• It’s expensive

• It hasn’t innovated enough

• The experience feels dated

And yet—

70% market share. Price hikes every year. No real churn.

So what’s really going on?

1. Naukri didn’t win on product. It won on predictability.

If you needed to hire at scale, there was no real decision to make.

You needed:

• A large candidate pool

• Immediate access

• Predictable volume

Naukri became the default because it solved one thing extremely well:

It has been the talent hose. The fattest one.

You could push thousands of candidates into your funnel and reliably get hires out the other end.

Not efficient. Not elegant. But it worked.

2. Recruiters are used to Naukri

Opening Naukri every morning is muscle memory for recruiters. They were trained on it. They know how to navigate it. They know its strengths and weaknesses and.. the hacks.

And here’s the real truth in recruiting:

Recruiters have urgent targets. 10 profiles by today. 3 hires by end of the week.

They will prefer a known devil than a shiny new thing which looks nice but may end up just wasting their time.

This is the reason why even the best products didn’t get the chance to fight.

3. Competitors chose a wrong strategy to compete with Naukri

Shine. Monster. Indeed.

They all tried to beat Naukri at its own game

• More candidates

• More listings

• More reach

This was a losing battle.

To make matters worse, they also copied Naukri’s pricing models. Resumes. Job slots. While they could have chosen a better pricing model that favored them.

They didn’t. And became irrelevant.

So, how does Cutshort fit into this?

The market today is very different.

Companies are not looking for volume. They are looking for relevance and speed.

That’s why instead of giving recruiters access to more candidates, the goal is to:

• Understand the role deeply

• Evaluate candidates before they enter the funnel

• Give you a priority list of candidates to close - not thousands to review

In other words:

• Naukri optimizes for volume

• Cutshort optimizes for relevance + speed

If that shift continues, the winning platforms won’t be the ones with the largest databases.

They’ll be the ones that can:

Reduce time-to-hire without increasing recruiter effort.

That’s the bet.
:::

Hold on. Not so fast.

While it’s tempting to see Legal as the “Department of No,” their hesitation usually stems from a valid concern:

To gain $1 efficiency, we can’t lose $10 + reputation.

To get legal teams to say yes, you need to understand the core issues they make them nervous.

3 risks that make legal teams uncomfortable about AI in recruiting

1️⃣ AI that works like a black-box

If AI tools

• scrape external data

• analyze social profiles

• infer personality or behavioral traits

• build hidden candidate scores

Legal teams see a huge unknown risk.

Why? Because if a candidate challenges a hiring decision, the company must be able to explain what signals influenced that decision.

Recent lawsuits involving AI hiring platforms — including cases against companies like Eightfold and Workday — have raised exactly this question: Are AI systems creating undisclosed profiles or scores about candidates that employers themselves cannot fully explain?

For legal teams, this becomes a major exposure.

How to avoid this risk

AI should analyze only what candidates intentionally provide — resumes, assessments, or application responses.

If a candidate asks “What data was used and how?” the recruiting team should be able to provide an accurate answer, not a mysterious algorithmic score.

2️⃣ AI that rejects candidates on its own

If AI tools:

• automatically filter out candidates

• reject applicants before a recruiter sees them

• make hiring decisions based purely on algorithmic scoring

Legal teams see a major accountability risk.

Why? Because when a candidate challenges a rejection, the company must be able to show that a human reviewed the decision and applied fair judgment.

Courts and regulators are increasingly questioning hiring systems that fully automate screening decisions without meaningful human oversight.

How to avoid this risk

AI should help humans make better decisions, not make those decisions on their behalf.

Use AI to highlight strong matches, summarize candidate information, and accelerate search — but ensure a recruiter makes the final decision to reject or move forward.

3️⃣ No choice of opting out of AI features

There will always be features that a specific company may find risky to use.

For e.g.

• Searching on AI derived attributes like “job stability” or “academic brilliance”

• Evaluating profiles on softer skills like “leadership experience”

While statups may love these features, an enterprise may want to opt out of these features.

Why? Because if a tool behaves unexpectedly — for example introducing bias or prioritizing the wrong signals — the organization may be legally exposed.

How to avoid this risk

Look for AI products that allow opting out of certain features your legal team is not comfortable with.

Teams should be able to see which signals the AI prioritizes, review candidates beyond AI rankings, and adjust the system to align with their hiring policies and goals.

The organization should always own the process — not the algorithm.

AI vendors need to play an active role here

AI systems in recruiting don’t just one responsibility toward their customers. They also have a bigger responsibility: towards millions of people in the labor market.

A job supports their livelihood, their families, and often defines important parts of their life and identity. If AI systems make or influence decisions in ways that are opaque or poorly designed, it can severely impact their life.

That’s why these guardrails should not be treated as compliance hurdles. They should be core product design principles.

At Cutshort, we did exactly this and have documented our approach to Responsible AI in hiring here:
👉 https://cutshort.ai/responsible-ai

Not perfect and always improving, but we know its importance and are committed to enabling our users with AI in a way which is fair and safe for everyone.

How is your team balancing AI speed with human oversight? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Claude Code wrote 300 articles last week. SEO agencies are so, so done now.

AI can find candidates in minutes. Recruitment agencies are legit dead.“

Scream the posts on X and LinkedIn daily.

The “AI will kill” services companies argument

Look at the core task in any service business.

In SEO, it is researching and writing articles. In recruitment, it is finding candidates. In software services, it’s building a feature.

These core tasks are definitely being done by AI. Better, faster, cheaper. People are creating full fledged applications that handle these tasks in weeks now.

The argument: Since AI can handle these core tasks, companies will no longer need to hire service providers.

But is that argument true in real business world?

We ran an AI-led recruitment agency business for 2.5 years. Here is what we humbly learned.

Yes, the core tasks are increasingly AI-powered. That perfect candidate, this SEO article, that legal case review.

