TCS to freeze lateral hiring

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT services provider, has plans to freeze its lateral hiring, or recruitment of experienced hands. The company, which expects to take a final call on its hiring strategy next month, also says the next year’s salary hike would be in single digit per cent range.

TCS, however, has assured it will honour its commitment on hiring 24,800 people during financial year 2009-10.

Ajoy Mukherjee, vice-president and head-global human resources, TCS, said: “We have almost frozen our lateral hiring. We have been very controlled about the numbers that we take from here. The focus is on trainees as from cost management perspective this will balance out.” He said that surprises are coming on a daily basis and one should be prepared for it.

Last quarter, the company had spoken about a hiring mix of 60:40 for trainees and laterals respectively.

For 2009-10, TCS has already made campus offers of 24,800 and the company says that it will honour all the commitments. For FY09, the company has a target of hiring 30,000-35,000, of which 30,430 are already on board. “Campus hiring is done at least a year in advance and we were not expecting the situation to be this bad,” he adds.

“It’s a business environment that is making the company look at such measures. But this will certainly help it manage cost as unlike its peers TCS did hire a lot of experienced people. But that is also because it has a higher component of R&D work. Two, we think it will help the company garner a good position in terms of credibility and branding in the long run,” said an analyst.

Meanwhile, the company is focusing on the bottom of the pyramid. Mukherjee says: “While I am not saying that we will not hire experienced people but it will be based more on domain expertise and business need. Besides, for off-campus recruitment, which we did in the fourth quarter to fill on gaps due to attrition, is also clearly ruled out this year. The other focus area also is shift from onsite to offshore.”

Of the total employee base of the company, about 20 per cent are onsite. However, so far almost one per cent people have returned offshore. The company has also agreed that the joining dates of trainees have been staggered by a few days.