TCS commits on strong campus hiring, as HCL, Infy & CTS lag

BANGALORE, INDIA: Belying the prevailing grim outlook on IT campus recruitment scenario in the country, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has said that it will hire 45,000 candidates (overall) this year.

At its fourth quarter results announcement on Wednesday, the numero uno IT exporter from the country revealed its plans to bring aboard 20,000 more freshers, apart from the 25,000 campus offers it had already made this year.

It's pertinent to note that TCS has one of the lowest attrition rates among Indian IT services companies, and it currently is 9.40 per cent, which is way below that of its other competitors.

"Last quarter, we have given offers to 25,000 trainees and they will start joining from Q2 (July-Sept) onwards. We will be adding about 45,000 (people) this year," said Ajoy Mukherjee, head of global human resources at TCS.

But the scene is not that rosy with its industry peers. In all likelihood, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) is expected to pinkslip around 500 employees, who reportedly underperformed.

"Each year, after our annual performance management cycle, relative underperformers leave the company or are counseled out in the interest of both the individual and the company. This is a common practice among all companies that focus on meritocracy and high performance," TOI quoted a CTS representative as saying.

We are awaiting an official response from CTS on the exact numbers of employees to be fired and on what grounds.

The news from Infosys Limited, which announced its fourth quarter results last Friday, is also not that heartening. "We will go to campuses for hiring as and when required. Though freshers account for about 70 per cent of our hiring, we will look for lateral hiring for the remaining 30 per cent internally through promotions as well as from the industry in new areas such as infrastructure, cloud, mobility and consultancy," chief executive officer, S.D. Shibulal, had said.

He informed that about 10,000 engineers would join the company this fiscal, including 5,000 who were given offer letters last fiscal - a marked deviation from Infy's practice to hire in big numbers.

"We will also consider doing just-in-time hiring during the year depending on the number of projects and their size," added Shibulal.

Infosys might be adopting a wait-and-watch policy expecting a turnaround in the global economic outlook before it decides to increase its headcount multifold. This, despite its attrition rate reaching 16.3 per cent in FY2013 from 14.7 per cent in the last fiscal.

It couldn't have got any worse for HCL Technologies, which is expected to on-boarding its campus recruits from the 2011 batch only by August or beyond, that too after facing a lot of protests across its development centres in the country.

Another IT major, Wipro Technologies, is announcing its fourth quarter results on Friday and would be revealing its hiring plans during the course of it.

With all other top Indian IT companies having announced their quarterly results, here's hoping that things would change for the better in near future.

Meanwhile, share with us your thoughts.