But here is the real truth:

A services business doesn’t complete these tasks. It does far more. Some of it is boring and some of it is essential - understanding customer context, stitching the solution that is not just fast but also reliable and dependable and providing critical support at times when things go south.

Take recruitment agency service. At Cutshort, by using technology on top of our large candidate base (2000+ signups daily), we made the core task of finding candidates both accurate and fast.

But to serve customers, this is not enough. Understanding real requirements, company specific constraints and bottlenecks, planning efforts across channels, changing processes, understanding verbal and subtle emotional feedback is what is still needed to deliver real success to customers.

Two years ago when we started recruitment agency services powered by technology, we had this hypothesis - the core tasks is more important than these service layers. We thought we would be able to serve thousands of companies with this model with minimal human intervention.

But this hypothesis was wrong. We realised we still needed the human layer

• To onboard and explain to customers (sales cost)

• To understand their roles and set up processes (onboarding cost)

• To keep the delivery on track and remove impediments on an ongoing base (service operations cost)

• To collect payments and provide warranty (support and finance ops cost)

So while the core task was automatable, the other service layers are required and have non-trivial cost.

The conclusion?

AI can make a recruitment agency service better and cheaper, but not replace it with agents.

Good services business will not get killed. They will get more profitable and scalable with AI.

Customers do not pay billions to humans for core tasks. They pay for a complete solution they can depend on. Cost and speed is important, but dependability is non-negotiable.

And that’s what real services businesses provide. While an AI agent will shun responsibility, a human delivered service business will step up when you need the most.

1. The “AI will kill X” noise is loud but it’s more applicable in startup and SMB market. In mid market and enterprises, most people are underestimating just how much more important accountability is for businesses than cost and speed.

2. Services businesses that did low value work will face the hear and face disruption.

3. Yes, larger services providers will struggle initially to make core tasks AI ready. But over time they will find a way and/or acquire smaller players to adapt to the change.

Who has more CVs.

More resumes.
More reach.
More visibility.

In India, Naukri competed on the CV number very well and decimated the competition that included Timejobs, Shine.com, Monster, Indeed, simplyhired and countless others.

Despite Naukri’s slower pace of innovation and customers complaining of their sales team’s monopolistic practices, it continues to retain largest market share of 65%.

So, it’s clear: Having most CVs has been the winning advantage.

The CV number is still a strong factor in the market

Let’s be practical. The CV number matters even today.

Check this latest sales creative from Naukri today:

“40 Lac active job seekers in IT/Tech” is their main sales pitch.

Although this looks grossly inflated (Indian IT sector employs only 58 Lakh employees as per Nasscom report in 2025, so 65% of them can’t be actively looking for sure), but it’s still the largest number.

And this is an important factor for the market: Recruitment teams know that for whatever skills, experience, salary, location combination, they will always get a decent number of candidates to work on.

But for a growing industry segment this is changing gradually

In last 3 years, business uncertainty has been high.

• Roles are more customised.

• Hiring timelines are tighter.

Having more profiles doesn’t automatically mean:

• Faster shortlisting

• Better conversion

• Shorter time-to-fill

In fact, in many teams, more CVs create higher screening overload & slower decision-making.

TA leaders today are today being asked:

• Why can’t we hire faster?

• Why is our hiring funnel so leaky?

Access to more CVs doesn’t solve these problems.

Recruitment players will need to shift from CV numbers to hiring speed

The next phase of recruitment isn’t about bigger databases. It’s about hiring momentum.

Recruitment players that win in the next 5 years will focus on:

• Speed, not just reach

• Conversion, not just discovery

• Outcome metrics, not vanity metrics

And it’s already happening:

1. Market leaders like Naukri and LinkedIn are definitely moving in this direction by adding more AI features in their systems.

2. A lot of standalone tools are coming up as well. However, adoption and ROI will not be easy for them.

3. Cutshort started shifting 2 years ago but in a different way. We now create a priority pipeline of highly relevant + screened candidates in your ATS automatically.

(Read more on Cutshort offerings here. Curious about how it compares with recruitment agencies and sourcing platforms? Get a callback here)

The open question for the ecosystem

So the real question isn’t whether recruitment portals will survive.

It’s this:

How do recruitment players evolve from being CV repositories to becoming engines of hiring speed?

Because in today’s hiring reality, the team that hires faster wins — not the one with the biggest database.

Curious to hear from you: What slows hiring down the most in your funnel today — sourcing, screening, or conversion?

The difference comes down to three questions:

1. Can AI produce clear, acceptable output on its own?

2. What’s the cost of a human doing the same work?

3. What’s the risk if AI gets it wrong (legal, brand, political)?

This is why engineering teams moved fastest:

• AI outputs are deterministic enough

• Human time is expensive

• Risk is relatively low

No wonder, the upside is obvious and we have seen massive adoption curves.

Recruiting is fundamentally different

Recruiting isn’t one job. It’s a bundle of very different tasks—each with different risk and economics.

• AI does create clear value in some areas (resume screening, high-volume screening calls, initial shortlisting)

• Human ops cost is relatively low (often ~¼ of software engineering cost)

• The downside risk is much higher (bias, compliance, employer brand, candidate experience)

So TA leaders are cautious. That’s rational.

How AI is actually getting adopted in recruiting?

At Cutshort, we talk to a lot of TA heads (~20 every week).

What we’re seeing in the market is:

• Point tools that use AI for one task at scale (search, screening, outreach)

• Or services that abstract AI away and deliver outcomes (so teams get benefits without owning risk like Cutshort for sourcing)

The “wait and watch” trap

While TA heads are no longer cynical about AI, many still have a “wait and watch” kind of outlook. They are thinking more like:

“Just let AI play out. 20% productivity gain in 12-18 months time frame is fine.”

This is understandable. But here is the real downside:

“By playing conservative, TA heads are losing a chance to solve long-standing challenges they could never address before”

This should make it clear:

Across different departments, the most valuable impact of AI is not the productivity gain. It’s the agility and impact.

