I advice on Product Management | Growing your customer base | Career Growth

2X-Founder | Author | Growth | Ultra Runner | Writer

From failed startups to scaling Truepush to 100B+ notifications monthly and 4,500+ customers worldwide, I've learned what it takes to build products people need and grow them relentlessly.

I built Truepush from paper wireframes to becoming a top 10 global player in our category. At Alohaa.ai, I doubled sales within just 3 months and drove consistent month-over-month revenue growth.
Beyond business, I push limits personally. 

I recently completed an 82.4km ultra run during a 12-hour stadium event. Mountains, travel, and nature are where I find liberation through both excitement and boredom.

Learning obsessively fuels everything I do. I've devoured 336+ books, and continuously invest in courses (Mindvalley, MasterClass, Matt Gray, Justin Welsh, Reforge and more).

When knowledge compounds with consistent execution, results follow:

- Built a 25,000-person startup community across 3 cities
- Published 250+ LinkedIn posts in 2024 alone
- Recognized among the top 1% of mentors on Topmate.io
- Created Solopreneur OS to help others identify market gaps and build growth systems

All while maintaining 7 hours of sleep nightly, seeing friends regularly, and maintaining my unusual preference for vegetables over chocolate (though I love both).

Want to build something great? Let's connect.

Manoj Surya

OpenAI just raised $110 bn (Rs. 10 lakh crores only/-)

Only that much.
Only,
On...

Sorry, taking time to process.

2X Founder | Author - The Serotonin Addict | Head of Growth | Ultra Runner | I write on Growth for B2B and Personal Learnings

There are 3 types of people who smile a lot in Starbucks or Thirdwave

1) Friends
2) People working on a new Idea, together
3) People who are still hiring people into Ponzi-like schemes

Just my observation (3rd type seems constant, and it's disappointing)

There is too much BS on Linkedin these days and I am staying back out of necessity to connect with relevant people.

With AI, everyone started to say

1) 30 hours saved
2) $500k in pipeline
3) I am working with 11 AI agents

Fine, good, but - 

1) 30 hours saved - But along with it, share the quality of work it did, screw ups, learnings too
2) $500k pipeline, but based on your industry standard, whats your TAT  from pipeline to paying customers, are you getting revenue?
3) 11 AI agents. Fine. So? I will hire an intern and ask them to create 100 agents. What does it prove?

If you are sharing something - either tell us the quality you bench mark or revenue. Only these two are signals. Rest all is noise. 

PS: The noise level of BS is feeling like bad AQI in one of the large cities we know.

At Alohaa we work with Voice bots and Voice Streams, and I keep getting curious, here is why - 

While the mass is adapting to AI on Text, Voice AI has its own challenges. 

In India, the accent starts changing in almost every district. This means that to train one language, you can't just train in one accent or dialect. 

There are multiple companies building good models that can understand multiple Indian languages, accents, and dialects. And it's amazing to see how good they are.

Pair it with Voice latency on Telecom lines (Which we are trying to solve with Voice Streams)
Pair it with the issue with getting numbers into spam(Which we are solving use few methods)
Pair the Telecom rules in India with different sectors. For examples in the Financial Sector, with TRAI rules with 1400(promotional) and 1600(Transactional) number series, which started to show lower pick up rates.

While the AI models are one big step for Indian languages, another challenge is the Infra + Regulations.

At Alohaa, we wrote a book on how to be compliant for the Fintech sector and gave those away for free at events we attended, consulted with a few NBFCs to migrate and avoid penalties, and see where we can help or collaborate.

At least in the Voice AI ecosystems, multiple companies have to work together and grow the Industry as collaborators, friends, and grow together rather than growing thought a Enterprise sales cycle.

We try our best to do this from Alohaa, and hopefully the circle grows

PS: If you know anyone working in the Voice AI Industry, do tag them. The more the merrier.

Manikanta Thrivikram

Do things that AI can't do, like 

sleeping well
eating well
exercising
meeting friends
travelling
reading books
telling jokes
learning languages

What will you add to the list?

