Building a Global Recruiting Strategy That Works in 2026

Global recruiting has become a defining priority for Heads of Talent Acquisition who are expanding into new regions or centralizing hiring across existing ones. In recent conversations with Talent Acquisition leaders, two priorities keep showing up together, even though they require different decisions and different operating muscles.

One challenge is building or operationalizing a Global Center of Excellence (CoE) for Talent Acquisition. Another is recruiting effectively in key locations such as India, as organizations expand rapidly or enter for the first time. These topics are linked, yet they surface different sets of challenges. 

Why Global Recruiting is Difficult

Global Talent Acquisition leaders feel a consistent friction: operating across countries can add more complexity than value when processes, messaging, and data are misaligned. The operational drag shows up quickly, as teams end up reinventing basic decisions market by market.

Leaders are trying to answer two practical questions:

• What should be uniform across regions so the company operates like one organization? 
• What must be localized because local labor realities make global consistency unrealistic?

 

Navigating the tension between standardization and flexibility is the bulk of the work.

Global Centers of Excellence and the Shift to Coordinated Talent Acquisition

Many U.S.-based Heads of Talent Acquisition are being tasked for the first time with standing up or formalizing a global CoE model. The mandate often comes from the CHRO or CEO, then execution lands with the Head of Talent Acquisition, supported by a regional or global team.

The move is typically a shift away from fragmented, hyper-localized hiring practices toward a more coordinated Talent Acquisition function across regions like EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. In this structure, each country functions as a “unit” under the CoE, similar to how offices or campuses might be treated as units in a U.S.-only model.

A useful reframe that has resonated in these conversations: “Think of it like a campus recruiting CoE, just at the scale of entire countries.”

What a CoE Can Standardize Without Breaking Local Hiring

Global CoEs typically aim to standardize elements that benefit from consistency and shared ownership:

• Process foundations and interviewing standards 
• Employer brand guardrails and reusable messaging assets 
• Technology and reporting expectations

 

The goal is not control for its own sake, but rather predictability, consistency, and a candidate experience that feels efficient across markets.

At the same time, leaders repeatedly emphasize that full standardization does not hold across countries. Compensation norms vary widely and candidate expectations differ in response time, communication style, and negotiation etiquette. Local labor markets behave unpredictably, and local compliance realities can change the practical shape of a hiring process.

This is why leaders have gravitated toward a model that keeps a stable center while allowing for adaptation around the edges. A metaphor Heads of Talent Acquisition often use for this is a “global spine” of process, with “regional ribs” attached. That phrasing captures the intent: a core that supports scale, plus regional structure that makes the system workable.

The CoE Pitfalls Leaders Run Into Early

In discussions around building a CoE, several recurring pitfalls emerge around operational design.

One pain point is siloed Talent Acquisition ownership inside plants, countries, or functions. Another is the mismatch between a centralized process and the practical realities of local execution. Leaders also cite cultural differences in hiring and regulatory nuance as sources of friction.

A theme worth naming directly: when regional teams adopt local workarounds, it is often because the global process was not built with their realities in mind. That dynamic creates a cycle where HQ sees inconsistency and tightens controls, and regions feel unseen and further disengage. A well-designed CoE helps break this cycle by designing governance that anticipates local nuance instead of treating it as an exception.

Global Spotlight: Recruiting in India

International recruiting conversations increasingly include India. Leaders describe India as a market where interest is high, demand can scale quickly, and execution details matter immediately.

The first step is a clarifying question that shapes everything that follows:

“Are you hiring in India for the first time, or expanding an existing footprint? What kind of talent are you looking to hire there?”

Hiring in India can mean building high-volume delivery capacity in-country. It can also mean establishing a sourcing or Talent Acquisition team based in India. Each path comes with  different infrastructure needs, risk profiles, and timelines.

Common Hurdles Leaders Cite When Recruiting in India

For many companies hiring in India, several hurdles show up repeatedly:

• Regulatory complexity: Talent Acquisition leaders often run into India-specific differences in employment law, notice periods, and hiring timelines operating differently than in the U.S., which can slow processes significantly. 
• Candidate fraud risk: Leaders cite fraud as a top concern when hiring in India, especially in tech and high-volume roles. This commonly includes cases where candidates ghost on day one or someone different appears than the person interviewed. 
• Process and infrastructure gaps: Many organizations do not yet have the right Talent Acquisition systems or local partners in place to recruit at scale in India.
  

 

A key point for 2026 planning: these issues are not unique to India. They become problems in each region when the global system lacks clarity on how respective local compliance, timeline expectations, and risk mitigation are handled at the workflow level.

Connecting the Two Challenges: CoE Design that Anticipates Key-Market Realities

It is tempting to treat global CoE work as a structural exercise, then treat recruiting in X country (i.e. India) as a market entry execution issue. The leaders who are making progress treat them as connected.

A CoE is where leaders decide what gets standardized globally and what gets localized by design. India is a real-world test of that decision, because it surfaces regulatory realities, timeline differences, and fraud risk needs in a way that forces operating clarity.

This is why leaders keep saying variations across countries make it hard to plan headcount, prioritize markets, and select sourcing channels that work region by region. They want a single source of truth that creates confidence across markets, without requiring micromanagement. In practice, that tension is what shifts global recruiting into an operations-heavy task, where decisions about structure, data, and governance are tested against hiring conditions. 

Global Recruiting that Holds Up Under Real Conditions

Building a global recruiting strategy that works in 2026 is not about picking a single CoE model and applying it everywhere. When it comes to CoEs, there’s no one model, industry, or structure. An organization’s unique goals shape what is needed, and maturity shapes what is sustainable.

If you are being tasked with building a global CoE, you are not alone. The work gets clearer when you separate the “global spine” decisions from the “regional ribs,” then test that design against real-market realities like recruiting in India.

That combination is what turns global recruiting into a coordinated Talent Acquisition capability instead of a collection of country-by-country reinventions.