Despite AI transforming high-volume tech hiring, India’s senior IT roles remain sealed inside private networks and trust loops.
Sindhuja Maddela, founder of Plarty, a culture-tech platform that focuses on bringing people together through shared Indian experiences, realised how opaque senior hiring truly is when a ₹96-lakh CXO role disappeared before it ever went public.
According to Maddela, who said she was privy to the process, there was no LinkedIn post, no application pipeline, no screening, just a founder sending a casual message to someone he trusted: “Hey, I need a CXO. Any names?”
Within a day the conversations began; the following day the offer was issued.
“People like to believe senior hiring is structured. It isn’t,” she said. “At that level, nobody wants to take risks. Leaders pick people they already know, or someone a trusted voice vouches for.”
Maddela acknowledges that she has long benefitted from this quiet hiring circuit, but the ease came with a hidden downside.
“Over the years, getting roles through references became a disadvantage, because you stop preparing for interviews or updating yourself. When you finally have to apply without a referral, you feel stuck and the imposter syndrome hits,” she told AIM.
The comfort of referrals, she added, also narrowed her path. “I never went through rigorous FAANG-style interviews or tried for something bigger because I kept slipping into roles too easily.”
She believes companies need a deliberate counterbalance. “References give quick access, but others deserve a fair shot. Businesses should maintain a quota for open recruitment so new people and new ideas actually enter the system.”
Her experience reflects the broader patterns India’s largest talent platforms are now observing across the industry.
Academic research has long shown that referral-driven hiring is not just common but structurally influential in labour markets.
One study, The Role of Referrals in Immobility, Inequality, and Inefficiency in Labor Markets, argues that when companies rely heavily on referrals, it can limit mobility, reinforce inequality and create inefficiencies in how talent is matched to roles.
Another paper, Social Networks as a Mechanism for Discrimination, demonstrates how hiring through personal networks can inadvertently disadvantage certain groups, showing that network-based recruitment can shape access to opportunity as much as skill, or experience.
Clubbed together, these studies offer a useful lens for understanding India’s tech sector, where AI is reshaping hiring at the bottom even as networks continue to dominate the top.
LinkedIn’s global survey shows that nearly 80% of professionals believe networking is critical for career success, and 70% of people hired in 2016 landed roles at companies where they already had a connection.
In India’s IT sector, this pattern is as pronounced. AI now drives much of the junior and mid-level screening, but senior mandates, from CXO roles to practice heads, continue to move largely through private networks, trusted referrals and closed-door conversations.
This widening divide between tech-driven hiring at the bottom and trust-driven hiring at the top is reshaping who gets seen, who gets considered and how leadership pipelines are formed.
Aditya Narayan Mishra, MD and CEO of CIEL HR, said AI has transformed hiring at the base and mid layers, where volumes are high and skill maps are predictable, but has barely moved the needle on senior recruitment.
“AI helps screen faster, match profiles better and maintain consistency. But leadership hiring is far more layered,” he said.
Strategic thinking, maturity, cultural alignment and the ability to lead complex teams are all qualities AI still cannot evaluate with the nuance that clients demand. As a result, senior mandates still rely on “experience, trust and established networks,” he said.
Interestingly, Mishra noted that AI is beginning to add value by surfacing senior candidates outside the usual inner circles, leaders who built practices in mid-sized firms, or scaled emerging roles.
He said that hiring for senior roles in Indian IT can be relationship driven. Sometimes that narrows the view. AI-enabled tools help widen it, he added.
Yet, he acknowledged that time pressure pushes organisations back toward low-risk, known profiles.
For AI to play a material role in senior hiring, companies must build trust in how insights are generated and adopt a mindset that blends data with human judgment.
Kartik Narayan, CEO–jobs marketplace at Apna, argued that the gap between AI’s actual capabilities and its adoption in senior hiring is larger than most realise.
“AI has moved faster than our intuition,” he said. Apna’s AI calling agent already conducts structured conversations in English and Hindi, produces transcripts and evaluates problem solving and clarity at a scale impossible for human panels. More than 3,000 employers now use it in early screening.
Narayan believes the barrier in senior hiring is not capability but comfort. “For seasoned developers, architects and technical leads, AI can already assess functional rigour and decision making with confidence. Companies simply want more human engagement later because conversations shift from skill to context.”
Leadership hiring, he said, involves assessing how someone carries culture, influences people and navigates ambiguity, qualities that require long, unstructured conversations.
Still, he sees AI as a powerful equaliser earlier in careers. “When the first look is an AI conversation, candidates are evaluated on skill, not pedigree or proximity.”
Over time, AI-driven skill graphs could help identify leadership potential earlier, reducing dependence on closed networks.
The dominance of networks at the top is something staffing firms openly acknowledge.
Neeti Sharma, CEO of TeamLease Digital, said the pattern is unmistakable. “Senior roles are rarely published in the open market. They move through known networks,” she said, adding that over two-thirds of roles such as delivery heads, practice leads and vertical heads are filled through internal or referral candidates.
Companies often post senior openings publicly “more for signalling,” she said, even when the real hire is made through internal candidates, references or search firms.
Sharma explained that business urgency reinforces this behaviour. “A known candidate ramps up faster, and for critical openings that matters.” Referrals confer an advantage because cultural fit and working style are already known.
But, she believes fairness is still possible if companies assess external candidates alongside internal ones, maintain transparent evaluation stages, and use unbiased panels.
The post Why AI Stops at the Door of Senior Hiring in Indian IT appeared first on Analytics India Magazine.
