Corporate-functions work is being redefined faster than it is being removed. Clients want people who can improve the process, not just run it.

The clearest shift the desk has seen in the last six months is that clients are asking for broader, more hands-on ownership rather than narrowly defined functional specialists. Across recent talent acquisition, operations, HR business partner and commercial searches, clients increasingly want people who can both own the function and improve the process underneath it. A talent acquisition hire is expected to build recruitment process and employer brand rather than simply fill vacancies. An operations hire is expected to combine day to day execution with transformation, technology and, increasingly, AI.

That expectation has a public counterpart, and it is worth stating plainly rather than dramatically. Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Council estimates that 2.2 million Thai workers, 5.4 per cent of the labour force, sit in roles where AI could replace the work rather than assist it. The composition of that group is the part worth reading. The largest occupational block inside it is clerical, secretarial and office support work, followed by customer service and reception, then accounting, finance and statistical staff. And most of the group are graduates: 55.8 per cent hold a bachelor's degree or above, business administration is the most common field of study at 41.8 per cent, the average age is 36.5, and a little over half work in Bangkok and its surrounding provinces. This is not a story about low-skill work. It is a story about the Bangkok graduate back office.

The International Labour Organization's July 2026 brief on ASEAN puts 20.6 per cent of Thai employment in occupations with more than minimal generative AI exposure, close enough to NESDC's 21.8 per cent to count as independent corroboration from a different method. The ILO adds a caution that belongs here too: observed AI use in office and administrative support occupations remains relatively limited, despite those roles ranking among the most exposed. The work is being redefined considerably faster than it is being removed. That is the market the desk is describing when it says clients no longer want a narrow functional specialist.

What clients get wrong, consistently, is defining the role by years of experience or by title rather than by the scope the person will actually own. A talent acquisition lead or HR business partner brief will often describe someone who has been a recruiter for seven to ten years, when the role genuinely requires someone who can build a function, influence senior stakeholders, own hiring strategy and improve process. Operations briefs carry the mirror image of the same error: director level titles attached to work that needs a very hands-on operator. The desk's advice to a hiring manager is a single sentence. Define what the person will actually own in their first six to twelve months before starting the search.

The hardest thing to find is not a skill, it is a combination: functional expertise, genuine technical capability, and the business-facing communication to carry both into a senior room. The strongest examples the desk has worked with this half are talent acquisition professionals who pair recruitment leadership with employer branding, analytics and process improvement; operations leaders who understand P&L and multi-site execution and also use data and AI to improve how the operation runs; and financial engineers who combine financial markets knowledge with strong Python and data skills. Any one of those three components is findable. The intersection is not.

For these searches the desk sources heavily from large multinational organisations, regional technology companies, fintechs, digital businesses, recruitment and RPO firms, and established Thai enterprises. That spread matters because it is where the process-building experience actually sits, and it is frequently outside the client's own sector.

The most common reason a strong candidate says no is compensation combined with perceived career progression, and the two are not separable. These candidates are already established and performing well in their current roles, which is precisely why they are worth approaching and precisely why they are hard to move. Base salary remains the biggest single factor, but candidates increasingly evaluate the whole career proposition. For someone already earning well, a competitive offer needs to deliver either a meaningful compensation increase or a clear step up in scope, seniority, ownership and future progression. Where it offers similar responsibilities without a meaningful improvement in any of those, they stay.

The contrarian observation, and the one the desk would put first: senior candidates are not necessarily looking for the biggest salary increase. They are looking for a better career situation. The desk has seen candidates accept relatively modest increases where the new role gave them broader ownership, stronger exposure to senior leadership, international scope, or the chance to build something from nothing. It has also seen candidates turn down higher compensation where the environment read as bureaucratic, hierarchical, or unlikely to grant real autonomy. The strongest people are asking increasingly specific questions before they engage at all. What am I actually going to build? What decisions will I own? How much autonomy will I have? What does success look like? A hiring manager who can answer those four questions has a materially easier role to sell, particularly when the competition is the candidate's current employer.