For most(or all) of us who are lucky to have privilege of education, work and health. Our needs are always met(food, shelter, cloths, some good relationships). 

It’s the wants that are hard and we try to make meaning out of it.

Why we need personal wealth - we need to have clarity first so we know what’s a good number to hit.

I am not saying you shouldn’t build great things , scale and make insane money.

If you have potential (which you have), you should absolutely go for it.

Just that, having clarity will make you differentiate and then actually spend money on things that matter to ‘you’.

For SaaS products, you have AWS credits,
What do you have for Voice bots to deploy on Telecom lines to make phone calls?

From Alohaa , we are planning to give 10,000 minutes of voice streaming (soon)
Which is more than you will need to deploy your bot, test it out, and launch in the market.

Working out on the launch plan currently,
But if you want to take advantage of getting this early (or people you know)

If you are offering companies to deploy your voice bot to make phone calls, 
DM me, we are here to support.

Do share your 1) website, 2) stage of development for the voice bot with me on DM, 3) email id, and 4) phone number. (So it's easy for us to evaluate, reach out to you to coordinate, and avoid to and fro conversations of the obvious)

PS: Once we launch and reach out to ecosystem partners, the turnaround time to verify and give you credits may take time, so if you reach out now, we can get you those credits with less wait.

No lock-ins, no contracts.

cc: Manikanta Vinutha Sanjay Fatema Srinivas Praveen Subba Raju

In India, most of the adoption feels like it's coming from coders, like everywhere else, but in marketing, it feels like it still needs a lot of adoption. 

The reason, my guess is, is purchase parity. For a product that is $100 in the US, we see the same perceived value at $40. 

Images and videos using AI are not cheap. Even other AI tools in marketing don't feel cheap. 

Another reason could be that Marketing needs a lot of experimenting. With code, you can see the output. With marketing, it's still a guesswork. So it may feel safer to go with what's already working than try new tools (the results are visible after a few days or weeks sometimes).

For experimenting, at least for the small to medium startups, it feels like a lot because you end up spending a lot. 

If we compare people versus AI tools, AI feels much better, but got to see how much it will be a common practice soon. 

PS: Or maybe the adaptation is good, and I may not be seeing it well in immediate circles. What's your observation?

Reviews are growing, get your copy here -

Physical copy - https://lnkd.in/grbibXRW edition - https://amzn.in/d/0iqFRk37
You don’t need to believe but you can read why 33 readers have wrote and decide for yourself?

It’s a good read in your break, travel, weekend or breaking your weekdays pattern (while helping you set hard long term goals and making them doable)

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

AI is helping me do many things and it's scary, here is why -

Firstly, I see myself as a generalist in understanding, and having depth with marketing.

Secondly, with AI (using Claude code), I know I can build few things, but then, do not know if I can understand scale or depth.

I haven't focused enough on creating agents, but it will be inevitable not to create agents and get things done.

So anything with some understanding of agents(easy part) + strategy(hard part) can make agents do - Research, compose data, send emails to relevant people for research, build specific landing pages based on personas, make content for ads / seo  (or even run campaigns by themselves in the future)

While I can take this data, use whispr like tools, talk to my command line (or just input the data from research) and let the claude agents orchestrate things and build a product, while I read a book, make tea, or go out for a walk.

There is something called The Jonah Complex - It is the terrifying realisation that you are capable of far more than you are currently doing, which creates pressure to live up to that potential. 

It's that, now you know you can do so many things, and the pressure build up gets the best of you (while we try to catchup with AI, try to avoid burn out while making 20-30X decisions in short time, that we are used to).

If the potential to create anything is scary, I don't know what is.

We will only remain sane, only when we are clear of purpose and direction (at least on the SaaS side of things)

Or else, it's easy to be lost, pressured and even broken now living up to what we can do. And anything that makes us value less isn't worth it.

Things are changing top down (early adapters -> everyone else).

Time to embrace the change. Sooner the better.