In software development, Cursor frees up time from writing code to thinking about business problems. They ship faster and learn faster from the market. Productivity gain is nice added benefit.

The same shift is possible in recruiting

Similarly in recruiting, there are TA leaders who are adopting AI not to reduce people cost but to fix the longstanding issues in their recruitment process for which they never got time earlier.

• closing candidates

• improving joining ratios

• strengthening employer brand

• making hiring data-driven

This post from Rishi Banerjee is a great example of this:

Rishi is not alone. In our conversations, some 10% of TA leaders get super excited about how our 3.5% only-sourcing model can do the sourcing while their team could focus on closing and other high impact work.

TLDR: The best TA leaders are not being reactive - they are freeing up their time to make their roles and teams more strategic than ever before.

Your recruiting team stuck in manual work?

If your recruiting team is buried in manual sourcing, nothing is “broken.” Offers per recruiter may look fine for the salaries you pay.

But imagine this instead:

• A smaller, sharper TA team

• Less time on resume submissions

• More time fixing problems you’ve postponed forever

That’s what the best TA leaders are doing with AI—not reacting, but reclaiming their time to become strategic again.

P.S. If you want to free your team from manual sourcing for product/engineering roles, check out Cutshort.ai.

Most people believe so. They look at layoffs and media headlines. And yes — their own experience confirms that tasks which took them days now take minutes with AI.

So the conclusion feels obvious: “AI will replace us.”

But this is a paradox. The story starts in the 1800s.

Meet Jevons Paradox

In 1800,s William Jevons studied something strange:

When steam engines became more efficient, people didn’t use less coal. They used more.

Why? Because efficiency made coal:

• cheaper

• easier to use

• economically viable for new industries

Result: total coal consumption skyrocketed.

This became Jevons Paradox —

when the cost of something drops drastically, total demand usually explodes.

Jevons paradox applied in software engineering

AI has dramatically reduced the cost of coding. Non-engineers are now building tools and products that earlier required a full engineering team.

So at first glance, it looks like software engineering jobs will be decimated.

But let’s apply Jevons properly.

1. AI reduces the cost of software development

What needed 10 engineers may now need 3. A prototype that took 3 months now takes 3 days.

Anyone looking only at this step concludes: “AI kills jobs.” But they’re missing the second half of Jevons.

2. Lower cost → More projects → More demand for people

When something becomes dramatically cheaper, it opens the door for:

• new customer segments

• new use cases

• new industries

• entirely new categories of products

And we’re already seeing this play out.

We’re watching this in real time

Modern AI-first companies are hitting $100M ARR in months, not years. Why? Because:

• Small businesses that never bought software tools before… now buy AI tools.

• Non-technical teams that never hired engineers… now launch internal tools using AI.

• Founders who earlier struggled with MVP costs… now build faster and hire instead for operations, customer success, partnerships, and domain expertise.

The market didn’t shrink.

It exploded.

“But won’t fewer engineers be needed?” Yes… per project. But more projects will be commissioned than ever before.

This is the part most people miss.

A typical company might cut engineering headcount per initiative — but will also launch more initiatives because it’s now economically feasible.

If building a tool goes from:

• ₹1 crore → ₹10 lakhs

• 6 months → 6 days

Why would a company build one tool? They will build twenty.

So while the cost per project drops, the number of projects goes up even faster.

Just like Jevons predicted.

AI is going to change the type of jobs, not the number

The layoffs and hiring freezes are a short term effect. Companies are rethinking the skills they need from humans.

The shift looks like this:

↓ Pure coding

Routine engineering work becomes automated.

↑ Problem framing, architecture, and ownership

Companies need people who can:

• define what to build

• ensure correctness

• integrate domain knowledge

• manage ambiguity

• run faster, cheaper experiments

New hybrid roles are already emerging

• AI Engineers

• AI Product Leads

• Prompt Engineers (but the real kind, not the meme version)

• Domain experts who can translate business problems into workflows

This mirrors every historical wave of automation — workers move up the value chain.

Just like computers changed the skill sets across almost all the job functions.

Remember the cashiers in banks? Counting notes accurately used to be an art - but it faded away when automated counting machines arrived.

Is it different this time around?

A common argument is that AI is fundamentally different. That it’s not a tool, it is the worker.

While I understand how disruptive AI is, here is my take.

Firstly, after 3 years of applying AI across several industries and job functions, we have learned that AI is not able to replace a human 100%. In some roles, it does 30%, in others it may do 85%. Despite the best of coding models, average productivity gain reported by engineering teams is just 30%, not 300%.

Secondly, even when AI acts as a complete “worker” in one function, Jevons still holds. An AI worker still needs:

• product guidance

• domain context

• data ops

• evaluation

• customer understanding

• integration with the rest of the business

So, net demand for humans only increases due to lower cost of running the project. (Unless we reach a point when AI scores a 100/100 on skills, business context and winning trust of humans.)

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Will Jevons paradox continue to hold or will AI defy it?

“Ask a colleague who left recently”,
“Check Glassdoor”,
“Check AmbitionBox”.

Good for curiosity. Useless when you have to answer the real question:

“How much should I ask this company I just interviewed with?”

And to make things trickier, the market of the last 3 years is nothing like before.

The job market has changed completed in last 3 years

We did a unique event last month titled Inside the Software Engineering Job Market — When Recruiters Speak Off the Record , in which we had experienced recruiters and talent leaders joining anonymously to share their raw insights.

It became quite clear: Today, salary ranges today vary widely. Different companies have always have had different compensation ranges but now they are different within a single department in the same company.

Plus the salary ranges are also quite rigid now.

In 2020–21, ranges existed but nobody cared. If they liked you, they’d stretch.

Today? Companies are far stricter with budgets. They would easily reject a great candidate than break their range.

And once they reject on this ground, they are not looking back.

3 variables that decide the salary you should ask for

Don’t go with a gut feel. The salary you can get depends on these 3 variables today.

Variable 1: Role & Skills

We are living in a funny world. For some roles, there is a fight amongst the companies. For some others, they are laying off.

