Although TCS would adjust its hiring plans based on the demand expectation for discretionary spending, Subramaniam is not completely ruling out bringing in laterals to its talent pool
TCS COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam reportedly stated that the company is on track to hire 40,000 campus recruits in the current fiscal year, despite the slow growth environment in which businesses are adjusting their plans for hiring freshers.
He states, “We usually hire between 35,000 to 40,000 people and those plans are intact. There are no large-scale layoffs. The way we’ve calibrated this is we’re working towards improving our own utilisation because we have a decent bench.”
However, some of its peers are still hesitant to visit campuses. In a recent earnings call, Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy supposedly stated that the company added 50,000 freshmen last year and that it will wait to recruit on campuses until demand increases.
Although TCS would adjust its hiring plans based on the demand expectation for discretionary spending, Subramaniam is not completely ruling out bringing in laterals to its talent pool.
“When there is a contraction in discretionary spending, we hire a lesser number of laterals. In the last 12 to 14 months, we saw a huge attrition. We didn’t know how long that would continue, so we ended up hiring a lot more than what we needed to build a bench. Our utilisation is currently around 85%… we used to operate at about 87-90%,” he added.
According to Subramaniam, TCS has a bench to meet any demand that is on the horizon. “About 10% of 6 lakh employees – which means about 60,000 people – are on the bench and they can be productively deployed. But all these people were going through training, induction, and upskilling in the last 12 months. They’re available as a productive pool to be deployed into various projects,” he said.