PS: The above automation, even to make it, needs conviction, time and a mental framework how things needs to be done and what output you intended to get(hard part). Once we know, it's easy to get things done.

The hard part (direction and purpose) never changes.

Vibe coder, vibe marketer, vibe writer. Fine. Let’s also vibe some good life? Just saying.

A good piece of writing advice is that you have to write as you speak, 
and with tools like Wispr Flow (speech-to-text tool), I feel like you can just speak and it writes, 
So, more or less, it's in the speaking language. 

This week I wrote two posts with Wispr, and the engagement was pretty good. 

When I went back and read those posts, I did feel like they were more natural, conversational, and made a point across quickly(saved a ton of time).

PS: Even this post is written like that.

AI Anxiety - here is how I plan to deal with it and do better things with life.

A short read.

Hey Reader, I don’t know about you. But things changing in AI are not very exciting for me, yet. I am a marketer. Last year, I tried 50 tools and publ

Open article: AI Anxiety - A Personal Discourse by Manoj Surya • 5 min read

Forming an identity and believing is the hardest 

I published a book if someone says I’m a writer, it will take me a moment to realise it is true

I ran for 12 hours covering 82.4km and yet on the day of the run, at the start like, I felt I did not belong there

With marketing sometimes it works in 3 days sometimes in 3 months, easy to have self doubt if I know things well

The voice of imposter syndrome for any creator or a good operator is usually high

Over the years I learnt to see it as a background noise. Nothing more, noting less

If you have imposter syndrome despite results, just know it’s normal

Jack Dorsey cut down 4000 employees out of 10,000, even when their company is already profitable.

He used terms like " intelligent tools - instead of saying it's due to AI

Do those 4000 people won't get jobs?
I think they will.

I feel that with all this AI wave, this is the first time for our generation where we need to adapt to new things, or at least be aware of what is happening.

There are three types of people who may thrive
1) People who create things with AI (Creators) - but still learn the old business strategies (eg, Right to win principles)

2) People who Adapt to AI (Operators) - meaning they know which tool to use when, efficiently

3) 80% of the people who are unaffected because they aren't in the technology in the first place (the whole world isn't on LinkedIn, remember? It's only a small portion)

Here is what I feel we should focus on going forward

1) Companies should spend money on their staff on new tools to try. If not, employees should and must spend their own money and learn to stay relevant

2) Creators have to see how their tool can differentiate for a large audiance, or cater to a specific niche, so winning and growing is sustainable

3) Be healthy mentally and physically, because AI gives you burnout, because it spins out the output in a few seconds, and we haven't been used to making a million judgment calls in a short time. We need our body and mind to be healthy

4) Friends - yes, the show with this name helps, but having real friends will make more sense for us in the world. AI Wave is fine, but sitting on that wave on a boat with friends makes it better.

5) Lone time with the brain - We need to keep away from gadgets so our brains get resting time, thinking time, and time to wander. Without this, we are less human. 
Currently, the best way be more human is to do nothing, literally.
When is the last time you rememeber day dreams? Or looking at the stars? Or heard a bird chirp? (What's wrong with us, have you thought?

The way forward is AI Adaptation + being more human.

Let's accept that, change our day and week schedules for this. We all will be in a better place, as we should be.

PS: Jack's post link - https://lnkd.in/grHCdS3y

People are saying tech people are not writing code anymore, and software is cheap, and anyone can code. 

The thing that is not getting popular is that non-tech people can code or make apps.

The reason is that it's very complex for a non-tech person. Somebody who knows what goes where and what to ask, it's easier for them to get things done, but for a non-tech person, what to ask is also a very big deal. 

It gets very confusing very quickly. 

I did code in college, but then I had to relearn a lot of basics the last few months just to go and vibe code again. I thought I'd manually code, but then I started to vibe code because I know what to ask, at least the basics, and I'm so happy that I've spent a few months learning all the basics again, so I know what to ask and not get lost! I did try Replit, Loveable, to make some apps, but it gets into hallucination, and the apps were never made. 

