Padmini Dhruvaraj
In a good news for freshers, the country’s largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has started the process of hiring engineers and others graduating in 2024.
The company has opened up its its hiring portals for freshers across three different categories – Ninja, Digital, and Prime — with the Ninja category offering a package of Rs 3.36 lakh per annum for different roles, while the Digital and Prime categories will offer Rs 7 lakh and Rs 9-11.5 lakh per annum, respectively. It has called applications from BTech, BE, MCA, MSc and MS batch of 2024. The last day to apply is April 10 and tests will be held on April 26. However, the company has not specified how many it plans to onboard.
The recruitment announcement comes as a relief for students as numerous IT firms have frozen their hiring due to poor demand from their clients.
Separately, TCS also announced that it has trained 350,000 employees in generative AI skills. The company, which had in January announced that 150,000 staffers are trained in the skill sets of what is said to be the biggest opportunity for IT services firm in the future, has now taken the number up to over half its employee base.
In 2023, it had become the first technology company to create a dedicated business unit for AI and cloud to address the growing needs of customers for cloud and AI adoption.
TCS’ work till now includes application of GenAI to enhance customer experience for airlines featuring natural conversations with customers when their flight is delayed or cancelled, and alternative routing options. It has also tapped into GenAI capabilities to streamline and simplify the contract review process including identification and validation of clauses, the company said.
During the company’s third quarter earnings call, Milind Lakkad, chief human resources officer, had said, “We are committed to hiring from college campuses and growing talent organically. We have commenced our campus hiring process for the next year and see tremendous excitement among freshers to join TCS”. TCS had a target to recruit 40,000 freshers in the financial year 2023-24.
The company will report its January-March quarter earnings on April 12.
While the TCS’ hiring announcement comes as a relief, other major domestic IT companies like Infosys are still steps away from conducting any immediate campus placement. Infosys’ outgoing chief financial officer Nilanjan Roy said in January the company would continue to monitor the utilisation rates and its flexi-hiring model.
Further, analysts now worry that a revenue guidance cut by the global IT giant Accenture has cast a shadow over Indian IT companies, dashing hopes of a much anticipated recovery eyed later this calendar year.
However, in the last few quarters, the IT companies have seen improvement in their utilisation and attrition rates from the lows of 2022.
Voluntary attrition of TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra declined quarter-on-quarter in Q3 (October-December). The last twelve months’ attrition of TCS fell to 13.3% in Q3 from that of 14.9% in Q2, and Wipro’s attrition in Q3 fell to a 10-month low of 12.3%, down 90 bps from Q2. Meanwhile, HCL Technologies net added 3,617 new employees in the quarter gone by, taking its total people count to 224,756.
TCS on Friday also announced that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recognised it with Generative AI competency partner status.
“Achieving AWS generative competency as a launch partner is a result of TCS’ industry-leading and forward-looking investments along with our deep collaboration with AWS,” its deputy head of AI.Cloud unit Krishna Mohan said.