India?s largest IT sector employer Tata Consultancy Services will overshoot its hiring target this fiscal, adding 10,000 people more than planned for 2012-13, Ajoyendra Mukherjee, the company?s vice-president and head (global human resources), said. TCS had an employee base of 2,63,637 as on December 31, 2012.
?Last year, we announced 50,000 hiring and we are already close to that. We will be hiring 10,000 more above the last year?s target that brings the total hiring for FY13 close to 60,000,? Mukherjee said.
The company has hired 2,000 local employees in the US for the fiscal 2013, which is higher than last year?s hiring target of 1,600. The company has also increased its hiring in other markets. ?We have increased our presence in Latin America where we are doing pretty well and have over 7,000 employees there,? Mukherjee said. ?Maximum hiring (almost 95-96%) in regions like Latin America and China has been local.? TCS has decided to hire 25,000 trainees for the next fiscal.
Local hiring is one of the options for the company to avoid visa rejection issues. Visa rejection rate is still over 50%. ?Visa issues are still the same but it?s difficult to speculate the future,? said Mukherjee. The company has, therefore, started shifting work to offshore locations. TCS is also looking to hire more sub-contractors in such regions where visa is an issue. ?Visa planning is not easy because the H1 application process starts on April 1 and those who get through can travel only from September onwards. The application also requires to specify the name of the company, nature of project, role of the person travelling and location. All these things need to be planned a year in advance of applying for visas,? Mukherjee said.
TCS is sitting on a comfortable attrition rate of 11.2% in the Q3 of 2013, which is its lowest in the past 24 quarters. Attrition rate in IT services has also dipped to 9.8%. ?Our attempt will be to bring it down further,? said Mukherjee. ?The sentiment outside lacks good opportunities which is helping us retain employees.?
TCS has not yet decided the wage hikes for the next fiscal, which was 8% in India last year.
The company is also comfortable with an employee utilisation rate of 80-83%. In the December quarter, it had a utilisation rate of 81.7%, excluding trainees and 72.1% including trainees.