Because I won’t know what's going on! It will throw an error, and I would never understand what it is. 

So, it's still a good idea to go learn to code, and learning to code is cheap in terms of cost. The only thing is time, but it's an asset. Once you learn, it will stay with you for a long time. I tried Scrimba, got a good discount, and I paid ₹4,000 for a year. I would spend about 30 minutes every day. That’s why it took me a very long time. 

For me, it’s like a hobby, a side project, or an interest. I do know that it's a skill that I need to develop, because going forward, apps may be more dependent on APIs than plugins or interfaces. 

If I want to create some workflow or AI agent or anything, so I am not dependent on the tech team or where I'm not paying a bomb for software, which I could instead make on a weekend. Go to Scrimba, it's cheap, or if you find something similar, you can try, but this is really good. 

If you are a non-tech person, just don't stress about learning quickly. Give it like 30 minutes every day, or like three times a week, it doesn't matter, as long as you're getting somewhere and getting an idea of what this all is about.If you want to do something really quickly, you can go and check Codefast by Mark Lou. I tried that too. That’s where I actually could understand the whole picture of what happens in a SaaS. Then I went to Scrimba and learned the details. 

I did enjoy it, so for me, I didn't really mind just going back to it every day for like 30 minutes or working on it. Just try their free modules and see if it is working for you. Things are changing a lot, especially not tech people. 

I feel like they should learn about some basics of tech. Otherwise, it might get hard, or you might be paying a lot for software. If you are in a startup and on a low budget, this is a good way to innovate and try to do things your way. 

PS: If you are a tech or non-tech person in SaaS, like to know your views on this.

I want to start a Mind-brush up Meetup for SaaS creators 
Will be divided into 3 segments

Basically, you will come, write down everything you want to do,
Brainstrome, discuss, write down information gaps
Write down your success criteria

all this in the first segment

Second segment -> You will reserach on google(not AI) for fact and information checks as needed, write down what you think, discuss

Third segment -> Use AI to compare results from your think and what it says.

You preserve your original thinking, while also using AI to validate, add up more flavour than you do it alone.

You will also be less biased.

Or you can do this at your home or office, individually, if you like this format (to much effort to gather people anyway)

With the tools getting faster, the advantage anyone would have is to slow down in thinking and look at which direction to take. Once decided, execute it fast with the tools.

Better Thinking =

Better mental health
Not stressed out
A mind that is happy
Have depth of the field they are working on at some level
Intuition 
Working with the right people
Managing timelines
Knowing what to cut down
Knowing what to prioritize
Staying sane while all this is happening

What do you think?

Achyut Menon "AK"

For 33 years, I have had a ringside view of one of the most consequential decisions a professional can make.

Coming home.

I am an Executive Search consultant and career transition specialist. I work with two groups of people. 

-Senior NRI professionals who want to return to India
-Companies that want to hire global talent without losing them in six months.

The work sounds straightforward. It rarely is.

Most NRI transitions fail not because of skills, but because of perceptions, positioning, and conversations that never happen. I fix that.

► WHAT I DO: I place senior professionals of Indian origin, returning from the US, UK, Singapore, UAE and beyond, into leadership roles in India's fastest-growing companies. I also advise MNCs and startups on building cross-border leadership teams.

► HOW I DO IT: Through a network of 5000+ companies and 550 recruitment partners across 51 countries, built over 3 decades. I do not just match CVs to job descriptions. I match careers to contexts.

► WHY IT WORKS: I have spent 40 years inside hiring rooms on both sides of the table.I know what Indian companies fear about NRI hires, and what NRI candidates consistently underestimate about coming home. That knowledge is the gap I close.

► WORK WITH ME. Executive Search mandates. Options Executive Search Private Limited. Career Coaching and NRI Transition Advisory -https://topmate.io/achyutmenon

If you are sending a connection request, a brief note on why you are connecting helps me respond meaningfully. Thank you.

