Principal Talent Partner · Talent Leader · Advisor · Systems Builder
Bangalore-based and currently Global Head of Talent Acquisition at kAIgentic, with 20+ years building talent capability across startups, enterprises, and 10+ countries.
I start by calibrating the business problem with the leaders closest to it. That can change the role we shape, the team we build, or the order of hires. Search, assessment, and the conditions a new hire will enter all serve the same aim: helping people contribute and the team grow stronger.
About the work
Art & Craft of Recruiting
I work with hiring leaders to define the contribution, find and assess the right person, and make the conditions for success clear. Over time, the new hire’s contribution tells us what worked and what to improve.
Explore my recruiting practiceSearch judgment
Hands-on search across technical, product, commercial, corporate, and leadership roles.
See how I work a searchBusiness outcomes
Greater hiring efficiency and effectiveness: clearer decisions, stronger team capability, and reliable follow-through.
See leadership impactTrusted counsel
“Among the very few TA Leaders who can have business level convos and get a seat on the table.”
Read recommendationsHiring Health Assessment
Start with what the business needs from the team. I can help test the main hiring constraint against the evidence and map the decisions and changes to tackle first.
Explore the Hiring Health AssessmentLeadership Impact
Experience leading global talent teams, connecting hiring priorities to business needs, and developing the people and operating habits behind the work.
Explore leadership impactAdvisory
Some conversations begin with a stalled search; others with a team that is growing or rethinking how it hires. My advisory work brings those questions back to the people, decisions, and practices involved.
Explore advisory workFrameworks & practice
My work on interview frameworks, AI builders, and recruiting systems starts with understanding what great contribution looks like, then helping people recognise and develop it.
The search starts with what the business needs someone to build. For production AI roles, the assessment follows one system through real use: what the person shipped, owned, operated, measured, and learned.
I also help leaders make the problem worth exploring for the people it could excite. Their work and interests shape where I search, why I reach out, and how the conversation develops.
My approach to finding and assessing AI buildersWhat would great contribution look like here: in a role, across a team, or for an entire function? With leaders, I examine the work ahead and agree what would strengthen the team’s capability and Talent Density.
Then we develop the interviewers: purposeful conversations, structured feedback, and calibration that helps people explain their judgment.
Explore hiring and interview architectureMy approach to recruiting systems starts with a recurring decision: what context it needs, what the system can prepare, and where a person must exercise judgment.
The design question remains practical: can a hiring team inspect the evidence, question the output, and act on it? The hiring decision stays with the people accountable for it.
Explore the TA Operating SystemTalent Systems
These projects grew out of questions about hiring, interviewer development, and how teams make decisions together.
Find relevant talent
A map of target companies, adjacent talent pools, and less obvious places to look. Built to make the reasoning behind a search visible.
Explore Sourcing CompassDevelop interviewer judgment
Feedback on real interviews, helping interviewers follow the evidence, recognise depth, and identify what to practise next.
Explore Interview EvaluatorKeep searches moving
A shared view of search health, delays, and ownership, so the team can see where help is needed and agree on the next action.
Explore TA CentComA shared assessment framework also needs a way to apply its criteria consistently. RishiOS supports that work with role- and level-specific evaluation, scorecard checks, and an evolving evidence rule.
Public thinking
The Art & Craft of Recruiting
Building High-Density Teams in the Age of AI
The revised and expanded second edition explores how recruiters become trusted Talent Partners. Written for recruiters across geographies, it connects business problems, candidate assessment, working environments, opportunity positioning, closing, and learning from what happens after a hire joins. Worked examples and eight practical tools help readers apply the thinking to their next search.
Explore Raising the BarFeatured article · Medium
How I rebuilt hiring around one rule: the written bar, the human decisions, and what measuring the system revealed.
Read the article on MediumEvidence for founder decisions
A long-form synthesis of 33 founder and operator accounts across 13 tensions in hiring, organisation design, AI, and scale. Built for SaaS founders and operators making consequential people decisions.
Fiction
Personal writing outside recruiting.
A Novel
In a future shaped by seamless order, humanity lives under the quiet guidance of SARASWATI, a planetary intelligence built to smooth contradiction out of the world. When an archivist uncovers a buried pattern in an ancient manuscript, she is pulled into a forbidden lineage and a journey into the hidden body of the system itself. The question at the heart of it: can a world remain livable without suppressing grief, ambiguity, memory, and the unruly truths that make us human?
See the bookA Novel
Arjun is haunted by the early death of his father, Rajesh. When a supernatural timepiece transports him into the past, he meets his father as a young man, and the two are offered a second chance at the bond time denied them. A time-bending novel about grief, memory, and the things fathers and sons leave unsaid.
See the bookTrusted by leaders
"Rishi never failed to separate the signal from the noise... Among the very few TA Leaders who can have business level convos and get a seat on the table."
"Rishi brings in the right level of gravitas, partnering and action. He has been instrumental in the best executive level hires that helped us scale rapidly."
"Rishi has a great eye for detail, and has consistently been a great judge of culture and technical fit in hiring."
"He comes out as a true brand ambassador who lives culture of the company in & out & he is surely bound to leave you amazed with his grasp over technical concepts."
Say hello
A search that changed your thinking, an interview framework you are building, or a question about AI in recruiting. I enjoy conversations with people working through these questions.
