Hiring Strategies: GCCs look beyond immediate roles to build future-ready talent

Global capability centers (GCCs) don’t hire the way most companies do. When a GCC brings on an engineer or data scientist, the decision rarely starts with a project deadline or client contract. Instead, it starts with a question that startups and services firms seldom ask upfront: What capability does the enterprise need to permanently own five years from now?

That shift in thinking, from filling roles to building capabilities, has made hiring in a GCC unique. Unlike startups that scale fast or service firms staffing projects, these centers hire for progressive functions meant to last years. By moving away from creating roles to meet quarterly demand, several homegrown centers are now seeking to hire professionals that support core functions that compound over time.

Scouting techno-functional talent

Unlike IT services firms, where hiring is typically tied to live client contracts, or startups that recruit for survival, GCCs hire with a multi-year horizon in mind. Interestingly, their mandate evolves with the maturity of the center itself.

The hardest roles to hire

As GCCs take on greater ownership of global platforms and systems, industry leaders revealed how some of the most acute hiring challenges sit at the senior end of the talent spectrum.
Recruitment platforms see this as an exposure gap rather than a pure skills gap.

According to Neelabh Shukla, CBO, Careernet, a talent solutions provider, roles such as DevSecOps, ML/AI observability engineers, and platform engineers are among the toughest positions to hire across GCCs today. Notably, several staffing firms pointed out how mid- to senior-level, typically with 4-plus years of experience, is short in supply.

“The hardest roles to hire are those that sit at the intersection of multiple skill sets. Profiles combining cloud with cybersecurity, data with AI, or deep systems knowledge with modern digital stacks are especially scarce,” Shukla pointed out.

This is largely because demand for such talent is high across IT services firms, and global tech players simultaneously. “AI roles are particularly challenging to fill, as GCCs are looking beyond surface-level exposure,” he added.

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