► WHERE YOU'VE SEEN ME: Top 20 HR Influencers in India | Featured in SHRM, People Matters, Economic Times HR World | NHRD and NIPM Recognitions

► TYPES OF BUSINESSES I've HELPED:  IT, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals,
Banking & Financial Services, Automobiles & Infrastructure | Funded Startups & Family Business Groups

Career Architect

AskMenon.com is a one-to-one telephonic career coaching service where you can ask questions regarding YOUR career -you always wanted to ask but didn’t know whom to ask.

As a global hiring expert, I help candidates check their blind spots restricting their career transition and take a full charge to get ahead.

I also provide pointers to align your LinkedIn profile to your goals and target companies so you can unlock their true potential.

AskMenon Talent Advisory Services consults Startups regarding their hiring solutions by providing hourly consulting/recruiting services. This is a great way for business owners to get the recruitment services they actually need.

Feel free to schedule a call. Please visit http://askmenon.com/scheduletime.php.

Achyut "AK"

"Nobody told me returning home would feel like starting over."
 
After 14 years in Singapore, Priya had managed teams across 6 countries.
Led a $40M product launch.
Built a reputation that preceded her in every room.
 
Then she came back to India.
 
And spent 8 months being asked:
"But do you know the local market?"
 
Here is what I have seen in 30 years of executive search —
 
The NRI returning home does not have a skills gap.
They have a perception gap.
 
Companies want global thinking.
They just do not always recognise it when it walks through their door.
 
The ones who crack it fastest do one thing differently.
They stop translating their experience.
They start contextualising it.
 
Not "I managed a P&L of $40M."
But "I can show you how a $40M business decision gets made in a market like Singapore, and what that means for your expansion into SEA."
 
Same experience. Different frame. Completely different conversation.
 
What has been the hardest part of your own re-entry, or what have you seen others struggle with most?

Hyderabad’s GCC Boom: New Jobs or Just New Lanyards?

Hyderabad is back in the headlines.

Thousands of jobs. Global names. New office spaces in Gachibowli.

But step back.

Is this net-new employment for the ecosystem, or a reshuffling of existing talent under a different logo?

The Déjà Vu Effect

Take two recent examples.

UBS has been in Hyderabad for years. Last year they announced a significant headcount expansion. This year’s “3,000 jobs” narrative feels less like a greenfield entry and more like a continuation packaged as fresh news.

Sanofi too is not new. Their expanded office footprint signals growth, yes. But much of the workforce is already in place. The ramp-up appears incremental, not an overnight hiring surge.

This is expansion. Not explosion.

The Great Rebadging

The deeper shift is structural.

When GCCs hire, where is the talent coming from?

A large portion appears to be lateral movement from IT services firms.

 Same engineers. Same domain knowledge. Different payroll.
IT services trim discretionary exposure.

GCCs internalise high-value work in AI, data, security.

Volume reduces in one pocket. Value consolidates in another.

The Narrative Trap

The optics suggest a jobs engine running at full throttle

On the ground, the ecosystem story looks more measured.

New badge. Same commute.
Different cost center.

The real question is not whether GCCs are growing. They clearly are.

The sharper question is this:
Is Hyderabad creating new capability, new IP, new leadership depth?

Or are we largely reallocating existing talent within the same pond?

Because that difference will determine whether this is a five-year headline cycle
or a twenty-year structural transformation.

800% job growth in nine months.
Not in coding.
Not in AI engineering.
Not in data science.

In a role most people have never heard of.
Forward deployed engineers.

Think of them as the human bridge between what AI can do and what a business actually needs it to do.

They sit between the technology company and the client. They translate capability into adoption.

 They make AI work for people who will never understand how it works.

And demand for them just grew 800% in nine months.

Here is why this matters more than any AI layoff headline.

The bottleneck in the AI economy has shifted.
It is no longer about building the technology.

It is about making it work for the rest of us.
And the skills that crack that problem are not what anyone predicted.

Autodesk analysed nearly three million job postings. The finding stopped me.

