Talent Radar · May 2026 — GCC hiring slows in BFSI, AI roles up 14%.

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Know what the role costs before you open it.

Most GCC hiring plans are built on a comp band someone set last year and a guess about who's available. We give you the real number and the real shortlist of who could move, drawn from the same placement record behind 4,000 senior hires into India's GCCs. So you know whether to move now, and at what price.

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Live benchmarks · By city
Comp studies run for GCC clients
35
Benchmark turnaround
Daysnot weeks
The Problem

You're pricing a role against a market you can't actually see.

The comp band on the requisition came from a survey that's twelve to eighteen months old, aggregated nationally, and blind to your sector. By the time you're in the market, it's already wrong. The good people read the number in the first thirty seconds and decide whether you're serious.

Availability is the harder blind spot. A role can look fillable on paper and have maybe nine people in the country who actually qualify, six of them settled, two unreachable. You only learn that after a quarter of an open req and a stalled search.

So the question that should come before the hire goes unanswered: is now the right time to move, and what does this person genuinely cost in Bengaluru, in your sector, this quarter. Getting it wrong costs you the candidate, the timeline, or the budget. Usually all three.

When we benchmark a role a client already has open, the band is often off by enough to lose the shortlist before the search begins.
From the Compensation Index, India GCCs.
Our Approach

Three reads. Before you commit.

Knowing the market is a calibration problem before it's a hiring one. We tell you the price, the supply, and the timing, then you decide whether to open the role at all.

01 · Price
What the role actually pays, this quarter
A comp read for the specific role, sector, and city, built from what comparable mandates closed at, not a national survey. Fixed, variable, and the parts of the package that move senior people. So your band wins the person you want instead of the one who'll settle.
02 · Supply
How many people could genuinely do this
A mapped count of who's qualified in your city and sector, with a read on how many are realistically movable. When the answer is nine people and two are reachable, you want to know that before you brief a search, not ten weeks in.
03 · Timing
The signal that says move now, or wait
Hiring activity, comp drift, and attrition in your sector right now, read against your plan. Sometimes the call is to move this quarter before a competitor does. Sometimes it's to hold ninety days while a band corrects. We tell you which, and why.
A Typical Engagement

How a market read comes together in three weeks.

Four phases. Most single-role reads land inside two to three weeks, a full plan across a function or a build runs a little longer and follows the same rhythm.

Phase 01
Days 1–3
Scope
The roles, the cities, the sector cut, and the decision you're trying to make. We agree what a useful answer looks like before we pull a single number.
Phase 02
Days 3–10
Benchmark
We build the comp read from our placement record and live market checks, then map the qualified universe. You get the price and the supply for each role, with the working shown.
Phase 03
Days 10–16
Read
A working session, not a slide drop. We walk you through where your band is off, where supply is thin, and what the timing signal says. Then we take your questions and pressure-test the plan.
Phase 04
Days 16–21
Decide
You leave with a clear call on each role: open now at this band, hold, or restructure. And if the search makes sense, we can pick it up the same week with the intelligence already in hand.
What This Changes

The numbers that move.

Aggregates across market reads we ran in 2024 to 2025. Not promises, what tends to happen when the price and the supply are known before the role opens.

Days
Not weeks, to turn around a single-role comp and availability read
Typical turnaround
35
Compensation-benchmarking studies run for GCC clients
Benchmarking engagements to date
82%
Offer-acceptance rate when the band is calibrated before the search begins
Offer-to-acceptance
Client Outcome

When the band was the problem all along.

See all case studies
Case Study · BFSI GCC · Hyderabad
Engagement
Comp + availability read · 6 roles · confidential

"We'd had a Head of Risk Analytics role open for four months and blamed the candidates. Recruise benchmarked it in a week and showed us we were 22% under the Hyderabad market for that exact profile. We fixed the band and closed it in five weeks."

TA
Head of Talent Acquisition
Fortune 500 BFSI GCC · Hyderabad
22%
Under market on the original band
5
Weeks to offer after recalibration
4
Months open on the wrong number
Read the full case study
We Also Help You · Access the Hidden Market

The people you want aren't applying.

The senior leaders who'd reset your function are employed, well-paid, and delete recruiter messages unread. Reaching them is a mapping problem, then a credibility one: we find everyone who could do the job, work out who's genuinely movable, and approach in a way that protects both sides.

