Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services provider, said it had so far made campus offers to 43,600engineering freshers for 2012-13, higher than the 37,800 offers made this year.
The company said these numbers represented the offers made to only engineering students at Indian campuses and the final hiring target for 2012-13 would be announced by the end of March. The target will include hiring from foreign campuses and lateral (experienced) offers.
At a time when IT budgets are under pressure, the hiring trend represents the demand outlook for the next financial year. For TCS, which does not give revenue guidance, the hiring numbers gave a sense of the spending patterns of its clients.
In 2011-12, TCS will end up hiring around 66,000 employees. In the last three quarters, it has added 51,000 employees (both lateral and campus hires) and will add another 15,000 during the January-March quarter. Of this, 9,000 will be freshers. The ratio of freshers to laterals was 70:30 in the third quarter.
TCS has changed its strategy of applying for visas to the US, its majority market. While it has reduced its dependency on the L-1 visa category due to higher rejection rates, it has increased applications for H1-B visas. For calendar year 2011, TCS applied for 4,500 H1-B visas, significantly higher than the 1,500 H1-B visas applied for in 2010.
“The spike in H1-B visa applications was due to the higher rate of rejections in the L-1 visa category. This made us look at other venues and strategies. H1-B visa application submission begins from April 1 and goes on till October. Over the last two years, the window is getting closed in December time frame. So, while for 2011, we had applied for 4,500 H1-B visas, some of these were issued in October and we started using these visas, and the rest would be used going ahead. For 2012, we are yet to decide the number of visas we will require,” said Ajoy Mukherjee, executive vice-president and head, global human resources, TCS.
Another reason for the company to opt for more H1-B visas was the recent decision of the US embassy to consolidate its L-1 visa process at its Chennai centre. The company has witnessed rejection rates as high as 30 per cent in the L category, which in recent times have further increased. According to Mukherjee, the guidelines are the same, but it is the application of these norms that is leading to the rejections.
Mukherjee said the company continued to hire more locally in the US. “We are hiring people in our Cincinnati, Dallas, Milford and Phoenix centres. We have 1,200 people on TCS rolls and around 2,000 business associates (employees on contract). We have so far made 120 campus offers, of which 70 have been accepted,” he said.
