GCCs Are the New Campus Recruiters: How to Win Their Drives

Placement cells in Hyderabad reported roughly three times as many Global Capability Centres running campus drives in 2025-26 compared to the previous year, according to Times of India coverage of that city’s placement season. Three times in a single cycle is not a gradual trend. It is a signal that GCCs have crossed some threshold in how seriously they treat campus hiring as a talent pipeline.

I build enterprise relationships for a living, and the question I kept hearing from placement heads through that same season was not “should we go after GCCs?” Most had already accepted that the market had shifted. The question was more specific: how do we get a GCC to visit, and once they do, how do we ensure our students can clear their rounds? Those are the questions this article is for.

The drive that has changed shape

GCC fresher hiring in India rose by approximately 48 percent in FY25, reaching an estimated 1.33 lakh freshers, according to Times of India reporting from January 2025. The growth has been consistent, and it is happening at exactly the moment when traditional IT-services bulk intake has become more selective at most campuses.

The reason for the GCC expansion into campus hiring is structural. A Global Capability Centre is not an outsourcing vendor delivering a client’s project. It is the parent company’s own team, building its own systems in India. When a bank runs a GCC in Pune or a technology firm runs one in Hyderabad, the people there are working on the firm’s actual product. A fresher hired into that team is expected to contribute to real deliverables within weeks of joining.

That changes the nature of the hire. The company cannot take a large cohort into a common training pool and decide later where each person goes. It needs to know before the offer whether the student can do the specific job. This is why GCC campus drives look and feel different from the IT-services model most placement programs were built around, and why the preparation a college builds for one does not automatically transfer to the other.

Where GCC screening differs from the IT-services drive

The IT-services campus drive that shaped the last two decades had a recognisable structure. A large aptitude round filtered a wide cohort. A technical round assessed general coding ability. An HR round rarely blocked anyone. The company would take the selected batch into a common training program and assign projects later. The whole model was built around trainability at scale.

GCC drives run on different logic, and the structure reflects it.

Most GCC drives run four to five rounds. A communication assessment conducted in English typically comes first or runs in parallel with the aptitude test. At BFSI GCCs and technology GCCs, this is not a formality. The team the student will join works closely with headquarters in London, New York, or Singapore. Precision in English, the ability to explain technical work clearly, and the capacity to communicate under time pressure are genuine requirements, assessed in a scored round.

The technical round is role-specific in a way the IT-services version is not. A data engineering role at a BFSI GCC tests SQL, data pipeline logic, and numerical problem-solving. A software development role at a technology GCC tests coding in Python or Java alongside system design fundamentals. A risk analytics role tests quantitative modelling and statistical reasoning. A student who prepared for a single general coding test will clear the round for one GCC type and struggle with another. The aptitude component is correspondingly demanding, assessing reasoning in the context of real work rather than general trainability patterns.

Many GCC drives, particularly for AI, data science, and analytics roles, include a problem-framing round after the technical assessment. The task is not to produce a working solution from memory but to describe, clearly and logically, how you would approach a business problem with data. The interviewer evaluates the thinking, not the output.

The behavioural interview that closes most GCC drives is substantive. It looks for evidence of ownership, the ability to communicate across levels, and the capacity to work with some autonomy. Most campus preparation programs treat the HR round as a low-stakes formality. At a GCC, it is where candidates who cleared the technical rounds are differentiated.

What two-thirds of GCC roles now require

A July 2026 Economic Times report found that close to two-thirds of new GCC roles in India now require AI, data, or automation skills, up from approximately 11 percent of GCC roles in 2021. The shift reflects a change in what GCCs are built to do: they have moved from cost-arbitrage delivery to product and platform innovation, and the skills they hire for have followed.

The headline figure matters for understanding the direction. The more actionable decomposition for a placement cell is by sector, because the screen changes meaningfully between GCC types.

GCC type	Who runs them	Common fresher roles	Primary screen emphasis
BFSI	Banks, insurance firms, fintech companies	Data analyst, risk analyst, operations analyst	Quantitative aptitude, SQL, data interpretation, English communication
Technology	Software, internet, and platform companies	SDE, data engineer, QA engineer, ML engineer	Coding in Python or Java, system design basics, AI problem-framing
Manufacturing / engineering	Industrial, auto, and electronics multinationals	Embedded systems engineer, process engineer, CAD analyst	Domain fundamentals, logical reasoning, problem decomposition
Healthcare / pharma	Pharma and health-tech multinationals	Data analyst, clinical data manager, regulatory analyst	Data interpretation, domain knowledge, structured communication

A college that builds a single GCC preparation track and runs it across all branches is preparing for none of the sectors particularly well. The segmentation should map each student group to the GCC type it can realistically target.

Four preparation shifts that make the difference

Across the institutions we work with, the colleges that have moved into GCC placements consistently share a small set of practices. None of them require a complete overhaul of what the placement cell already does.

Map which GCCs operate in your geography before outreach begins. GCC campus hiring follows geography and relationship. A college in Coimbatore has a different set of reachable companies than a college in Bhubaneswar, and the sectors differ. Mapping means knowing which GCCs are within a practical travel or pool-drive radius, which run campus or pool drives at colleges in a comparable tier, and what roles those drives fill. This is an afternoon of research most placement cells have not done, because the tradition was to wait for companies to make contact. GCCs, particularly first-time GCC recruiters, do not always reach out to campuses that have not made themselves visible as credible sources.

