About

Sonia Sahgal is an experienced HR professional with over 19 years of experience in talent acquisition, staffing processes, start-ups in new territories, and identifying business opportunities. Currently, she serves as the University Recruiting Leader for Microsoft in India, APAC, and ANZ. In this role, she leads Microsoft centers across Asia for university and early in career hiring from top/elite T and B-schools. She manages a team of account managers, recruiters, sourcers, and SMEs for year-over-year delivery, drives operational excellence and strong recruitment efforts, and manages key search partner relationships. Sonia has established campus hiring programs, hired across the globe while managing SLAs, and defined process guidelines. She has a strategic understanding, planning, and coaching for the hiring manager on scoping the hiring demand. She drives college hiring strategy, including university relationship, local market positioning, and collaboration for One approach. Sonia consistently achieves team KPIs, including productivity, quality-of-hire, and cost-per-hire metrics. She partners effectively with Human Resources (HR) and C&B partners to manage client relationships and prioritize hiring needs and requisitions. Prior to her current role, Sonia served as the Staffing Manager for Microsoft in the IMEA region. She defined and drove the talent acquisition strategy for all hiring activity across the area of responsibility, including executive hiring. She drove operational excellence within the team, managed key search partner relationships, and focused on the quality of hire. Sonia also managed all team members, including commitment setting and performance management of the extended team members. Sonia has also worked as the Director of Recruitment for CDI Corp. In this role, she led a team of experienced professional recruiters in the RPO space, managed the recruitment function strategically and operationally, and engaged with clients and stakeholders. Sonia has completed a Brain-Based Coaching degree and a Coach Mentoring Training Program from the NeuroLeadership Institute India & South Asia. Her tech stack includes search. Sonia has a proven capability in talent acquisition, staffing processes, and identifying business opportunities. She has exposure to talent pools across geographies and visibility around multiple territory hiring set-ups.