• AI/ML and GenAI → high volatility, high premiums

• Data engineering / platform / SRE / cybersecurity → strong upward flexibility

• Traditional backend / frontend / product → more stable

• Low-scarcity roles → almost no room

Within a role itself, the exact skill set dictates whether you can push or need to stay conservative.

Variable 2: Your experience level

Salary bands behave very differently across career stages.

• Entry-level: Fixed bands. Minimal negotiation.

• Mid-level (3–7 yrs): The most dynamic zone — huge range differences.

• Senior (8–12 yrs): Paradoxically, tighter bands. Companies are cautious here.

• Leadership: Pay is tied to scope, not years. Roles with salaries > 75LPA get quick tricky.

Variable 3: Company Type

Most people, especially younger ones, only understand the broader categories - IT services companies and Product companies.

But within product companies and startups, there is a whole bunch of shade here that completely changes everything.

• Product companies → Structured bands

• GCCs → structured, stable

• IT services → predictable, on the lower side

• Small consulting shops → budget-constrained

• Startups

  • Early stage → low base salaries, high equity

  • Young, funded → flexible for the right hire

  • Scaled → High but structured bands again

You can only negotiate properly when you know the “species” you’re talking to.

The salary negotiation strategy that actually works in 2026

Here’s the simple, reliable playbook:

Step 1: Ask for the company’s salary range

Once you know the range, assume a 5–8% upward margin.
This keeps you competitive but not overpriced.

Step 2: If your role/skill is in high demand, add another 5%

AI/ML, GenAI, cybersecurity, SRE, platform engineering — these roles get more breathing room.

Step 3: If it’s a funded startup AND your interviews went well, add another 5–8%

Young + Funded startups can make exceptions when they really like the fitment.

3 super important caveats

1. Look at the salary range in context. If the salary range is 20-28LPA for 3-6 years experience, then at 3 years, you can’t expect 28LPA. Adjust your expectations based on where your experience falls in that salary range.

2. Expecting hikes higher than 50% could be risky. Many companies have cap on the % hike (likely 40%) and even if you are currently underpaid, they can’t get an approval to give you a hike like 60% other above. Angle for salary hikes later.

3. If you had just switched recently (in last 6 months), justifying another hike like 30% or above is not easy. Be mindful.

Let’s take an example

Let’s assume this is the role you are interviewing for

Experience range: 3-6 years

Salary range shared: 21–30 LPA

Role: Product-backend engineer

Your experience: 4 years:

Here are the steps

1. Starting point (based on the job range and your experience): 24LPA

2. If you have a hot skill like AI, then 5%-8% higher = 26LPA

Is this a young funded startup AND your interviews went well? You can go 5%-8% higher = 28LPA

Sanity check on salary hike: Let’s say your current salary is 16LPA, then asking for 24LPA would be asking for 50% hike, which is just about okay. But if you are let’s say at 14LPA then asking for 24LPA would be 70% hike and the some companies might not be able to give you that hike.

Conclusion and final thoughts

Knowing your worth is important. The more informed you are, the better you can negotiate.

However, remember that salary is just one part of the opportunity. Do NOT maximise salary at the cost of sacrificing your role and learning opportunities. In long term, the matter far more in the fast changing job market of today.

Check out career defining opportunities on Cutshort: https://cutshort.io

1. Job portals and resume databases (Naukri and LinkedIn are the largest players)

2. Recruitment agencies

How is the market adoption of these offerings and what are their price trends?

We did a webinar and survey on this topic recently

Last Thursday, we did an interesting webinar on where AI will disrupt the existing recruitment market offerings. 150+ TA leaders and agency business owners attended and many stayed for an extended 1 hour after the scheduled closing time!

A a part of this webinar, we also did a survey to understand how companies utilise these offerings and their pricing experiences.

Cost of Recruitment Offerings and Pricing Trends in India

This survey revealed interesting trends. Some I expected, some surprised me.

Key pricing insights

1. Naukri Resdex is the de-facto option: 78% bought Naukri Resdex regularly or when they needed. 15% yearly hikes in Naukri pricing is most commonly reported. 25% was reported quite commonly as well.

2. LinkedIn is a little less aggressive with price increases but 15% is pretty common there too.

3. Recruitment agencies pricing: 8.33% continues to remain most common.

Other recruitment function related findings:

1. 30% leaders believe AI has increased recruiter productivity. But an overwhelming 45% have not measured this yet.

2. Pricing satisfaction: Largely the sentiment is they are not happy with the cost vs the value equation of recruitment offerings.

Other recruitment function related findings

• AI adoption: 30% of leaders believe AI has already improved recruiter productivity. But an even larger 45% admit they haven’t measured AI’s impact yet — suggesting we’re still at an early stage of adoption and awareness.

• Pricing satisfaction: The overall sentiment is clear: most recruitment leaders are not happy with the cost vs value equation. In fact, when asked to rate satisfaction with recruitment costs, the majority scored it only 2–3 out of 5 (unhappy to neutral). Rising costs of job portals and LinkedIn licenses were the top pressure points.

  

The takeaway

Recruitment market in india shows the classic signs of a large market with clear category leaders, but customers not being happy with them.

• Resdex and LinkedIn continue to increase prices by ~15% (and sometimes 25%) every year.

• Agency fees have remained more stable at 8.33% of CTC, though usage is highly specialized (mostly urgent or senior hires).

• AI is starting to provide productivity gains — but most teams are yet to quantify this.

In short: pricing pressure is real, satisfaction is low, and the search for better ROI is on.

We believe AI has the best chance to change this market dynamic. It can create better offerings in terms of quality and speed while also offering significant better ROI.

Cutshort’s Sourcing-only model at 3.5% success fees is one such example. We believe more offerings will soon follow in the market which will make it interesting.