Design skills have now overtaken coding as the most in demand skill in AI roles.

Communication, leadership, empathy and collaboration are in the top ten.

The most valuable person in the AI economy is not the one who built the model.

It is the one who can walk into a room of confused, resistant humans and make the technology actually land.

Now here is where this gets personal for me.

After three decades in executive search, I have been watching India's GCCs invest heavily in AI tools.
The tools are there.
The adoption is not.

Because the people who can bridge that gap, who have lived at the intersection of technology and human behaviour in global markets, are still sitting in Singapore, London and San Francisco.

They are called NRIs.

And India's AI adoption problem is, at its core, an NRI hiring opportunity that nobody is framing correctly yet.

The 800% job boom is happening in the West.
The equivalent need exists right here.
We just have not named the role yet.

What do you think - is India ready to hire for human centred AI skills, or are we still chasing the wrong profile?

The pay premium for switching jobs just hit its lowest point since 2020.
1.9% points.

That's the gap between what job-changers and job-stayers are earning, according to ADP Research for January 2026.

Two years ago, that gap was 8.4% points.

The Great Resignation is behind us. What we have now is the Big Stay. Low hiring, low firing, and a job market where searches are up 31% but new postings remain flat.

I've watched hiring cycles for four decades. This kind of reset changes how you should think about your career, not just this year, but for the next few years.

Don't switch for a marginal bump. The math has changed. 

Your real leverage right now is internal. Specialize in areas where talent is scarce, because that's where the premium still exists.

And think in longer cycles. This is Test cricket, not T20.

The gold rush is over. The builders win from here.

I've written a longer piece on what this means in practice, for salary negotiation, career planning, and for NRIs watching the India opportunity quietly widen on the side.

What are you seeing on the ground? Are candidates more cautious about switching right now?

What the collapse of the job-switching premium means for your career in 2026 and beyond Four years ago, switching jobs was the smartest career move yo

Open article: The Great Job Switch is over. Welcome to the era of the Big Stay. by Achyut Menon "AK" • 4 min read

The Great Job Switch is over. Welcome to the era of the Big Stay.

McKinsey & Company  just announced it is moving from selling advice to underwriting outcomes.

Recruiters have been doing this for decades.
We just never called it that.

In contingent recruitment, the model has always been brutally simple.

No hire.
No fee.

You can map the market for 60 days.
Interview 40 candidates.
Present a strong shortlist.

If the role is not closed, you earn zero.

That is pure outcome underwriting.

Executive search evolved this further. Retainers and staged payments were introduced not to reduce accountability, but to align commitment. The client shares risk upfront. The search firm commits brand, research depth and access. But the real test remains the same.

Did the hire create impact?

Now consulting is discovering something recruiters have lived with for years.

Advice is easier to sell than accountability.

In a world where AI can generate frameworks, benchmarking reports and strategy decks in minutes, analysis is becoming abundant. What remains scarce is execution and measurable business impact.

So the language shifts.

From “we recommend”
To “we underwrite.”

From “here is the presentation”
To “here is the business case we both stand behind.”

This is not about McKinsey alone. It is about the future of professional services.

Recruitment will not be spared either.

If we only fill roles, we will be commoditized.
If we connect leadership hires to business outcomes, we stay strategic.

The next decade will reward firms that can answer one hard question:

What measurable value did you create?

Not how many resumes.
Not how many slides.

Outcome.

The rest is noise.

Curious to hear your view. Is outcome based pricing becoming the default across advisory services?

The Economist says the bottom has fallen out of the job market for graduates. The data is real. The conclusion is incomplete. 

Here's what's actually happening and what to do about it.

The headline is dramatic, the diagnosis is partly right, but the conclusion is dangerous for a whole generation.

Across the West, recent graduates are losing the privileged position their degrees once guaranteed. In some markets their unemployment rate now exceeds the average. The college wage "safety premium" has started to decline, and traditional absorbers of young talent ,finance, law, media, have been stagnant for over a decade.

But three things are getting lost in the noise.

