Infy's 'Expert Track' to tap key talent from IITs, IIMs

New recruitment initiative to make company competitive against new-age companies, start-ups

Information technology (IT) services companies might have put India distinctly in the global technology map, but when it comes to hiring, they are not the ones that attract the crème de la crème from top engineering colleges and management schools, such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). With all the fireworks happening in the start-up space, new-age companies have positioned themselves formidably in attracting such talent not only by offering better pay packets, but by offering challenging works as well.

To address this challenge, Infosys, India’s second largest IT services company, has launched a recruitment initiative under which it will go to an identified set of B-schools and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) from where it will hire people offering “significantly higher compensation” than what these new-age companies offer.

Those who get selected after going through a stringent selection process, will be deployed in ‘specific identified and complex projects’ under the direct supervision of architecture and technology head Navin Budhiraja.

Launched this year, Infosys under its ‘expert track’ programme, has already hired 20 such talent, chief operating officer U B Pravin Rao told Business Standard.

“Historically, when we recruit, there is a certain but small section of the talent whom we are not able to attract. They typically join start-ups and Ubers of the world with pay package of Rs 15-17 lakh per annum,” said Rao.

While the overall ‘expert track’ programme is driven out of the recruitment team of Infosys, the selection criteria is different from the one it uses to hire talents through campus interviews. “It’s done by the regular recruitment team, but we are going for specific identified universities; the recruitment criteria are different, questions are different,” said Rao.

Before taking this initiative outside, Infosys tested it internally. The interested ones who applied for the programme underwent a selection process that included tests and interviews. The company finally selected 20-25 people.

“At the end of the day, we wanted to make sure if there are people with similar skills internally, we should be able to compensate them similarly,” said Rao. Infosys employs 188,000 employees.

Infosys, TCS and Wipro are no longer the favourite choice of graduates from premium institutes such as IITs and IIMs. Besides, the number of people these companies hire from premier institutions are also not many. As a part of its ongoing campus recruitment process, Infosys has narrowed down the number of engineering college campuses it plans to visit this year. The company plans to hire 20,000 people through the campus recruitment drive this year.

Rao also said while the annual compensation package the company offers to fresh campus recruits has remained at the same level of Rs 3.25 lakh a year, it has increased the stipend money it offers to the interns from Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000 a month.

“From the strategy perspective, we are also hiring interns during the last semester of their engineering. We’re are also increasing the stipend not just to make it more attractive, but to increase the stickiness,” he said, adding: “We believe this model of bringing people to work with us will have a much better impact in terms of their readiness for the corporate world.”