Full survey report now available on Cutshort website

Check out the full survey report on Cutshort website here:

Download the full PDF Report

Some excerpts from this report are here:

Naukri Resdex pricing trends:

When companies use recruitment agencies and at what price:

Download the full PDF Report

We also wrote a detailed blog post to cover this in more detail

>>>>>Read the detailed blog post here.

As I said in this LinkedIn post), there’s an interesting debate happening about whether AI will increase recruiter salaries or push them down.

Data from multiple 2025 salary reports indicates that recruiters specializing in technical talent with AI proficiency are commanding premium salaries.

Technical Recruiters hiring for AI, with AI: Salaries UP ↗️
The premium in tech hiring is happening in newer skill areas such as AI, security and Cloud and recruiter salaries are no exception.

Recruiters with expertise on these roles are commanding premium salaries.

Further, many informal sources also indicate that technical recruiters who’ve upskilled with AI tools are seeing 20-40% hikes when switching jobs.

Volume/General Recruiters: Salaries FLAT or DOWN ↘️
Conversely, recruiters handling high-volume, entry-level positions or general roles are experiencing salary stagnation or even declines. One recruitment leader at a major IT services firm said privately: “We’ve reduced our entry-level recruitment team by 30% in the last year as AI has automated most of the screening and initial outreach.”

The bottom line
Just like I observed with software engineers, we’re seeing a job reshuffle, not a job shrinkage. As recruitment is getting automated, new roles focused re emerging—and they’re paying more than before.

What’s your experience? Are you seeing this divide in the recruitment profession in your organization?

Discuss on LinkedIn

From CutshortHQ

We are moving to Bangalore!

Are you in Bangalore?

I have lost count of how many times people have asked this. Investors, customers, talent and who not.

We haven’t had a strong reason to setup a base here (apart from 🍺), but with our AI+human powered offerings like Sourcing Assistant, it’s becoming clear that we need to be closer to our customers.

So, Bangalore here we come. Just 2 months and we are excited for more gatherings like this:

Join our Gen-AI Recruiter community for meetups

Special section

A brief history of job market reshuffles

Every decade or so, the job market experiences a seismic shift that transforms recruitment. As we navigate the current AI disruption, here’s a quick look at previous “job market earthquakes”:

The Y2K Boom (1997-2000)
The millennium bug created unprecedented demand for IT professionals, launching India’s tech industry. Software exports jumped from $1.8B to $5.7B, with IT salaries rising 25-40% annually. Recruitment transformed from informal networks to structured processes.

The Dot-Com Crash (2000-2002)
The internet bubble burst, freezing tech hiring overnight. Tech unemployment jumped from 2% to 6.5%, compensation shifted from equity-heavy to salary-focused, and many recruiters specialized in tech suddenly found themselves jobless.

The Outsourcing Revolution (2002-2008)
Western cost-cutting created a boom in India, with IT services growing from $9.5B to $52B. Campus recruitment became dominant, and standardized salary bands emerged as the norm.

The Global Financial Crisis (2008-2010)
The Lehman collapse triggered hiring freezes, recruiter layoffs, and salary stagnation. The power shifted dramatically to employers, with candidates accepting offers they would have rejected pre-crisis.

The COVID-19 Disruption (2020-2022)
The pandemic normalized remote work, sparked the “Great Resignation,” and widened compensation disparities between in-demand and traditional roles. Tech salaries jumped 15-30% as digital transformation accelerated.

The AI Reshuffling (2023-Present)
AI is creating a two-tier market—AI-savvy professionals command premium compensation while traditional roles face automation. Rigid salary bands are giving way to multi-dimensional frameworks, and the gap between highest and lowest earners within the same profession is widening dramatically.

Throughout history, each disruption has created both winners and losers. Where will you position yourself in this latest reshuffling?

Hope you enjoyed this edition. See you next week!

With ❤️

Nikunj

CEO at Cutshort

The future of recruiting is “human”.

“Today’s youth should be ready to work 70 hours a week” says NR Narayan Murthy (Co-founder of Infosys)

In the inaugural episode of 3one4 capital’s podcast ‘The Record’, NR Narayan Murthy (co-founder of Infosys) shared a very hot take claiming that today’s work culture needs a major revamp and the youth of India should be ready to work 70 hours a week to be able to compete effectively on the global stage.

While this statement has sparked a nation-wide debate with people arguing about the feasibility of this idea and how it’ll take a toll on people’s work-life balance, there are folks who agree with Murthy’s thought of revamping the country’s work culture and believe that we need a more committed and disciplined approach towards work. Read more about it here.

What are your thoughts on having a 70 hour work week? We’d love to know what you think!

“Today’s leadership is more like rolling up sleeves and working with teams” says Tarun Chugh

In a recent interview talking about running the people show, the importance of a Gen-Z workforce, and how leadership and leaders have been transformed, Tarun Chugh (MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance) says that the leaders of today are very different from the past.

They have to work within designs and get into the depth of things while at the same time, respect the skills a specialist is getting to the table.

He also goes on to say that leadership in the past has been more commandeering but today, you have to be more empathetic and understanding. You have to be close enough to be objective and not have the emotional aspect.

Check out the full interview with Tarun Chugh on ETHR’s website.

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates!

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Big Data and its impact on recruitment

From identifying the best-fit talent (which Cutshort does flawlessly by the way) to being able to analyze workforce performance, the rise of Big Data has made things more efficient and easy to use.

Check out this article by Dr. Sheetal Nair (posted on ETHR) as he dives deeper into the world of Big Data and how it is changing today’s recruitment practices.

Changing work preferences: 58% of India’s tech talent prefers remote work even in exchange for a pay cut

As per a recent study conducted by Uplers (in partnership with Kaizen Market Research), it was seen that 58% of India’s tech workforce would prefer working remotely even if it meant they would earn less.

This data was concluded based on thorough primary research with sample sets from 24 Indian cities and included both quantitative and qualitative research.

Read more about it in this article by Financial Express.

Understanding the Gen Z mindset: Upskilling is the way ahead?