Segment the cohort by sector-fit, not by degree branch. Most colleges assign GCC preparation to CSE and IT students by default and do not extend it to ECE, EEE, or Mech. The result is that a significant part of the cohort is left out of a growing placement pool. ECE students with strong quantitative aptitude and communication are competitive for BFSI and manufacturing GCC roles. Mech students with sound logical reasoning have cleared engineering GCC rounds at several institutions we have worked with. The segmentation should be based on which screen each student segment can realistically target, not on the branch category it belongs to.

Build the communication and behavioural track on the same schedule as the technical track. The most common gap in college GCC preparation is not in technical depth. It is in the communication and behavioural component. GCC behavioral rounds are substantive: they look for structured thinking, evidence of initiative, and the ability to communicate in English about work you have done. That combination requires consistent practice across the preparation period. A two-week run before the drive calendar opens is not enough to move the needle.

Approach GCCs with a pre-screened shortlist, not a brochure. The effective outreach to a GCC names the roles the college believes its students are a fit for, describes the cohort’s relevant profile, and attaches a shortlist of students assessed against the company’s screening criteria. This is different from an email with a NIRF rank and a general request. GCC recruitment teams are choosing among many campus approaches. A shortlist that lowers their cost and risk per visit is easy to act on. A brochure with general statistics is not.

A placement cell in Rajasthan that started with the map

An engineering college in Rajasthan with approximately 2,200 students across CSE, ECE, and Mech branches came into FY25 with no GCC participation on campus. The placement cell had a working program for IT-services drives and reasonable aptitude training, but had never systematically identified which GCCs were within reach.

The placement head’s first decision after the FY24 review was not to expand the company outreach list. It was to build the map. The cell spent two weeks identifying GCCs that operated in or near the cities their alumni most frequently moved to. The research surfaced seven companies: four in BFSI and three in technology sectors, all within a reasonable pool-drive distance from the campus.

The cell then spent a week researching each company’s hiring pattern: what roles they had filled with freshers in recent cycles, what the screening structure looked like, and whether any had run pool drives at colleges of comparable profile in the region. A baseline assessment of the cohort followed and gave them a working picture of where students stood against each company’s criteria.

Roughly 260 students met the quantitative aptitude threshold for the BFSI drives. Of those, about 190 had the English communication level those drives specifically assessed. About 130 CSE students met the technical foundation for the technology GCC rounds.

The preparation ran two parallel tracks over 60 days. The BFSI cohort worked on SQL, data interpretation exercises, and structured communication practice using BFSI operations scenarios. The tech cohort worked on Python, basic system design, and problem-framing exercises that mirrored the case-based round format those companies used. Both groups ran practice sessions on the behavioural component, treating it with the same seriousness as the technical rounds.

By the time the cell made outreach, it had a tailored shortlist for three of the seven identified companies, each scored against that company’s reported criteria. Two of the three ran drives from those shortlists. The packages in both drives ran significantly above what the IT-services firms had offered the prior year.

The outcome was not the result of a new relationship or a larger budget. It was the result of starting with the map, building the evidence, and making a specific ask.

Thirty days, sixty days, ninety days

The sequence below reflects what works across the institutions that go from zero GCC participation to a productive first season. It assumes an existing placement program and adds the GCC-specific layer to it.

In the first thirty days, the task is information and baseline. Identify which GCCs operate in your geography: which companies, which sectors, and whether they run campus or pool drives at colleges comparable to yours. A working map of six to ten reachable companies with sector profiles is enough to start. Run a baseline assessment of the cohort across the three dimensions GCC drives test: quantitative aptitude, technical fundamentals at the branch-and-sector level, and English communication. The baseline is a diagnostic, not a filter. It shows you where the preparation effort needs to concentrate and which student segments are closest to the bar for each GCC type.

In days thirty-one through sixty, close the primary gaps by segment. Technical gaps at the domain level respond well to focused practice against specific role requirements. The communication and behavioural component must run on the same timeline because it does not respond to compression. Build in regular practice on structured problem-framing and behavioural scenarios, calibrated to the sectors you have mapped rather than to generic interview templates. Two months of consistent practice moves students; one week does not.

In days sixty-one through ninety, build the shortlist and make targeted contact. The shortlist should carry assessment scores against the criteria you have mapped. The initial contact with each GCC should name the roles you believe your students are a fit for and attach the shortlist. The ask should be specific: a pool drive date, a preliminary call, or a first screening slot. GCCs respond to specificity because it signals that the college has done the groundwork rather than generating a generic request.

Where the work begins

The GCC hiring picture in India is wide enough in geography and sector that almost every college has at least a few captive centres within reachable distance. The constraint is rarely a shortage of companies. It is almost always the absence of a map: the placement cell does not know which GCCs are accessible, what those GCCs screen for by sector, or how its cohort measures against those screens.

Once a cell has that map, the preparation path becomes specific and plannable. The gap between zero GCC participation and a productive first season is shorter than most placement heads expect, and it does not require exceptional resources. We have run this exercise with institutions across more than 2,000 partnerships over 18 years, and the lever that moves GCC participation is always the same: preparation that is sector-specific, a baseline that shows where to concentrate, and an outreach approach that replaces a general invitation with evidence.