Polar opposites: TCS says on track to hire 40,000 freshers in FY24, Infosys says not hiring this year

Major Indian IT companies like Infosys and HCLTech are recalibrating their fresher targets for FY 2023-24 amid slowdown in growth in the sector. However, contrary to the popular trend, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam highlighted that the IT major is on track to hire 40,000 freshers this fiscal.

Hiring 40,000 freshers for FY 2023-24

"We usually hire between 35,000 to 40,000 people and those plans are intact,” the Chief Operating Officer noted in an interview to Times of India.

The COO also noted that despite widespread layoffs in the tech sector since the end of 2022, TCS would not be conducting any large scale layoffs.  Subramaniam said, “There are no large-scale layoffs.”

Improving utilisation, reducing bench size

Although the IT major plans on hiring new employees, the focus would also be on improving utilisation, the COO said. "The way we've calibrated this is we're working towards improving our own utilisation because we have a decent bench," he noted

Utilisation percentage refers to the percentage of employees who have been assigned to a project. Employees who do not have a project are put on the bench. 

Upskilling in focus

Employees who are on the bench in TCS are being upskilled so that they are project ready, Subramaiam noted. 

“All these people were going through training, induction, and upskilling in the last 12 months. They're available as a productive pool to be deployed into various projects," he said.

TCS’s utilisation is around 85 per cent, the COO added. He also noted that the company cuts back on lateral hiring during slow quarters.

"When there is a contraction in discretionary spending, we hire a lesser number of laterals. In the last 12 to 14 months, we saw a huge attrition. We didn't know how long that would continue, so we ended up hiring a lot more than what we needed to build a bench. Our utilisation is currently around 85 per cent. we used to operate at about 87-90 per cent," Subramaniam said.

Hiring at other IT companies

Unlike TCS, Infosys plans on not going to college campuses for recruitment drives due to its huge bench size, Chief Financial Officer Nilanjan Roy said post announcement of Q2 results.

“Company is not going to campuses as yet. Last year, we hired 50,000 freshers and hired ahead of demand, we still have a significant fresher bench,” Roy said.

Similar trends were observed at HCLTech. The company’s headcount went down in Q2 FY 24. The company’s CEOC Vijaykumar noted, "Our employee count decreased by 1 percent on a sequential basis because we consciously didn't backfill attrition as a lot of freshers we hired in the last 18 months are now ready to be deployed."