Recruiters to capability builders: How HR roles are changing in sustainability sectors

The rapid expansion of sustainability-linked industries such as e-waste and battery recycling is exposing a structural weakness in traditional hiring systems. While sectors aligned to the circular economy are attracting investment and policy attention, organisations operating in these spaces are increasingly finding that conventional recruitment frameworks are unable to deliver workforce readiness at the pace the industry requires.

According to Sonalee Ambardar, Chief Human Resources Officer at RecycleKaro, the challenge is not the absence of talent itself, but the inability of legacy hiring structures to recognise and prepare talent for emerging, interdisciplinary roles.

“The hiring challenge in emerging sustainability sectors like e-waste and battery recycling is not a talent shortage problem in the traditional sense. It is a talent translation problem,” Ambardar told People Matters.

Her observations reflect a broader shift underway across sustainability-driven industries, where companies are increasingly being pushed to function not merely as employers, but as talent creators and capability builders.

Why traditional hiring models are struggling

Ambardar argues that most hiring pipelines were designed for stable sectors with clearly defined career paths and established role structures. Sustainability-led industries, by contrast, combine operational disciplines that traditionally functioned independently.

“These sectors sit at the intersection of manufacturing, chemical processing, reverse logistics, compliance, and environmental science,” she said.

While India has expanded its skilling ecosystem through initiatives such as the Skill India Mission and institutions including the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), Ambardar believes these frameworks were built around conventional job families rather than hybrid sustainability roles.

“What breaks down is not intent, but fit,” she said.

According to Ambardar, most recruitment systems continue to rely on:

• Standardised job descriptions
• Keyword-led screening models
• “Closest match” hiring practices

However, she noted that sustainability industries often lack historical benchmarks for identifying ideal candidates, leading organisations to repeatedly hire for familiarity rather than contextual readiness.

“The result is recurring cycles of hiring for familiarity rather than readiness followed by heavy investments in post-hire improvements,” she said.

Operational readiness outweighs theoretical expertise

Ambardar identified the largest capability gap as the intersection between operational exposure and safety-compliance maturity, rather than purely technical expertise.

“We consistently see candidates who are technically sound on paper, experienced within siloed functions, but underprepared for high-risk, process-driven environments,” she said.

The challenge becomes particularly acute in sectors such as e-waste and battery recycling, where operations involve:

• Hazardous material handling
• Strict environmental compliance
• Precision-driven recovery processes

Although Sector Skill Councils, including the Green Jobs Skill Council, have begun defining green job roles, Ambardar said the transition from framework-level definitions to plant-level execution remains inconsistent.

“What’s missing is industrial-scale operational judgement, embedded safety discipline and comfort with ambiguity in evolving systems,” she explained.

This, she argued, fundamentally changes how organisations assess talent.

“In practice, this means organisations are not just evaluating skill. They are evaluating contextual readiness, which traditional hiring pipelines are not designed to assess.”

Sustainability sectors are building roles in real time

Unlike mature industries where organisational structures are already standardised, sustainability-focused businesses are still defining operational roles while simultaneously scaling.

“Organisations here are not hiring into fixed structures. We’re defining roles and the talent framework as we scale operations,” Ambardar said.

She pointed to the limitations of frameworks such as the National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF), noting that many sustainability-linked roles still do not map cleanly to existing qualification structures.

According to Ambardar, this creates fluid and constantly evolving job architectures, where:

• Job descriptions shift frequently
• Roles combine multiple functions
• Hiring criteria changes based on operational learnings and regulatory developments

“In many cases, we are reversing job architectures from real operational friction, rather than importing them from industry benchmarks,” she said.

While this approach may appear iterative or inefficient, Ambardar argued that it produces hiring structures more aligned with operational realities.

Adjacent industries can supply talent, but not complete readiness

As sustainability industries scale, organisations are increasingly drawing talent from sectors such as manufacturing, chemicals, logistics and waste management.

Ambardar acknowledged that government-backed mobility programmes and Recognition of Prior Learning initiatives under Skill India have supported some degree of workforce transition. However, she cautioned that adjacent industries rarely produce immediately deployable sustainability talent.

Where transitions succeed, candidates typically bring:

• Process orientation
• Experience in regulated environments
• Familiarity with structured operations

Where they struggle, according to Ambardar, is adapting to uncertainty and building systems from scratch.

“The crux is that sustainability roles often require first-principles thinking, not just functional expertise,” she said.

She added that many candidates lack understanding of circular economy value chains and struggle to operate effectively within resource-constrained, evolving industrial setups.

Apprenticeship-style learning is becoming critical

Ambardar also highlighted the widening disconnect between formal education systems and operational realities inside sustainability industries.

While India’s skilling infrastructure has expanded significantly through IITs, polytechnics and NSDC-affiliated programmes, she believes curriculum design continues to lag industry evolution.

“Most academic programs cannot cover real-world recycling technologies, lack exposure to regulatory and compliance realities, and lack connection to plant operations,” she said.

As a result, organisations are increasingly investing in internal stewardship and apprenticeship-style capability programmes.

According to Ambardar, workforce capability in sustainability sectors is primarily built through:

• On-site operational immersion
• Apprenticeship-style learning
• Real-time problem solving
• Learning through operational iteration and failure

“In fact, some of the most reliable talent pipelines we’ve built are those that prioritise learning agility and discipline over pedigree,” she said.

HR leaders are becoming talent creators

One of the strongest themes emerging from Ambardar’s assessment is the changing role of HR leadership itself.

“A fundamental shift for CHROs in this space is moving from being talent consumers to talent creators,” she said.

She described the transition as structural rather than optional, particularly in industries where standardised external talent pipelines remain underdeveloped.

However, this shift introduces several operational challenges, including:

• Longer productivity timelines due to training investments
• Higher post-skilling attrition risks
• Lack of industry-wide training standardisation
• Increased dependence on managers as operational coaches

“This changes the mandate of HR from recruitment efficiency to capability-building at scale,” Ambardar said.

She also noted that organisations must focus more heavily on employer branding, long-term career pathways and retention strategies if they want internally developed talent to remain within the sector.

Building a national ecosystem for green talent

Looking ahead, Ambardar argued that sustainability hiring can no longer remain an organisation-specific challenge if India intends to scale circular economy industries meaningfully.

“If this sector is to scale meaningfully, hiring cannot remain an organisation-level problem. It needs to evolve into a national ecosystem-level solution,” she said.

She outlined several structural shifts that she believes are necessary for long-term workforce development, including:

• Deeper industry-academia collaboration
• Expansion of green skill qualification packs
• Mandatory apprenticeship pathways for sustainability sectors
• Creation of national skill taxonomies for circular economy roles
• Stronger coordination between regulators, skilling bodies and employers

“India’s talent has the institutional scaffolding. What’s needed now is speed, specificity, and industry-led co-creation,” Ambardar said.

Her comments reflect a broader transition underway across emerging sustainability industries, where hiring is no longer viewed simply as workforce acquisition, but increasingly as a strategic exercise in building entirely new capability ecosystems from the ground up.