Infosys will honour hiring commitments

India’s second largest software exporter Infosys Technologies has announced it will honour its commitment of employing all the candidates to whom it had issued call letters. Infosys’ co-chairman Nandan Nilekani told mediapersons on the sidelines of a CII event in the city today that: “All the call letters that have been sent will be honoured. We are sticking to our numbers.”

The software major normally starts the recruitment process during April or May. However, it recently said it has put a freeze on fresh recruitments after meeting this financial year’s target of hiring 25,000 people. It added, though, that it would honour its commitment of hiring 18,000 campus students who pass in July 2009. Infosys Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan had also stated that the company might consider taking some people towards the end of the second quarter of the financial year 2009-10.

Meanwhile, on the issue of the US government putting curbs on the H-1B visas, Nilekani said that protectionist measures would not help anyone. “Certainly we are all for free trade, it is good for the world, it is a way of spurring growth. While there is this murmur (H1-B visa issue), fundamentally I am hopeful that people realise that we need free trade,” he added.

India’s IT-BPO body NASSCOM recently said that protectionist measures such as the ‘Buy America’ clause and the H-1B legislation suggested by the US government will not have any impact on India’s IT-BPO industry rather they will hurt the US economy.