Amidst all the uncertainty coming in from the unstable (now-stabilizing) talent market and the widespread use and development of Generative AI, today’s workforce is focusing more on learning new skills to unlock new opportunities.

According to the Pearson Skills Outlook Survey – Employee view, 88% of Gen Z workers in India have had to rethink their career path due to the uncertainties of the last three years. This is significantly higher than the 67% of millennials and 55% of Gen X workers who said the same.

Read the full article by Economic Times.

That’s all for the updates we bring to you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more interesting updates.

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Let’s dive right in.

Today’s workforce is prioritizing a healthy workplace in exchange for a salary cut: Reports

Based on what recent studies and reports state, it looks like 97% of Indian Gen Z and Millenials are okay with taking a pay cut in their salaries in exchange for a healthy workplace and relationships with co-workers.

Added to this, the HP Work Relationship index also stated that while only 27% of the global workforce reports a healthy workplace relationship, India is seeing a different scenario where 50% of the workforce has shown workplace contentment. Now that’s some news!

ETHR released a more detailed article on this study that you can read here.

Managing your applicants from unregulated channels: How Cutshort can help

Over the past few years, social media and similar channels have become a great way for companies to promote their open roles and attract more folks to apply for these roles.

While these channels work great in terms of visibility, they also end up adding more noise to the pool and increase the workload of the hiring managers as they’re then forced to screen each resume individually trying to understand their relevance and fitment for a role.

Is there a way out?

Nikunj Verma, our Cofounder recently published this short video on how Cutshort can help you manage your applications better and how the platform is built to ensure that you find the best folks for your role. Check it out here.

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates!

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And what do the new labour laws say about leave policies for employees?

Tune into this week’s newsletter for some exciting updates!

IT firms lose their charm amongst freshers and students

Big IT service companies like TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, etc. that were some of the most sought-after mass recruiters for the longest time, seem to be losing their charm amongst students and freshers.

The reason? A volatile market in the United States and the fear of a possible recession have led to the weakening of these companies’ deal pipelines. This uncertainty has forced them to either revoke the offer letters they rolled out or indefinitely delay their joining dates.

Check out this article by Business Today that details the current market sentiment and how people are reciprocating to these uncertain times.

Labour law update: Employers must pay for unused leaves beyond 30 days

The new labour law changes that are due for implementation will introduce a lot of changes for both the employer and the employee.

One such major change coming under the “Occupational safety, health, and working conditions code” states that if an employee’s accumulated paid leaves exceeds 30 days in a calendar year, the employer is entitled to pay them for these extra leaves.

More details about this change have been captured by ETHR in this article.

G2 rewards Cutshort with the “High Performer” badge for Fall 2023🎊

Congratulations are in order since Cutshort has been awarded the “High Performer” badge for the fifth consecutive quarter by G2.🥳

Your constant love and support always push us to go above and beyond and push our levels of excellence. We will keep building Cutshort with one goal in mind - Deliver a faster, better, and more efficient experience, just for you!

Check out our profile on G2 and drop a review if you love what we do!

Tha’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates!

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Let’s dive in!

Storytelling to communicate employee benefits - How Fidelity Investments is boosting adoption & engagement.

Fidelity Investments, A Boston-based multinational financial services corporation with an office in Bengaluru, India has taken some interesting measures to ensure their employees are educated about their benefits and are adopting them to the fullest.

They realized that effective communication was the only way to improve the adoption rate of company policies, and hence deployed Beneflix, their first attempt to create a brand for its benefits.

The results? More employees are now actively contributing their thoughts and questions and the adoption of employee benefits has seen a 10% - 15% uptick since Beneflix was deployed.

Check out ETHR’s article as they interact with Narayanan Vijayaraghavan (Head - Compensation & benefits at Fidelity Investments) on Beneflix and how they are leveraging it to improve employee engagement and communication.

Studies show women returning to work are seeing an 18% increase in job openings!

A study by Spectrum Talent Management reports an 18% increase in job opportunities for women rejoining the workforce after career breaks. This rise is due to public and private sector efforts to promote gender diversity and has mostly been in healthcare, education, BFSI, and tech.

Contributing factors include a shift towards inclusive workplaces, more educated women in professional roles, diversity initiatives, flexible work options, and demand for diverse skills.

Source: People Matters (Read the full article)

X.com (Formerly Twitter) - The new source for hiring?

Earlier this week, X.com (formerly Twitter), run by Elon Musk, announced a Beta Feature for eligible companies to start posting and promoting their jobs via their x.com handle.

This is being seen as a move to take on LinkedIn and the platform seeks to simplify the hiring process for jobseekers.

The only criteria for you to be eligible is if your company is subscribed to their $1000 verification status. Read more about it here.

Well, looks like Elon Musk is super-motivated to making X.com a super app!

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next one!

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Let’s dive in!

Is the tech hiring chaos slowing down?

2023, as you know, has been an absolute disaster of a year for tech companies and their talent.

With over 300k layoffs in the first half of 2023, and low funding/revenue leading to hiring freezes, it looked like all things were doomed!

However, recent reports/trends show a glimmer of hope and signal toward the return of normalcy in tech hiring.

As per this article by Business Insider, the number of layoffs in tech has gone down significantly, and companies that have been laying off talent are slowly opening up their recruitment channels and re-hiring folks they had to let go.

Added to this, India Today also reported that the Indian IT sector saw a slight increase in hiring activity during June 2023. While it isn’t a huge number, an upward trend is a sign of relief!

Is your hiring prepped for the re-opening market?

If you have been hiring or have plans of hiring, then now is the time for you to build your tech hiring game and give yourself an edge over the competition in hiring the best folks.

If you wish to supercharge your tech hiring and close your roles at Lightning speed, we might have just the solution!

Check out Lightning⚡ by Cutshort, a super-fast recruitment agency service for your tech roles that takes you from JDs to offers in just 21 days!

