Morgan Stanley says Infosys may skip campus hiring this yr

Infosys Ltd, India’s second-largest information technology services company, may not hire freshers from engineering colleges this year, according to a report by US banking giant Morgan Stanley.

“Strategically, we believe this move could help the company rationalise its rising bench of unbilled employees, which has increased from an average of 20,000-22,000 people over the last two years to almost 38,000 unbilled employees in F1Q (April-June quarter),” said the report.

However, an Infosys spokesperson said the company had not finalised its campus hiring plans for 2013-14 and it would be determined based on the needs. “In any case, according to the Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) directive, we can’t start the (campus hiring) process before September,” the spokesperson added.

For 2012-13, Infosys had given 23,000 campus offers.

While announcing the first quarterly results, V Balakrishnan, chief financial officer and board member of Infosys, had said the company would honour all its hiring commitments despite the rising bench.

“In fact, we do not need to hire anybody since we have a large bench but we are going to be hiring because we have made certain commitments in the campus and we want to honour those commitments,” he had said.

Infosys’s headcount, as on June 30, stood at 151,151.