Arun Zacharia — CEO

As a Global Talent Acquisition Leader, my focus is on moving beyond traditional recruiting to architect AI-native talent functions that serve as a core competitive advantage. I build scalable, autonomous, and data-driven hiring engines designed to secure the top 1% of global talent. At the AI-native conglomerate RGG, I lead this transformation and pioneer a skills based hiring. My approach is built on a simple premise: human expertise augmented by intelligent automation. My Core Pillars: • Player-Coach Execution: I lead from the front. I personally own and drive all executive searches and critical 0-to-1 hires while mentoring a world-class global recruiting team to meet aggressive, month-over-month hiring targets. My role is to both hunt and build a team of hunters. • AI-Native Strategy (I don't just use AI; I build it): To achieve scale, I design and deploy multi-agentic AI workflows (leveraging Google AI Studio, Claude, Make.com, n8n) that automate 80% of manual sourcing and 90% of pre-screening. This allows my team to focus exclusively on high-value human interaction and closing elite candidates. • Skills-Based & Unbiased Hiring: To ensure quality at scale, I architect skills-based assessment frameworks that eliminate bias and predict on-the-job performance. This approach has led to a 46% improvement in hiring efficiency while demonstrably increasing the quality of hire. • Data-Driven Stakeholder Management: I partner directly with the C-suite to translate business goals into talent strategy. Using predictive analytics and transparent dashboards, I provide clear, data-driven insights that inform everything from workforce planning to employer branding. As W. Edwards Deming said, "Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." I thrive on solving complex talent challenges across SaaS, Software, e-Commerce, AI/LLMs, Telecom, Networking, Cybersecurity, and FinTech/Investment portfolios. Specialties: Global Talent Acquisition, AI-Native Tools & Process Automation, Data-Driven Recruiting Strategy, RAG & Agentic AI Automation, Hands-on 360 Recruiting, Sourcing, Employer Branding, Data-Driven Insights, Skills-Based Hiring, Executive Leadership, Prompt Engineering, M&A Merger and Acquisition Talent Integration.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Global Talent Acquisition Leader specializing in AI-driven recruitment strategies across multiple industries.

Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Experience: 10 yrs 7 mos

Skills

Global Talent Acquisition
Ai-native Strategy
Skills-based Hiring

Career Highlights

Pioneered AI-native talent acquisition strategies.
Achieved 46% improvement in hiring efficiency.
Led global recruitment for high-growth organizations.

Work Experience

Puffy

Head of Global Talent Acquisition, AI in TA & Branding (1 yr 11 mos)

RGG Capital

Senior Manager Talent Acquisition (1 yr 11 mos)

Sandvine

Manager, Global Talent Acquisition (5 yrs 7 mos)

Senior Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding Specialist (4 yrs 4 mos)

Infinite Computer Solutions

Talent Acquisition & Business Ops - R&D PES ( Product Engineering Services ) (1 yr 7 mos)

Orion Corporate Alliance Pvt. Ltd.

Manager, Talent Acquisition (1 yr 6 mos)

Education

Applied AI at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Master's degree at Athabasca University

Bachelor of Engineering (BE) at Anna University Chennai

Science at ICSE

Arun Zacharia

CEO

Dubai, United Arab Emirates10 yrs 7 mos experience

AI ML PractitionerAI Enabled

Key Highlights

Pioneered AI-native talent acquisition strategies.
Achieved 46% improvement in hiring efficiency.
Led global recruitment for high-growth organizations.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Global Talent Acquisition Leader specializing in AI-driven recruitment strategies across multiple industries.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

Global Talent AcquisitionAi-native StrategySkills-based Hiring

Other Skills

Data-Driven InsightsStrategic ThinkingAI AgentsProcess AutomationFinTechTechnical RecruitingSales RecruitmentM&A ExperienceStakeholder ManagementData CentersNetworkingStaffing ServicesAgency Relationship ManagementStaff Augmentation360 Desk

About

Experience

10 yrs 7 mos

Total Experience

2 yrs 10 mos

Average Tenure

1 yr 11 mos

Current Experience

Puffy

Head of Global Talent Acquisition, AI in TA & Branding

Jun 2024 – Present · 1 yr 11 mos · Remote

Reporting directly to the CEO, I architect and lead the end-to-end talent acquisition and employer branding function across a diverse portfolio, from stealth ventures to scaling companies. We're an AI-native group operating in North America (US, Canada) and EMEA.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership & C-Suite Partnership: Act as a strategic advisor to the CEO and portfolio leadership. Translate business goals into agile hiring strategies, managing stakeholder expectations through a data-driven, transparent communication framework.
Achieving annual and monthly hiring Goals, KPI’s and Targets for scaling organizations and 0-1 ventures.
Data & Insights: Develop and deploy recruitment analytics dashboards to inform leadership on hiring trends, performance metrics and predictive analytics insights.
Team Leadership & Mentorship: Lead and develop a high-performing distributed team of specialists with empathy and a feedforward approach. Foster a culture of excellence and continuous learning, driving a 15% MoM increase in team productivity.
Player-Coach Execution: Personally own all executive-level searches and critical founding hires while ensuring the team meets aggressive month-over-month hiring targets across the portfolio.
Pioneered a Multi-Agentic AI Recruiting System: Designed and built a suite of autonomous AI agents that reduced time-to-hire by 18% and cut manual sourcing efforts by 80%.
Architected a Skills-Based Hiring Framework: Led a full-scale redesign of the recruitment lifecycle, achieving a 46% improvement in hiring efficiency by implementing a multi-stage assessment process including psychometric and role-based skills challenges.
Employer Branding: Elevate Puffy’s global reputation, ensuring compelling and inclusive candidate experiences at every touchpoint.
Lead the long-term workforce planning.

