Infosys starts off-campus hiring after two years

Part of sectoral trend; demand for fresh hands has risen in past six months

Amid improvement in demand, Infosys, the country’s second largest information technology services company, has begun an off-campus recruitment drive after a two-year gap.

Faced with a slump in their business, most IT companies had slowed the pace of hiring in the past two years. For FY13, Infosys had said it would hire 6,000 graduating students, a sharp drop from 19,000 in the previous year. It had also decided to reduce the number of colleges it visited for campus hiring.

The Bangalore-based company has yet to detail its target for campus hiring for 2014-15.

PLACEMENT BUZZ

• Faced with a slump in their business, most IT companies had slowed the pace of hiring in the past two years
• After several quarters of disappointment, Infosys has for the past three managed to surprise the Street positively, with better than expected financial performance
• There was a sharp increase in employee attrition during Dec quarter

“Yes, we are hiring off-campus this year because we need it for our business,” an Infosys spokesperson told Business Standard. “Though we have sometimes gone for off-campus recruitment in previous years, we did not in the past two years. Last year, many IT companies had to defer even the on-boarding of campus hires, so there was no question of looking at off-campus recruitment.”

According to a job advertisement published on Infosys’ website, the company is looking for ‘system engineers’, for which those who graduated in 2012 and 2013 with a Master’s degree in computer application or in computer science are eligible. From several online job portals, where details of Infosys’ off-campus recruitment is listed, the company also wishes to hire for ‘process executives/associates’ and will consider candidates with none to two years of experience.

After several quarters of disappointment, Infosys has for the past three quarters managed to surprise the Street positively, with better than expected financial performance. The improved earnings and management’s confident commentary over recent months has led the market widely to believe predictability and stability are returning to the IT major.

However, there was a sharp increase in employee attrition during the December quarter (Q3), at 18.1 per cent, against 15.1 per cent a year before and 17.3 per cent in the September quarter (Q2). Headcount declined by 1,823 during the quarter to 158,404.

During the press conference to announce its Q3 earnings on January 10, Chief Executive Officer S D Shibulal had said recruitment during 2014 would reflect business needs, as always. “That will include freshers and laterals; we will be also be recruiting in our local markets from colleges for delivery and for sales,” he said.

Mass recruitment from campuses has traditionally been the favoured route for the IT services sector. Several, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) being one, have never tapped freshers off-campus. However, say experts, there is a shift to off-campus recruitment as companies try to avoid the costs of creating a huge bench (people without projects to work on) of skilled personnel, who then need to be fully utilised. Off-campus hiring allows companies to bring in manpower ‘just in time’ and put them on projects as early as possible, so that clients can be billed almost from the first day.

TCS, the largest IT services company, and mid-size player Mindtree have also in recent months said they were considering taking the off-campus route for recruitment. This is also being favoured as demand across the sector has risen in the past six months, experts said.

“After a gap of two to three years, IT services companies are looking at off-campus hiring and that is mainly because now they have work and not enough manpower,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, chairman of Headhunters India. “The freshers from campus will only join by May, so they need to look at other modes of recruitment to fill the gap sooner.”