TCS plans to hire over 40,000 freshers from Indian campuses in FY22

IT firm's recruitments may surpass FY21 numbers

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) — which now has more than 500,000 employees — has said it plans to recruit more people in FY22 than it did in the previous fiscal year.

“Last year, we hired 40,000 associates from campuses in India, this year the number may be even more. Similarly, in the US, we hired 2,000 employees from campuses in FY21 and the number is likely to be higher this year. The story will be the same for Latin America as well,” Milind Lakkad, CHRO, TCS, said in a media briefing. For the first quarter of FY22, TCS added 20,409 associates to the company, taking the total headcount to 509,058.

Lakkad said over the past five years, the company has been ramping up its local workforce in major markets. “So, despite travel restrictions during the pandemic, the company’s business was not affected,” he said.  

Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO & MD, TCS, also shared that having such a huge employee base is like going through a “living experiment”. 

“We are continuously exploring what is the best we can do with this size of our workforce. The question is how we structure ourselves in a dynamic changing world. Typically, a professional’s life spans over 40 years, within which they have to be prepared to go through about 5-6 tech cycles. Having an organization that thinks about their upskilling and reskilling is a very important aspect for a professional,” Gopinathan added.

On the increase in the recruitments, Gopinthan said, “We are quite confident that this structure will grow. Services business model is tightly linked to people, which also allows growth into adjacent areas such as products.”

He said he was often asked if the organization was too large, “but the way the company is structured keeps it nimble”.

At 8.6 per cent, TCS reported a higher attrition rate for Q1, but the company does not feel it would have an impact on their business. Rather, the company has expanded its talent development programme to other geographies as well. 

“We have always had a lot of programmes and mechanisms that align people to different career paths. We have expanded our talent programmes such as Elevate to other geographies as well. These programmes help employees decide on their career path. Also, attrition is something that keeps happening, what matters is that it helps keep our high-performing talent at the market salary rates,” said Lakkad.