Part I: 'We will hire 4,000 this year'

Nasdaq-listed information technology company Cognizant Technology Solutions is one of the fastest growing firms in India. The company, which registered 61 per cent revenue growth in 2003, expects revenues of around $530 million in 2004, up from $368.2 million last year.

Lakshmi Narayanan, President and CEO, Cognizant, in an exclusive interview with Shobha Warrier, talks about the company's decision to hire from the top B-Schools in the United States, the quality of the management and engineering students in India. Excerpts:

It was reported that Cognizant has started recruiting management professionals from the top B-Schools like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and MIT. What's the reason behind recruiting from US business schools and not from India?

In our business, we need to build what we call, domain-specific skills. In order to have that, we have been hiring MBAs from the leading business schools in India. This year we went to IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Lucknow, IIM-Kolkata, ISB and NITIE and picked up about 60 professionals. We have been doing this for the last five years.

That has worked out well. And, we want to continue this programme.

Now, you find that a number of business schools outside India also produce some very capable people. Some are people of Indian origin who study there; others are locals.

So, in order to get a comprehensive mix of capabilities and high talent, we decided we should look at outside universities as well.

That is the reason why we decided to focus specifically on some of the business schools in the US. We went to Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, MIT and Columbia for recruitment.

These are all Ivy League schools that attract top talent.

Earlier, people hesitated to come to India.

Did you try earlier too?

It is not that we didn't try earlier. A couple of years back, we went to recruit but they were not interested in coming to India and spending some time here.

Does that mean you want them to work in the US itself?

The domain specialists we hire here and the MBAs, eventually end up working there with our customers in the US and Europe because the skills that they have is appropriate for that kind of consulting work.

We need people there. So, we thought why not hire local people to fulfill our needs there. That was how we started this experiment a couple of years ago. But there were not too many takers then.

How did they look at an Indian company then?

At that point of time, their attitude was, "These people are doing something in IT. Let's see what happens!" Now that we are successful, they want to be a part of us. So, the mindset has changed.

About India?

Yes, about India. About India having the capability to be a major player in the IT field is something that is accepted. People now want to be part of Indian organisations, or be some way connected with the India story.

When you went to recruit in the US B-Schools, did you target only Indians or anyone who is studying there?

We target everybody. We wanted preferably the local people who are familiar with the local environment, local market place, and the local culture. But when you go to these schools, you ask for a GPA-based filtering of candidates, say a GPA of over 3.5 or 3.8. In that category, most of them are Indians.

Indians somehow seem to have mastered the trade of how to get high GPA. So, we had to do a different mix in order to make sure we had a good mix of people who have gone from here to study there as well as the local people, and people from other countries.

If you can get a person from China who is studying in the US and who wants to be a part of this organisation, it is good because eventually he could be a part of our Chinese operations when it expands. So, we were going after a good mix of people from different nationalities.

Two years ago when you went for recruitment, even Indians who went to the US were reluctant to join you?

Yes. They then preferred to work in a dot-com company or hot-spot companies like an eBay, Intuit or Microsoft.

When did you realise that this mindset has changed? Or have you been trying throughout?

We have been trying continuously. I would say that the beginning of this year was a turning point when the media turned their attention to offshoring in a big way. The visibility was very high and everybody was suddenly talking about India. Yes, there is a lot more that gets outsourced to China in terms of manufacturing than to India, but India got far greater share of that visibility.

That's when people realised that there is so much happening in India and wanted to be a part of it.

Have you already recruited the people? If so, how many of them?

We have already recruited about a dozen people from these Ivy League institutions, spanning engineering and management disciplines. We will get some of them here to India for 6 months to one year for training and orientation.

The training in India would cover the different aspects of our onsite/offshore model, including Cognizant's pioneering 4th Generation offshore model.

Process and quality management, programme management, strategy and consulting, domain specific solutions and financial modeling would be some of the areas of focus for this training. These professionals would also work in specific projects.

After training, we plan to deploy them back in the US in customer-centric and consulting roles, as relationship managers and account managers, and in our business technology consulting practice providing advise to customers on their IT roadmap, change management initiatives, etc.

We believe that this investment will help us provide greater value to our customers.

Why do you want to train them in India? Is it because you have your global training centre in India?

One, our in-house corporate university -- Cognizant Academy -- is based in India. Basic capability, processors, the technology; everything is here; our investments are here. It would be faster learning for them here.

Most companies recruit in India and send them abroad to work but you said you prefer local people. How important is it to employ people who are familiar with the local surroundings?

It is very important both there as well as here. We require local technologists because they understand the local ambience and culture.

And in the US, why we need local people is to interact with the various customers. Because their style of operation, nature of customer interaction, corporate decision making, psyche are different. 'Localness' is very critical for our business.

If you go to China, we have a lot of local people there. In fact our head of Chinese operations, Henry Yang, is a native Chinese, who has over 15 years international experience in the IT industry.

Compared to the premier Indian B-Schools, are the people from the top US B- schools not expensive to hire?

Yes, they are a little more expensive to hire because whatever the competitive wage that a person with an MBA in the US gets, we have to pay them.

Really, they have a choice between joining a Cognizant or a Hewlett-Packard, or a strategy-consulting firm such as an A T Kearney or a Booz Allen. When they offer a higher salary and we go at a lower salary, we will not be able to attract them. So we have to necessarily pay them a competitive salary which is more expensive compared to hiring here.

Talent-wise, how different are the students of these B-schools in the US from say, a student from the IIM?

Talent-wise, they are quite matched, except for the level of exposure they have in terms of independent learning and prior experience. It is different from the B-schools in India.

Even the IIMs?

Even the IIMs. In the US, prior to joining a B-school, most of them have intensive work experience. And for those that do not have that experience, what they learn in terms of case studies, the number of seminars they participate in, and industry awareness is slightly higher compared to the institutions here.

I have read that you prefer recruiting not only locals but people of Indian origin. Any particular reason for this?

No, it's purely a question of availability. We want to hire local people who are familiar with the local markets, with local conditions, who can interact with our customers on a day-to-day basis.

There we have no distinction between people of Indian origin or the local people. We try to hire both, whoever has the right capability. We don't differentiate at all. But in this field, Indians dominate; they always do better compared to any others. So, we end up having a higher proportion of Indians compared to the local people.

You have said that while recruiting in India, you choose those Indians who have come back to India after working abroad, for managerial positions. Why?

It's a cross-cultural thing, you know. Travel itself is an experience that cannot be learnt any other way. The people who have operated in that market understand the day-to-day pressures of our customers. So that customer-centric mindset is very important to provide a holistic solution.

Photo: Sreeram Selvaraj