Data-Driven InsightsStrategic ThinkingGlobal Talent AcquisitionAI-Native Strategy

Rgg capital

Senior Manager Talent Acquisition

Jun 2024 – Present · 1 yr 11 mos · Dubai, United Arab Emirates · On-site

FinTechGlobal Talent Acquisition

Sandvine

2 roles

Manager, Global Talent Acquisition

Promoted

Oct 2018 – May 2024 · 5 yrs 7 mos · Waterloo, Ontario, Canada · Remote

Owned the global talent acquisition function, reporting to the CAO. I was tasked with architecting the talent strategy to hyperscale the organization from a mid-sized company to a 1000+ employee global enterprise across 40+ countries (North America, Europe, UK, Middle East, Japan, India and APAC).
Hyper-Growth Leadership: Scaled and led a high-performing global team of up to 11, including regional leads, TA specialists, and onboarding/branding functions. We consistently met and exceeded an annual hiring target of 360+ hires, reaching up to 400 hires in a peak year.
Strategic Business Partnership: Drove 15% Annual Revenue Growth via Talent Strategy. Owned and executed a global hiring plan that directly enabled business growth targets while simultaneously reducing recruitment costs by 14% YoY. I also led the post-M&A talent integration for the SV-Procera merger.
Data-Driven Process Improvement: Increased overall hiring efficiency by 11% by implementing data-driven insights and process improvements, enabling us to fulfill hiring needs for up to 400 hires annually with increased speed and quality.
Executive Stakeholder Management: Partnered directly with C-level executives and VPs to fulfill complex, evolving hiring needs for volume-based niche skills in Telecom, Networking, and AI.
Key Skills: Strategic Talent Planning • Global Recruitment Expertise • Employer Branding and Positioning • Talent Analytics and Metrics • AI & Hi-Tech Integration • HRIS Integration • Merger & Acquisition Experience • Stakeholder Management • Talent Pipeline Development • GDPR, Compliance and Regulatory Knowledge • ISO audit champion for Recruitment, Onboarding & Criminal/Background verifications • Vendor Management•Continuous Learning
HR Technology: Ultipro (UKG) • Taleo • Workday • Oracle HR • Salesforce • Data analytics • MS Excel & Office Suite • SharePoint • OneDrive • Workplace

Technical RecruitingSales RecruitmentGlobal Talent Acquisition

Senior Talent Acquisition & Employer Branding Specialist

Jun 2014 – Oct 2018 · 4 yrs 4 mos · Waterloo, Ontario, Canada · Remote

Hiring for Sandvine's various functional groups such as R&D Software Product, Sales, G&A and Customer Success.
Hyper-scaling phase: “Start-up to Grown-up” hiring with ultra-quick responses, attention to detail and maintaining Quality-Of-Hire while handling the volume.
Increased talent pipelines and effectively fill open positions through effective Networking, Sourcing & Talent Engagement efforts.
Manage all leadership communications. Develops resolutions to complex staffing problems that require frequent use of creativity, adaptability and challenging stance.
Domain Strength: Analytics | Data Science [Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence] | Cloud & Virtualization | Networking | Telecom.
Hiring region for Global positions in the AMERICAS, EMEA and JAPAC. Build talent pipelines and effectively fill open positions through effective Networking, Sourcing & Talent Engagement efforts.
Employer Branding, EVP development project and social media-based recruitment marketing initiatives lead
Data-Driven Recruitment Practitioner!
Experience into campus hiring from Top–Premier Institutes like the University of Waterloo, University of Lund, Gothenburg University, IIT , NIT etc.

Infinite computer solutions

Talent Acquisition & Business Ops - R&D PES ( Product Engineering Services )

Nov 2012 – Jun 2014 · 1 yr 7 mos · Greater Bengaluru Area · On-site

Managed a 360-degree recruitment desk : Started as an individual contributor and promoted to lead the staffinh for the R&D PES II Business Unit (Datacenter, Telecom / Networking, Datacom Product development vertical)
Start-up to Grown-up phase: Owned the BU level hiring & growth from 2 to 90 team members in 15 months
Business Operations, Staffing management & Stakeholder Management (clients like Dell Data Centers, Cisco, Alcatel, Qualcomm, Ericsson, Diametriq/Intellinet, Kodiak and stealth-mode start-ups.)
Strategize different methods to increase talent retention rate.
Increased the hiring/headcount profit margin of the B.U to 34% in a short span (14 months).
Managed all hiring related communications with internal and external stakeholders.

Data CentersNetworking

Orion corporate alliance pvt. ltd.

Manager, Talent Acquisition

Dec 2010 – Jun 2012 · 1 yr 6 mos · Greater Chennai Area · On-site

Managed a 360-degree recruitment desk, handling the full lifecycle from client scouting to candidate closing in a staff augmentation model for clients like HCL and IBM. Developed the business, recruited and grew the team to 14 TA for South Zone staffing ops
Responsible for end to end recruitment process for IT/ ITeS vertical.
Setting goals for the team, tracking progress and various other KPI metrics such as Time-To-Fill and Cost-per-Hire.
Took care of management reporting, PO and invoice processes.
Administration – Attendance, formation of Leave policies and Incentive scheme preparation.

Staffing ServicesAgency Relationship Management