First, this is not simply "AI killed your job." AI has mostly exposed structural issues building for years: too many generic degrees, too little investment in real skills, and employers clinging to risk‑averse hiring instead of building early‑career pipelines.

Second, employers are already signalling the way out. Degree requirements are being dropped. Skills‑first hiring is gaining ground. Non‑graduates with digital fluency are now competing effectively for roles that once demanded a degree.

Third, the crisis is uneven, not universal. Youth unemployment is brutal in some regions, milder in others. This is a design problem in how we transition people from classroom to workplace not the end of work itself.

From where I sit in executive search, the pattern is clear.

Employers claim a "talent shortage" at mid‑career, yet quietly cut investment in entry‑level hiring and mentoring. Universities sell employability, but measure success in enrolments and grades , not 3‑year career outcomes. Young people are told to collect credentials, when the market now pays for demonstrable capability.

The question is not "Are graduates screwed?" but "Who helps them re-tool fastest?"

Three shifts I see working on the ground:

University is one input, not a ticket. Complement it with projects, portfolios and internships that prove value in digital, data and customer‑facing work.

Career planning to career prototyping. Shorter bets, more experiments, willingness to start in smaller firms or new geographies rather than waiting for the perfect brand name.

Policymakers and employers  invest in apprenticeships, bootcamps tied to real vacancies, and mid‑career reskilling. Stop subsidising more degrees.

The bottom has not fallen out of the job market.

It has fallen out of an old social contract: "Study hard, get a degree, and the system will look after you."

The new contract is harsher, but more honest: build skills the market values, show you can create outcomes, keep learning faster than technology changes.

Not a comforting slogan. But a path forward,for graduates, employers, and the economies that depend on both.

What are you seeing on the ground  from hiring managers, young professionals, parents? 

I'd like to know.

153 people voted this week.

Most chose the logical answers.

Salary too high.
Local knowledge gap.

All true. All rational.

But after three decades in executive search, I can tell you this:

The real objection is often not the one written in the feedback note.
It is the one felt in the room.

Trust.
Context.
Belonging.

Returning NRIs do not lose out because of capability. They lose out because of calibration.

And companies do not hesitate because of compensation alone. They hesitate because they are unsure whether the leader will stay, adapt, and build in the Indian context.

This week’s newsletter goes deeper.
• What hiring managers actually worry about
 • What returning professionals are struggling with
 • What successful NRI transitions do differently
 • And what companies must change on their side

If you are planning a return, or hiring someone who is, this is worth five minutes of honest reflection.

The honest answer from three decades of executive search - and 153 people who voted this week. This week I ran a poll on LinkedIn. The question: what 

Open article: Why companies really hesitate to hire returning NRIs. And what you can do about it. by Achyut Menon "AK" • 5 min read

Why companies really hesitate to hire returning NRIs. And what you can do about it.

In cricket, the game changed the day T20 arrived.

Not because the ball or the bat changed. But because the format did. 

Suddenly, skills that took years to master, classical technique, and patient accumulation were no longer enough on their own. You needed to orchestrate. Read the match. Deploy the right player at the right moment.

AI agents are doing the same thing to work.
I spent part of my weekend at a webinar by Vaibhav Sisinty on the future of work. No hype. No doomsday. Just a clear-eyed look at what is already unfolding in real organisations.

We are moving from prompts to agents. Not tools that answer questions. Systems that execute outcomes.

The part that made me sit up: customised agents built for specific workflows. Voice agents. Entire apps built on agent logic. 

One example: an executive assistant agent that reads your emails, attends meetings on your behalf, drafts responses in your tone, prioritises by business context and follows up automatically.

That is not a feature. That is a function that used to belong to a person.

Then came agent swarms. Multiple specialised agents collaborating toward a single goal. Think of it like a well-drilled fielding unit. One researches. One analyses. One writes. One validates. One executes. A complex research task that would normally take days was done in under ten minutes by ten coordinated agents.

