wage offers are generally greater than those of typical IT services companies, especially for such positions.

“The nature of work in the GCCs drives a 10-25 per cent compensation premium, which is not just due to a lack of skill. Positions with greater effect, such as product engineering, global platforms, and enterprise AI, are being filled by GCC companies,” Daniele Merlerati, Chief Regional Officer–APAC, Baltics & Benelux, GI Group Holding told ETGCCWorld.

Large IT services companies, at the same time, have purposefully slowed salary increases in recent cycles due to their lengthier transaction cycles and tighter margins, Merlerati added.

Premium for AI, cybersecurity skills

Recruiters and industry leaders say this is most visible in high-skill digital roles, where GCCs are paying a premium for specialised expertise as mandates expand.

GCCs are also prioritising skill density, by investing in fewer, mid-level specialised professionals rather than following the old pyramid model.

Nizar Ali Hamid, Chief Growth Officer, Taggd, sees a narrower but consistent premium in such compensation structures.

“Compensation patterns between GCCs and IT services are increasingly diverging. From what we see in the market, GCC compensation typically sits at 8-15 per cent above IT services for comparable experience. This is largely driven by the nature of work, global mandates, product ownership, and strategic accountability,” says Nizar Ali Hamid, Chief Growth Officer, Taggd.

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