HCL Tech to hire 40,000-45,000 freshers for FY23 to meet attrition threat

Is also paying higher increments and retention packages, expanding to tier 2&3 cities and other geographies

HCL Technologies plans to double its fresher hiring for the upcoming financial year (FY23) as attrition continues to inch up. The company said that it will hire 40,000-45,000 freshers for FY23, up from 20,000-22,000 target for FY22.

The company also stated that to ease supply-side constraints and to have access to diversified skills, it was expanding into other geographies over the next three-four quarters.

“Some of the geographies that we are investing in to source talent include countries like Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Costa Rica. We are also ramping up our presence in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Beyond this we are also paying higher increments and retention packages to hold on to talent,” said V V Apparao, the chief human resources officer, HCL Technologies.

HCL Tech has also ramped up its presence in tier 2 & 3 cities to get access to talent from smaller cities like Nagpur, Nashik, Vijaywada, but attrition in these cities have also risen. “The strategy to be in smaller cities has worked for us over the last five years and we have had attrition in these cities in single digits, but now it has jumped up to 15 per cent in this year,” Apparao said.

Globally, HCL Tech has about 1,500 employees in Poland and Bulgaria, about 500-600 in Romania, which it is scaling up quickly, about 2,000 people in Sri Lanka and Mexico has about 4,000-5,000 employees. “Since these are new geographies we are also taking some time to scale in these places. We want to take our numbers to 8,000 in Sri Lanka and Vietnam that too within a three-year window,” added Apparao.

He was also of the opinion that India can give scale at the bottom of the pyramid but for niche skills one will have to diversify to other regions. “Some of these geographies the scale may not be high but regions like Ukraine, Belarus and others have a high number of people pursuing PhDs, which are required for analytical work,” he said.

With focus on fresher hiring, Apparao is also making sure that the time of students becoming billable also comes down significantly, and for that they have focused on backward integration with colleges, which means that in the last two semesters the colleges will teach the curriculum that the company wants to focus on. “Earlier on, boarding of a campus recruit would take six-nine months but that we have managed to bring down to two-three months,” he said.

• FY22 fresher hiring target 20,000-22,000

• So far on-boarded 17,500 freshers

• Q3 company added 10,143 employees

• Attrition at 19.8% for Q3