GCC Talent - Ep.18 - GCC Leadership Hiring: What the Numbers Say?

If you are an active job seeker in the GCC space, the next few minutes is for you. Hi, I am Kamal Karan, co-founder of Xfino and I welcome you to our GCC talent podcast. Today, let's reflect on the latest leadership hiring trends amongst the GCCs. We couldn't go deep into the 1700 GCCs and give you an overall picture but we did the next best thing. We took two cohorts within the 1700 GCCs and we think that should be a fair representation of leadership hiring. First we took a stab at the top 125 GCCs. Let's call them the bellwethers for convenience sake. Why call them bellwethers? Well, see if you like the way we went about naming them bellwethers. We ranked the GCCs in terms of the number of full-time employees each one has in India and picked the top 125. We also saw that the top 125 global capability centers employed close to 1.4 million in India. Yes, about 13.6 lakh employees directly and out of 2 million that GCCs totally employ in India that's almost two-third, isn't it? So we thought it's a significant sample size to look at the leadership cohort. Second we took the last 140 green field GCCs which came to India. Green field GCCs logically will hire leadership team first, don't they? So we thought if we look at the leadership hiring in these two cohorts that is the top 125 GCCs or bellwethers as we will refer them today and the 140 green field GCCs according to us these two cohorts leadership studies should give us a fair idea of the leadership hiring action in the GCC centers in India and that too in the last 12 months. So what do the numbers tell us in the last 12 months? In the first cohort of GCC bellwethers there are about 11,000 people with leadership titles like director, some hedge or C title attached and guess what they added 500 such leaders in the last 12 months, it could look a tad less at least to me but that's what it is. Which are the cities which are adding such leaders? If you already guessed it yes amongst the bellwethers it's Bengaluru leading with 160 leaders added, Mumbai and Delhi added about 60 such leaders each and if you are a Hyderabad fan hang on they are there too with about 50 such leaders added. Now let's go to the second cohort, the latest 140 green field GCCs. How many such leaders did they add? Should be higher right? This cohort of 140 green field GCCs have about 2000 such leadership roles and they have added 650 leaders in the last 12 months, yes 650 new leadership hires. We all know Hyderabad had the maximum number of GCCs in the last two years as far as new setups are concerned so logically they should have hired the highest number of leaders right? No this time it's Pune's turn. Among the green field GCCs Pune had the highest leadership hires 270 of them, yes 270 leaders they hired. Mumbai was next with 90, Bengaluru is third with 60 leaders hired and Hyderabad saw 40 such leaders hired, yes 40 such leaders. So in total between both the cohorts that means the established bellwether GCCs of 125 and the green field GCCs of 140 we saw 500+ 650 leaders added which is about 1300 leaders hired or replaced. So let's ask some high level questions based on the data points we just reflected on. 1. Did the 650 leaders hired by the green field GCCs cost the attrition and replacement hiring at the established or bellwether GCCs? 2. Why are GCCs still replacing leadership roles while IT services companies are cautious about hiring senior leaders and many of these new GCCs have hired leaders from IT services companies. Bex a question or two you think? 3. Now what made Pune green field GCCs hire more leaders than Bengaluru and Hyderabad green field GCCs did? Considering Hyderabad and Bengaluru got more green fields in the last two years, did Hyderabad and Bengaluru get more mid market green field GCCs or their green field GCCs hired lesser number of leaders? The last question I have for today is Pune green field GCCs were they aggressive in hiring or did Pune get more larger branch in the green field GCCs which got them to hire more leaders? The broader answer is 1300 that is 1300+ leaders got hired in the last 12 months which means plenty of action as far as leadership hiring is concerned in the sample size we took. Remember we only covered 125 bellwethers and 140 green fields which is about 260+ GCCs. We left out about close to 1500 GCCs. So what is your guess on the leadership hiring action in the 1500 we did not study? So if you are a GCC leader looking for another job or you are in recruitment business looking for leadership hiring business think about what you could have missed in the last 12 months. With that I thank you for tuning into XFINOS GCC talent podcast once again I am Kamal Karan signing off till we connect again bye bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]