Episode 1 Summary and Key Takeaways
Saaquib is Head of Business Recruitment at Rippling India, where he's scaled the team from 350 to 1,300 employees in 18 months with a 92% acceptance rate. Before that, he was employee number five at Revolut India and helped grow that team to over 1,000 people. He's got experience most recruiters in India don't have - hiring across 20+ countries and seeing how global recruitment actually works versus what happens here.
The conversation reveals the stark differences between Indian and global recruiting cultures, with Saaquib highlighting how most Indian companies fail to give recruiters a seat at the table despite hiring being a top-three problem for every founder. He shares tactical insights on employer branding, the brutal reality of screening 1,000+ candidates to hire just 40 account executives, and why even customer support roles at Rippling require exceptional talent. The discussion also covers the future of recruiting in an AI-dominated world and why building genuine relationships will be the key differentiator for recruiters who want to survive the coming automation.
Saaquib's journey from banking to product management to becoming one of India's most respected talent acquisition leaders offers valuable lessons for anyone involved in scaling teams, whether at startups or established companies.
The Scale of Hypergrowth Recruiting
"When I joined Rippling, it was just a base of 300, 350 employees that we had in Bangalore. And today, as you said, like we've almost quadrupled that we are close to 1300 folks in like a year and a half. And almost 75-80% of that has majority of the growth has been on the non-technical side."
The Brutal Talent Bar Reality
"To give you one insight on the number, we've probably looked at more than a 1000 Account Executives from India's B2B SaaS and tech ecosystem in order to pick and choose the 40 that we wanted to hire over the last one year. So the talent bar (at Rippling) is that high."
The Customer Support Scaling Challenge
"The customer experience org I think when I joined was close to around 50 people and today in like close to a year, 15 months of working with them, we are at around 450 odd folks just in the customer support org... There came a point where we had to hire more than 50 people every two months. So roughly around 25 to 30 people every month. It's almost like getting at least one hire every day."
The Indian Recruiting Reality Check
"Most Indian companies don't respect recruiters so much. Recruiters can't even dream of having a seat at the table, especially when they are ICs and not even a leader... It's like 180 degrees different from what you see in India. And that's very unfortunate."
The Founder Paradox
"You talk to any founder, maybe even yourself, if I ask you today, beyond, you know, building a great product and having a solid business model or a revenue model, anyone will say top three problems. Hiring is definitely one of them a hundred percent... yet they end up hiring someone who one is not capable enough to be a single recruiter for them."
AI's Impact on Recruiting
"I feel there's going to be much fewer recruiters, you know, that are going to do very, very specific key level hiring... Companies will hire one very senior leader to run the show and they will be able to like run the mandate for that entire organization rather than have like a team of 100 recruiters."
The Power of Recruiter Personal Brands
"A lot of candidates have this crazy amount of trust with recruiters that they have had a relationship with so much so that if I today call someone and tell them, Hey, I have a job for you. Would you be interested? They won't care so much whether about it's like Rippling or a Revolut or a Michael Page, as long as Saaquib is calling them, they will be keen because Saaquib has worked with them for the last seven years."
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The Screening Room is hosted by Jayanth and focuses on the real stories, strategies, and insights from talent acquisition leaders who are scaling teams and building the future of work.