“As an organization, our role is that of a facilitator” - MakeMyTrip Group CHRO on Learning & Development

In a recent interaction with ETHR, Yuvraj Srivastava (Group CHRO, MakeMyTrip) spoke about how they are creating a learning & development environment within the organization.

Some of the very interesting points he made were -

• To ensure a culture of continuous learning, we understand that it is crucial to empower individuals to choose what they want to learn and how they want to grow their careers. As an organization, our role is that of a facilitator.

• Technology is essential for individuals to take charge of their own learning journey and identify what they want to learn. Along with this, technology also enables the delivery of the right resources at the right time to the right folks.

• While measuring the effectiveness of learning can be a challenge, simply analyzing the environment and observing changes in behavior, performance, and overall delivery can work as great insights.

You can read the full interaction from “Future Skills Conference 2023” on ETHR’s page. Check it out here.

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates.

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Moonlighting in the Indian IT industry

A term that took the entire professional world by storm, Moonlighting as been a very debated topic.

While Rashid Premji (chairman at Wipro) calls Moonlighting “cheating and unacceptable”, Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Minister of state for electronics and IT) came out in favor of Moonlighting and said that this era of the Indian workforce has seen a structural shift in the attitude of tech professionals.

While there might be very strong differences in opinion regarding Moonlighting, it still lacks a deeper examination of the underlying complexities.

Check out Cutshort’s latest report - Moonlighting in the Indian IT industry, an unbiased study of the reality of Moonlighting in India.

The biggest challenge around upskilling is creating a mindset of change - Shailesh Singh

In a recent interview with Economic Times, Shailesh Singh (CPO at Max Life Insurance) spoke about how upskilling is not a choice anymore but a strategic imperative for companies to remain competitive and relevant.

He further goes on to share some strategies his organization has implemented, their methods of understanding the need of the hour, and more on this topic.

Check out the entire article by ETHR here.

Dissculture - A wake-up call to organizations that profit over people

Victor C. (an avid HR & Tech enthusiast, and an active contributor to the TA fraternity), tired of all the injustice and inhumane treatment by big organizations against its people and decided to lash out!

He, along with SaintJosh & VIBHOR BEATS brings you the “Dissculture”, a warning to all the organizations that profit over people.

Go check out this track and leave a like on this YouTube channel. :)

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates!

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In this week’s newsletter, we will dive into some of the recent reports around tech talent addressing the current situation and explore ways to optimize your plans to scale with these trends.

Let’s dig in!

Is the tech hiring market seeing a downfall?

Naukri.com, in its latest report - The Naukri Jobspeak index, reported that tech (IT) hiring has rapidly slowed down significantly since last year.

As per these trends, there has been a 31% decline in new jobs created since June last year.

Additionally, Karthik Mandaville (CEO at Springworks) recently tweeted that he received over 3000 resumes in 48 hours for roles across the spectrum (product, founder’s office, SDE etc.)

Is the market bad? Yes. Is all hope lost? Not really.

For starters, look at the bright side - If you are an up-and-coming organization planning to scale, now is the best time to build a power-packed team of talented folks to grow your organization.

Also, while it’s too early to conclude, we are already seeing some early signs of the chaos settling down.

If you take a closer look at Naukri’s Jobspeak Index, you can already notice an uptick in Machine Learning & Data Engineering roles (which could also be a result of the world becoming more AI-driven).

Not only that, we very recently introduced Lightning by Cutshort for hiring companies and have already onboarded 23 companies hiring for 100+ open positions.

Money, misconduct, and recruitment.

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services company was recently hit with major allegations of corruption involved in their recruitment.

As per the reports, an internal team of recruiters favored certain staffing firms and their candidates over others in return for a monetary gain.

While this did lead to TCS losing some really talented folks, the bigger concern here is about the ethics & professionalism of these staffing agencies and the banned employees.

Are staffing agencies bad for your organization?

One incident can’t be used to make such a bold statement, can it now?

While there is not enough data to make a conclusive statement, there’s one thing we can guarantee - Lightning by Cutshort can help solve your hiring woes and you’ll never have to worry about diluting your team.

What is Lightning by Cutshort?

Our brand new offering - Lightning by Cutshort is an agency service only for tech roes that can take you from JDs to offers in just 21 days!

Curious to know more? Head here to for more details and to try it out yourself.

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next one with more exciting updates!

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These are the words of Shubham Vats (Chief Growth Officer, StarApps Studio) when we asked him - what makes Cutshort stand out?

This week’s newsletter will explore StarApps’ success story and how they closed 6 positions in less than a month using Cutshort! 🙌

Finding the stars at StarApps - How Cutshort helped in their success

StarApps studio, founded in 2016 and based in Pune (Maharashtra, India) caters to Shopify-powered e-commerce businesses by building software solutions to boost their sales and revenue.

In less than a month of making their jobs live on Cutshort, Shubham and his team were able to hire 6 amazing folks for their open roles.🥳

Here’s how they did it👇

The first phase - setting the fundamentals

Earlier this year in April, Taruneshwar (StarApps’ account manager at Cutshort) contacted StarApps’ team to understand their hiring needs. During this call, they mentioned their tech support engineer role and needed Cutshort’s help since they were struggling with it for a while.

After understanding the context of their role and helping them set it up on Cutshort, we sat back to watch the magic happen!

In less than a week, StarApps found over 350 relevant folks for this role and shortlisted over 40% of the folks applying for this role.

Once the sourcing was taken care of, a few quick rounds of interviews & validation to better gauge the talent led to them rolling out an offer, getting a confirmation, and closing the role within two weeks! 🤯

Leveling up - 900 applications in 3 days!

Now that they had seen the power of Cutshort, they wanted to take it to the next level.

This time, they were looking to hire 2 junior developers, 2 AI engineers, and 1 AI engineering intern. While there weren’t any strict deadlines set, the TAT for these roles was exceptional!🚀

The StarApps team, with the help of Cutshort, made these jobs live on the platform and in less than 3 days, saw ~900 applications coming in for these 3 roles.

