U.S. firms rapidly offshore recruiting jobs to India, Reddit post says
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — A viral Reddit post has exposed the staggering scale of United States recruiting jobs being offshored to India, with one screenshot showing 2,565 hybrid roles outsourced versus just 322 based in the United States.
Scale of offshoring revealed
The numbers tell a stark story: staffing firms have shifted their recruiting operations overseas at an unprecedented rate. One example shows that there are more hybrid jobs based in India than in the United States.
“Outsourcing has gotten completely out of hand, but they are blaming AI,” stated in the title of the original Reddit poster, who noted companies are blaming AI for poor hiring practices when the real issue is offshore teams working under intense metric pressures.
Comments revealed that this extends beyond recruiting, with one bank employee reporting that 90% of operational roles have been moved to India, leaving U.S. offices as empty shells.
“My office used to be a competitive, collaborative, and rewarding environment in a tier 1 U.S. city — it’s now quite depressing to go to work, as I typically don’t speak to anyone in person and all interactions are over teams with colleagues in India, who are offline by 11:00 AM,” a user wrote.
The trend appears self-perpetuating, with users noting Indian executives in U.S. companies often accelerate outsourcing to their home country.
Human toll of metric-driven hiring
The offshore paradigm has turned a recruitment business into a numbers game, where success is gauged by the number of resumes generated rather than the number of qualified matches made.
Candidates complain about receiving irrelevant job pitches, while employers, on the other hand, receive weakly filtered applicants—a practice that is a lose-lose on both ends and destroys trust in the job description.
This hyper-metric-driven approach comes with hidden costs. U.S. workers describe increasingly isolated workplaces, while offshore recruiters work odd hours to align with American time zones.
One Reddit user cynically redefined “AI” as “Actual Indian,” highlighting how human labor is being disguised as automation. The system appears unsustainable, with candidates, employers, and even recruiters themselves expressing frustration with declining standards.
Need for better hiring practices
Amid the backlash, some see an opportunity to rebuild better systems. The outrage has sparked calls for government intervention to reshore jobs, with pressure growing on companies to justify offshoring decisions.
Others suggest the solution lies in hybrid models that leverage global talent without abandoning local expertise.
As AI automates more tasks, companies may be compelled to focus on the human aspects of hiring that can’t be outsourced and utilize human skills with AI effectively.
Outsourcing done right
As the controversial issue of outsourcing rages on, one positive aspect that most people do not often see has been the strategic outsourcing of recruiting processes to foreign countries such as India, which has helped U.S. companies to stay competitive in the globalized economy by lowering the costs of their operations, becoming more efficient as well as giving its domestic staff the opportunity to concentrate on more high value functions such as strategic recruitment and employer branding capabilities.
This model encourages global collaboration, generating new, skilled job opportunities overseas that can stimulate economic growth worldwide.
When properly managed, it can facilitate quicker and more scalable applicant discovery solutions to the advantage of both organizations and workers.
