Cisco has appointed Monika Kaushik as senior talent advisor– *APJC* , effective October 2026. She brings over 10 years of experience in technology talent acquisition, with expertise in recruitment strategy, regional hiring, workforce planning and recruitment process optimisation.
Kaushik joins Cisco after serving as manager – talent acquisition at VMock from July 2025 to April 2026. She partnered with the company’s founders and senior stakeholders to align hiring priorities with business requirements, overseeing recruitment across technology, product and business functions. Her responsibilities also included campus hiring, particularly from institutions such as the IITs and IIMs, and mentoring recruitment teams.
Before VMock, Kaushik spent over three years at Builder.ai as senior talent advisor, leading end-to-end recruitment across engineering, product, delivery, design and growth functions in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East and Africa regions.
Earlier, she worked as senior talent partner at ValueFirst from July 2019 to December 2021, leading global recruitment initiatives while handling hiring across APAC and the Middle East and Africa. Her work included developing hiring strategies, improving recruitment processes and strengthening employer branding.
Kaushik began her recruitment career at E2 Edge as an IT recruiter in 2014. She subsequently spent nearly four years at Think Future Technologies as senior talent- acquisition executive, focusing on technology recruitment and full-cycle hiring.
Across her career, Kaushik has highlighted several recruitment outcomes, including hiring more than 60 professionals across engineering, product, design and growth in a year, reducing time-to-fill from 90 days to 30–45 days.
She holds an MBA in Human Resources Management from Banasthali Vidyapith and a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Gurgaon College of Engineering.