Speaking of the quality of these folks, StarApps shortlisted 45%+ applications they received for these roles.

This, combined with a super-smooth workflow to manage your applicants + a super-fast hiring process at their end led them to hire 5 more folks for these roles in 10 days.
That’s some insane speed given the fact that they were struggling with these roles for quite a while before Cutshort.✅

Conclusion

In the words of Shubham himself,

“Cutshort is solving several problems in the hiring process, which ultimately benefits the organization. Firstly, it addresses the challenges of efficiently finding and connecting with qualified candidates. This saves us valuable time and effort in sourcing candidates and streamlining the initial stages of the hiring process.

Moreover, Cutshort’s intuitive user interface simplifies the entire recruitment journey. The platform’s user-friendly design allows us to navigate seamlessly, review candidate profiles, and interact with them effectively”.

If Shubham’s words haven’t convinced you yet. you can try out the platform for yourself. Just add a job to the platform (if you haven’t yet) and Cutshort your hiring woes!

P.s: We are currently piloting a new model to make this process a lot more easier and seamless. Watch out for more updates in the upcoming newsletters.

This 2hr discussion between the pioneers of the tech recruitment industry gave us a lot of insights on how AI is redefining the most basic aspects of tech recruitment like assessments and what you should be doing to adapt to these changes. Read on below👇

Adapting Technical Assessments and Interviews for the Age of AI

We’re in the era of Generative AI where a developer’s day-to-day work is being redefined from the core.

This move towards innovation seems to be affecting the recruitment industry as well and forcing companies to reevaluate their hiring.

How is this landscape changing?

A recent survey conducted by Cutshort piled with the insights shared by the pioneers of the tech recruitment industry gives us a deeper understanding of the ground reality. Some of them are -

1. AI is the new norm
   Amongst the 700+ tech professionals we surveyed, 71% of these folks said they’re using Generative AI at work regularly. Out of these folks, 77% claimed they are using ChatGPT to code faster and improve its quality.

   

   
   Not only this, 36% (majority) of the folks who took the survey also claimed that their organization is pro-AI and wants their employees to adapt it more in their daily work.
   
   Clearly, Generative AI is here to stay!
   

2. However, convenience also leads to drawbacks
   While tech professionals are all for AI and how their coding is automated, recruiters are definitely noticing anomalies in their existing coding tests.

   

   Since the launch of ChatGPT, 67% of recruiters have found either a positive or a negative change in their assessment results.
   
   Why? Well, mostly because these candidates rely hugely on ChatGPT and similar tools to generate their code.
   

3. Are skill requirements changing in the current industry?
   Yes and No.
   
   While some fundamental tech skills are still needed, it looks like Generative AI has removed the need of being proficient in one language and writing beautiful code.

   

   In today’s world, you need an engineer who can help you in the architecture, QA, and software development lifecycle more than the code itself.
   

4. How are other companies responding to this change?
   It looks like the need to act is picking up very fast.

   

   While the majority of folks haven’t taken any action yet, statistics suggest that more and more folks already have or are moving towards adapting their assessments to Generative AI and making it fool-proof to see better results.

5. Wish to adapt to these changes?
   We’ve had a very elaborate deep dive into what you should be doing to adapt your assessments to the AI age.
   
   While you can view the entire recording of our 2-hour discussion on our LinkedIn, we are compiling our learnings in the form of an e-book for easier consumption and shareability.
   
   This e-book is due for release soon. Check out more details about the e-book and sign up for a copy below👇
   

   Request a copy

P.s: While we are working on the release of the e-book, check out The Moonlighting Ground Report by Cutshort

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you in the next newsletter with more exciting updates :)

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Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is!

Upon digging deeper, we learned that the majority of the assessment tests that were taken recently had a very heavy ChatGPT influence i.e. Generative AI did all the heavy lifting.

That got us thinking - In today’s era of Generative AI and LLM’s, how efficient are today’s assessment and interview methods? How do you separate the good from the average? How do you adapt your interviewing process to discover and hire the right people?

Adapting your technical assessments and interviews for the AI era🤖

To help find answers to these burning questions, Nikunj Verma (Co-founder, Cutshort), Sachin Gupta (Co-founder, HackerEarth), and Sachin Mittal (Co-founder, InterviewVector) are getting together to discuss "How to adapt your technical assessments and interviews for the age of AI” and (of course) you’re invited.🙌

Sign up now!

100+ TA folks, Engineering managers, and founders from fast-growing companies like INDmoney, ShareChat, Clevertap, and more have already signed up. Save your spot before we run out!

Using Generative AI to boost your hiring🚀

While there are some disruptions being created by Generative AI, this revolution has also opened up new possibilities for solving some interesting problems.

One such possibility is using Generative AI to improve the sourcing quality of the candidates you’re looking for.

Presenting Role Context Search!

Say goodbye to old-school search methods and make way for LLM-powered role context search by Cutshort!

Until now, keyword search has been your primary source of scouting for folks with a very particular skill set. However, the results were never 100% accurate.

For example, you might be looking for a ‘Data Engineer who is proficient in Python’. As a first step, you’ll use Python as a keyword to search for these folks. But then, you very quickly realize that these folks use Python but are more into Fullstack or ML engineering.

But now, with Cutshort’s role context search feature, our LLM modules will read your Job Description, understand the context of the role, and match you only with candidates that are as niche as - “Data Engineers from product companies with 3+ years of experience with Python”.

Read more about the Role Context Search feature and how you can onboard it into your hiring process!

Special feature: Cutshort’s 8th-year anniversary comes with some added benefits!

8 years! That’s quite a long time and we have come a really long way!

While we at HQ are gearing up for the celebration and planning our next offsite, here’s a quick update we’d like to share -

Cutshort is now available on a post-paid plan!🥳

You read that right!

As a special treat for our 8th year anniversary, we are offering post-paid plans for companies that prefer them.

Check out this article to know more details about our post-paid models!

That’s all the updates we have for you this week. See you next week with more exciting updates!

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