AI, India and agility: Randstad Digital’s playbook for the next wave of tech talent

Randstad Digital, the specialised digital solutions and technology talent company of Dutch parent Randstad, services 300 of the global Fortune 500 companies. In May last year, the company acquired Torc—an AI-powered talent marketplace platform with a specific focus on the LATAM, US, and India regions. With nearly $2.4 billion in revenue and five global delivery centres, the company looks at talent across industry verticals such as BFSI, Healthcare, Technology, Consumer and Retail, Aerospace, Automobile and Defence, and Life Sciences. It focuses on talent for areas such as Customer Experience, Data & Analytics, Digital Product Engineering, and Cloud & Infrastructure.

In January this year, the company announced that US-based Graig Paglieri would take over as Chief Executive. He has been with the group for nearly a decade. In an exclusive conversation with Fortune India during his visit, Paglieri outlined the global talent management landscape amidst current geopolitical uncertainty and increasing trade barriers.

Fortune India: Since taking over the company, could you share what are your current priorities and the changes that Randstad Digital is undergoing?  

Graig Paglieri: I had the opportunity here just starting at the beginning of the year to take the reins and really continue to build off on what's been started. So some of the big shifts and changes that we made are much more in-depth with our services.  So rather than,  just being reactive and responding to everything we hear in the market from our clients, which is more of a staffing mindset, we are focusing on  how do we go deeper into data and data engineering, into cloud and infrastructure, staying focused on customer experience , and how do we ensure we have the expertise behind that?. What you see right here in Bangalore as well as Hyderabad, we have a delivery centre similar to this in Eastern Europe and Romania. We have got Latin America and Mexico covered, in Mexico as well as in Portugal.  

But that service line focus is a very important shift, and we are  also being much more customer-centric in how we organize our clients.   So industry group focus, which is something we're a little bit more geo-market specific instead of really starting from the outside in. But global talent capacity is obviously also so critical in this field, and that needs to continue. From a bigger picture perspective, a major initiative is also ensuring that we're platform-centric in how we scale. What I mean by that, is not just throwing out a consulting word, but we have to shift our operating model and ensure that we're automating, we're AI-driven, and not just by point tools, but by having a central platform in how we engage talent and we attract them to be part of Ranstad Digital.   

Fortune India: Could you talk to us about how the Torc acquisition has played out and its integration and will you keep the brand separate?  

Graig Paglieri :  We did an acquisition of a technology, AI-driven platform called Torc and Torc will help connect all of Ranstad Digital globally from a talent perspective, creating a much more effective, efficient experience with talent, and ultimately the opportunity for clients to engage and access talent on that platform.  So the end state is not 100% digitizing the business by any stretch, but empowering our great teams and capabilities and expertise, like we have here in India under Milind Shah [MD, Randstad Digital India], and the market growth that we're experiencing, supported by our global delivery centres, powered by the Torc platform. I can see some more branding work overtime, but talent is going to be attracted to Ranstad Digital.  It's really the underpinning from a technological standpoint. 

Fortune India:  How do geographical markets currently stack up for the company and where are the big growth opportunities? 

Graig Paglieri : The US is our biggest market. That's a little over 50% of Ranstad Digital, followed by continental Europe, would be the next biggest piece. In Australia, we have a nice business there as well.  UK's a small market for us but  India now by far is our fastest growing sector, high, double-digit growth. In Japan and China are small and pretty client specific ,  it's not a main strategy at the moment.   

Fortune India : With artificial intelligence penetrating at a fast rate , how is the industry needle moving in terms of talent v/s AI amidst fear of job losses?  

Graig Paglieri : I think there is worry because there's just a lot of uncertainty and I think a lot of organizations are trying to navigate it right now and there are different degrees of maturity.  I think, even with some of the big tech companies that you see that are doing cuts, what often gets missed in the headlines are the additional thousands of roles they're hiring in AI to build agentic AI capability. I also think another misnomer around jobs going away or job loss, it's not as much. I think clearly, companies don't need volumes of roles,  as they have in the past,  so that the demand might be a little less, but they're not eliminating people, there's a lot of redistribution again, more so than just jobs going away. 

 Certainly, the non-tech sectors are much more susceptible tocement type automation, but with tech, there's still so much change and innovation that's happening. Companies are realizing that they have to invest to find out what it means for them.  

Fortune India : How are the dynamics of global demand and supply of talent currently playing out and global capacity centre models strengthening across the world and more so in India?  

Graig Paglieri: It's huge, I mean, again, that's one of the big feeders for the growth that we're serving and seeing here. But the number of big companies in the US that are shifting and building their own capabilities in India because it is a global market now, it's not just a wage arbitrage opportunity. It is a global value generating centre city economy that I think has happened really rapidly. The talent is superb and it's a shift to innovation, as compared to, again, cost savings, shared services, outsourcing your testing function.