Head of Assisted Hiring - International & India

The mandate:

You will build and scale our Assisted Hiring business across international and India markets.

The ambition is not to build a traditional recruitment agency. We want to operate as an extension of the customer's recruitment team, helping them understand mandates, source and screen relevant talent and build strong interview-ready pipelines without having to add equivalent recruitment capacity internally.

You do not need to be a technologist but technology and AI are central to how we want to build this. You do need to understand recruitment deeply enough to know where human judgement creates value, where traditional processes can change and how to work with Product and Technology teams to build a better model. The opportunity is to rethink traditional recruitment workflows and create a model where recruiter productivity, delivery quality and revenue can scale materially faster than headcount.

The immediate starting point is NaukriGulf. An Assisted Hiring capability exists today, but the opportunity is to substantially reimagine and scale it across markets such as UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This includes multicultural, niche and cross-border hiring where the right talent may sit across different geographies.

In parallel, you will build Assisted Hiring for iimjobs and hirist from the ground up. For iimjobs, the focus will be premium management talent across mid-senior and leadership roles. For hirist, the focus will be niche and new-age technology hiring across product companies, startups and GCCs.

This is a business-building role. You will own the proposition, customer relationships, delivery model, team and economics required to turn Assisted Hiring into a meaningful and scalable revenue business.

What you will own:

Build the International and India businesses:

- Set the strategy for Assisted Hiring across NaukriGulf, initially focused on our core geographies UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

- Build capability across a broad spectrum of white-collar hiring, including multicultural, niche and cross-border requirements.

- Develop sourcing capabilities that identify the right talent based on the mandate rather than being constrained by where candidates currently reside.

- Use Assisted Hiring to enter customer segments and hiring pools where NaukriGulf has lower penetration today, while also bringing relevant jobs and differentiated candidate supply onto the wider platform.

- Support Gulf customers hiring from India where relevant, while treating India as one of several potential talent markets.

- Build the iimjobs Assisted Hiring proposition around premium mid-senior and leadership hiring.

- Build specialist hiring capability for hirist across niche and new-age technology roles.

- Over time, identify opportunities to extend the international capability beyond the core Gulf markets where customer demand and economics support it.

Build a strong recruitment delivery engine:

- Own mandate qualification, sourcing strategy, screening, shortlist quality and interview pipeline creation.

- Build clear standards for recruiter productivity, turnaround time and quality across different types of mandates.

- Create the right team mix across scaled mid-level hiring, specialist and niche hiring and selective senior mandates.

- Build strong operating mechanisms around mandate reviews, customer calibration, recruiter productivity and delivery quality.

- Develop repeatable propositions and playbooks rather than operating as a generic recruitment agency.

- Build reusable sourcing intelligence so that every new mandate benefits from work already done across the practice.

Reimagine recruitment delivery using technology and AI:

- Rethink the recruitment workflow from mandate intake through sourcing, screening, candidate engagement and interview pipeline creation.

- Work closely with Product and Technology teams to identify where AI, data and automation can fundamentally improve how the work gets done.

- Separate activities that genuinely require recruiter judgement from repetitive work that can be automated, assisted or redesigned.

- Use technology to materially improve recruiter productivity, turnaround time, quality and delivery economics.

- Build a model where mandate volume and revenue can grow materially faster than recruitment headcount.

Own customer relationships, commercial growth and the team:

- Engage directly with CHROs, TA leaders and business stakeholders to understand hiring problems and shape the right solution.

- Work closely with NaukriGulf, iimjobs and hirist sales teams to identify and convert Assisted Hiring opportunities.

- Develop pricing and commercial models that create attractive customer value while maintaining healthy delivery economics to build a quality repeat business with strong delivery outcomes.

- Take charge of the existing international Assisted Hiring capability and assess what needs to change across people, processes and operating standards.

- Build the India practice from scratch and add new capabilities internationally as the business scales.

- Hire and develop strong recruiters and delivery leaders across different hiring segments with focus on scaling through teams, systems and playbooks rather than individual dependency.

How you will know you are winning:

- Assisted Hiring revenue growth across international and India markets.

- Strong repeat mandate rates and customer retention.

- Increasing penetration in priority customers and markets.

- Healthy gross margin and improving delivery economics.

- Strong time to shortlist and interview pipeline creation.

- Improving recruiter productivity and mandates handled per recruiter.

- Growth in differentiated jobs and candidate supply contributed to the wider platforms.

- Ability to scale mandate volume without proportionate growth in delivery headcount.

- Successful build-out of India and international teams and leadership capability.

Who we are looking for:

- 10 to 15 years of experience across recruitment, staffing, RPO, managed hiring, talent solutions or related businesses.

- Strong preference for someone who has built or scaled a recruitment practice and owned both customer relationships and delivery outcomes.

- Deep understanding of sourcing, screening, mandate calibration and hiring funnels.

- Experience across a broad spectrum of white-collar hiring. Experience limited predominantly to executive search may not be sufficient.

- Comfortable engaging CHROs, TA leaders and senior business stakeholders while remaining close to delivery.

- Strong commercial orientation with experience owning revenue, account growth and delivery economics.

- Experience managing and developing sizeable recruitment or delivery teams, ideally across multiple locations or markets.

- International, Gulf or cross-border hiring exposure is desirable but not mandatory.

- Strong curiosity around technology and AI, with the ability to work intelligently with Product and Technology teams.

- Entrepreneurial mindset, high ownership and comfort building a business where the proposition, team and operating model are still evolving.

Bottom line:

This is an opportunity to build a different kind of hiring services business. The starting point is NaukriGulf, alongside new Assisted Hiring businesses for iimjobs and hirist. We are looking for someone who can combine recruitment depth, customer credibility and technology to build a model that delivers strong hiring outcomes while scaling significantly beyond traditional recruitment economics.