Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country?s largest IT services exporter with an employee base of nearly 3 lakh, is focusing on grooming talent within the organisation to meet the growing demand for digital & advanced technologies. Speaking to FE?s PP Thimmaya, Global head, human resources at TCS, Ajoyendra Mukherjee says the company will continue to hire in larger volumes for the linear segment of its businesses and will be more selective in the non-linear segment. Excerpts.
How is the demand-supply situation for TCS from an HR perspective?
We are going to hire people from campuses and train them. Each organisation will focus on the linear business and the number of hirings in this segment will be large. There are certain behavioural characteristics we will be looking at when we hire from the campuses, such as whether they are agile, digitally savvy, proactive and collaborative. At the same time, we will need people with more and more domain knowledge. TCS will groom such people from junior-level itself. The volume will remain large for our linear businesses and it is not going to stop. In the non-linear and product & platform segments, the skills will be different, which we will build internally.
Will TCS adopt a different approach on campus hiring considering the growing demand?
I do not think so. We have been particular about the kind of students we hire and look for skills problem-solving ability, agility, analytical capability and aptitude for the IT industry. We are getting good people from the campuses. At the same time, we are upgrading the skill level of our students so that the industry benefits.
How will the hiring be for the non-linear business?
We are not going to the market to hire these numbers but will take a few. We will groom talent internally and that will be our larger focus. A majority of them will be groomed internally and we will give opportunity to our people to move into product and platform businesses, if they show an aptitude for it. That will be primary source. We also have research programmes with academia to develop these talents.
Given the size of TCS, how do you maintain a healthy culture within?
It is not easy. It is the core value system that works as a common glue. The question is how transparent we are as an organisation. The policies have to be well designed, which also meet the local regulatory requirement. The performance appraisal is same across the world regardless of the geographies, though the goals would be different.
Will TCS manage to retain the low level of attrition rate?
The lower attrition level is due to multiple factors. An organisation does well, if employees get what they are promised. It is also a factor of giving employees the opportunities to engage in different types of technologies or move into different roles. Though attrition depends on market demand, our goal is to keep it at the current level.
