TCS will look off-campus to hire fresh engineers
Saturday, July 17, 2010
, Posted by Unknown at 2:24 AM
After upping its hiring target for the fiscal, Tata Consultancy Services will now recruit entry level engineers even through the off-campus route for the first time in two years.
This is largely due to the rebound in demand for IT services which, in turn, has also led to an increase in attrition within the company. The country's largest software exporter recently increased its gross hiring numbers for the fiscal by 10,000 to 40,000.
“Of the incremental 10,000, 65 per cent will be engineering freshers who will come through the off-campus hiring programme. We will start with ‘walk-in interview' drives around the September timeframe to meet the requirements for freshers in our projects,” Mr Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice-President, Head, Global Human Resources, told Business Line here on Friday.
Generally, top IT companies prefer to hire entry level staff directly from leading engineering colleges. They go in for off-campus hiring — which refers to the process of picking qualified, yet inexperienced engineers directly from the job markets — only when their requirements are not met by campus recruits alone.
Hiring trends
TCS, which writes software applications and manages back-office functions for large multinational companies such as GE, Ferrari and AC Nielsen, is now opting for that route given that growth is back both for the software industry and the company. And it is in addition to the 20,050 offers made to campus recruits for joining in the current fiscal itself.
It may be recalled that through off-campus placements, TCS had hired 6,240 employees in fiscal 2008 and 5,430 in fiscal 2007. However, the practice was discontinued during the last two years as companies struggled with excess manpower and fewer outsourcing projects.
For the 20,050 offers for the year, the company expects a joining ratio of 70-72 per cent. While it has already started the intake of these campus recruits, majority of them will come on board from the current quarter onwards.
Approaching colleges
In order to hire freshers for the next fiscal, the company will approach engineering colleges starting October, said Mr Mukherjee. It may be recalled that until 2009, IT companies used to give out campus offers to students in the penultimate year of engineering.
However, Nasscom asked top colleges last year to postpone their placement season to the final semester. This was done to ensure that software firms would go in for just-in-time hiring so that they did not over hire in an environment where new IT projects were hard to come by.Recently, there were reports that Accenture has begun placements in some colleges a semester ahead.
Does that mean that companies will revert to the earlier regime?
“Sticking to campus recruitment in the eighth semester is ideal for everybody, including the students. Having said that, if people start going in advance, then we will also have to do the same since campus recruitment is very important for us to get the right kind of talent that can be groomed for the company,” said Mr Mukherjee.
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