Vaibhav mapped five levels of AI application. Most professionals are still at level one, prompting. The edge is at the higher levels, where you design workflows, manage agents and build systems that do the work.

One line stayed with me long after the session ended:

Eighty percent of job tasks will be done by agents. Twenty percent of professionals will manage those agents.

Now here is where I would add a pause.

In thirty years of executive search, I have seen many "this changes everything" moments. And they did change things, just not always in the way predicted, and rarely as fast as promised. 

The professionals who navigated those shifts well were not the ones who panicked or ignored the change. They were the ones who quietly upgraded their judgment while others were still debating the threat.

Agents will not replace people who understand business outcomes. They will replace people who only execute tasks without understanding why.

The emerging role Vaibhav describes, the AI Generalist, resonates with me. 
-Someone who understands what the business needs and knows how to deploy AI tools, models and agents to deliver it. 
-Senior leaders will increasingly manage a mix of people, AI strategists and AI generalists.

What you have done in the past no longer guarantees relevance. How you direct intelligence will.

The question worth sitting with this Sunday:

Are you still playing Test cricket in a T20 world? Or are you learning to read the match differently?

Curious how you are thinking about this, especially those of you leading teams or making hiring decisions right now.

1 in 4 job seekers have been searching for over six months.

And AI hasn't even fully hit yet.

Here's what I'm seeing from the executive search side:

Companies are offshoring mid-level roles to India, Poland, and LATAM ,not just for cost savings, but because visa constraints make it easier. 

At the same time, they're preemptively cutting headcount based on what AI *promises* to deliver, not what it actually does today.

The result? 

A double squeeze on professionals. Offshoring from one side. Automation anxiety from the other.

Anthropic's CEO has warned of 10–20% unemployment spikes and up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs disappearing in the coming years. 

Whether that timeline is right or not, the direction is clear.

So what separates the professionals who thrive from those who get squeezed?

One thing: they stop competing with AI and start compounding with it.

The highest-value people I place right now aren't the ones with the most credentials. 

They're the ones who combine deep domain expertise with AI fluency,  and pair that with judgment, creativity, and the ability to navigate ambiguity.

That combination is becoming the new premium skill set.

My advice to every professional I speak with:

Audit your role honestly.


- If 60% of your week is routine analysis, content generation, or data processing,a that work is on a countdown. 

-Shift your energy toward the parts machines can't replicate: strategy, relationships, ethical judgment, knowing which problems actually matter.

The career playbook has changed. Waiting it out is not a strategy.

What are you seeing in your industry?

 I'd love to hear whether this matches your experience.

#FutureOfWork #AIinWorkforce #CareerStrategy #TalentAcquisition

153 people voted. 71% chose the two safest answers.

Here is what 33 years of search tells me they missed.

Salary expectations too high -36%
Local market knowledge gap - 35%

Both real. Both solvable in 90 days.
Neither is the real reason.

The two options that got fewest votes:

Fear they will leave again -16%
Bias toward known names -14%
Just 30% combined.

Yet in my experience, these two decide more NRI hiring outcomes than anything else.

Here is why.

Salary and knowledge gaps are stated objections.
Fear and bias are felt objections.
Stated objections get discussed in debrief calls.
Felt objections never get said out loud.

And what never gets said, never gets resolved.

I have sat in hundreds of hiring rooms over three decades. The candidate clears every technical bar.

The panel nods. Then someone says, "let us keep looking."

That is not a knowledge gap talking.
That is risk aversion dressed as diligence.

The NRI candidates who crack this fastest do one thing instinctively.
They make the interviewer feel safe, not impressed.

They lead with curiosity about the business, not credentials from abroad. They ask about the problem before they offer the solution. They make the hiring manager feel like a partner, not a gatekeeper being auditioned.

In cricket terms, even the most talented overseas player reads the dressing room before he reads the pitch.

Same game. Different rules of belonging.

The poll still has 4 days to run, curious whether the pattern shifts.

Which felt objection have you encountered most, in your own transition, or in your hiring decisions?

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