01 · Map
Everyone who could do it, settled or not
A mapped universe of every person who could do the job in your city and sector, not the handful who happen to be active. The map covers the people no search string will surface, because they've never marked themselves available.
02 · Read
Who's actually movable, and what moves them
For each name, a read on whether they're genuinely open and what would move them: the mandate, the scope, the timing, rarely the headline number. The intelligence is the product, the names are the output.
03 · Approach
A first contact a settled leader will answer
We approach off-market, on background, in a way that protects the candidate's position and yours. The first message is the whole game at this level, and we make it the kind a busy executive actually replies to.
We Also Help You · Build Teams that Last

Hire for who's still in seat at 24 months.

A senior hire who leaves at month 18 costs you twice and sets the function back a year. Most of retention is decided before the offer, in how you read fit. We screen for the reasons people stay, then track whether they did and feed it back into the next hire.

01 · Motive
Why they're moving, and whether it lasts
We assess the real reason a candidate is open, not the one on the cover note. A move driven by scope or growth tends to hold. A move driven by a number or a bad quarter often doesn't. Knowing which one you're hiring is half of retention.
02 · Fit
Manager and mandate fit, tested honestly
The two things that break senior hires early are a manager relationship that doesn't work and a scope that turned out smaller than the pitch. We pressure-test both before the offer, including telling you when the role as written won't hold the person you want.
03 · Track
We follow them, and learn from it
We track our placements to 12 and 24 months and feed every early exit back into how we assess the next one. The retention read we bring you is built from people we actually placed and watched, not a model. The intelligence compounds.
Other Services

If this is part of a bigger problem.

A market read is most useful as the first move in a bigger plan. Most reads either fed or followed one of these.

Intelligence & Advisory
Compensation Benchmarking
The deep version of the price read: full comp benchmarking by role, sector, and city, the band you can defend to finance.
Explore Benchmarking
We Help You
Access the Hidden Market
Once you know the role is fillable, reach the senior people who aren't applying, off-market mapping and a discreet approach.
Explore Hidden Market
Placement
Executive Search
When the read says the right leader is settled and rare, a retained, off-market search with the intelligence behind every name.
Explore Executive Search
Managed Services
GCC Set-Up & Transformation
If the read is for a centre you're standing up, the price and supply picture is one of the first things to get right.
Explore GCC Set-Up
Read the Thinking

Intelligence on the market.

The reports, newsletters, and conversations behind how we read price and supply. All free to read.

Report
Where senior comp is drifting across India's GCCs
The monthly read on hiring signals, comp movement, and where the bands are bending by sector and city.
Read the Talent Radar
The Signal
The req that was open for the wrong reason
A weekly read on the senior talent market: what's moving prices, what's tightening supply, across India's GCCs.
Subscribe to The Signal
The Builder's Brief
"We held the role for a quarter, and it was the right call"
A GCC head on the hire they didn't make, and how reading the market early saved the budget and the timeline.
Listen to the episode
Frequently Asked

Questions we get asked.

If you don't see what you're looking for, the form below is the fastest route. Most enquiries get a response within one working day.

How is your comp read different from a salary survey?
A salary survey aggregates self-reported numbers nationally and ages fast. Our read is built from what comparable mandates actually closed at in your city and sector, cross-checked against the live market this quarter. It's the number a real candidate is being paid now, not a median from last year.
Can you tell me if a role is even fillable before I open it?
Yes, that's the availability read. We map how many people in your city and sector genuinely qualify and how many are realistically movable. When the count is single digits, we say so, so you can decide whether to widen the brief, raise the band, or wait, before you commit a quarter to a search.
Do I have to run a search with you to get a market read?
No. The read is a standalone engagement and plenty of clients use it to brief their own team or another firm. If the read points to a search and you want us to run it, we can pick it up the same week with the intelligence already done. The two fit together, but neither requires the other.
How current is the data behind the read?
It draws on our live placement record and market checks run during the engagement, so the comp and supply picture is current to the quarter. Where a sector is moving fast, we flag the direction of travel as well as the number, so you're not acting on a figure that's about to shift.
What sectors and cities can you read?
Across the GCC hubs, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, the NCR, and the sectors we place into: technology and engineering, pharma and life sciences, BFSI, and ER&D. If your role sits in a thinner segment, we'll tell you how confident the read is before you rely on it.
How quickly will I have an answer?
A single-role comp and availability read typically lands in five working days from a clear brief. A plan across a whole function or a new centre takes two to three weeks. We'll confirm the timeline at scoping, before any work starts.
Start a Conversation

Tell us the role you're about to price.

Give us the role, the city, and the band you're working with. We'll come back with a read on whether it's right, even if we don't end up running anything.

Tell us what you need to know.
We'll only use this to come back to you. Privacy · DPDP
Thanks, we'll come back within one working day with a read on the role, regardless of fit.