Infosys recruits mostly freshers

Infosys will get 'fresher' in the coming quarters, even as it shrugs off all possibilities of its bench piling on calories in case some of the newcomers are not billable.

The fresher intake, at 16,000, will constitute a record 89 per cent of total recruitments the Bangalore-based IT giant will carry out in fiscal 2010, according to information given by senior company officials.

"More trainees on our rolls means that we will have enough resources to address the market," said Infosys Chief Executive Officer Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Board member and Director, Human Resources, Education and Research and Administration, TV Mohandas Pai, said the training period for freshers had been increased from four months to seven months to give the new recruits adequate opportunities to be placed on different projects.

On whether the record fresher intake for the coming financial year would lead to the bench rate shooting up, Pai said, "We have 8,000 people currently in training and will enhance training availability to accommodate the higher fresher numbers. To counter the possibility of benching, we will ensure that every trainee gets gainful employment once he passes out.

"As part of our bench management initiatives, we will be placing more freshers on internal projects dealing with our IS systems. Trainees will also be gainfully employed across our 15 business units. So there is little possibility of bench numbers rising."

Pai was quick to add that the company would be faced with less flexibility on the people front as there would be less jobs globally in 2010. "Employees will have to shape up," he said.

On fears that the bench rate would rise further, Pai said while 5,000 people had joined the company's bench in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2009, this was not a considerable number, as they had been absorbed across Infosys' 18 strategic business units.

"As for the freshers, the prospects of those graduating in a year from now who have been given offer letters will also depend on the business environment at that point of time," said Pai.

The company is recruiting 18,000 people in 2009-10 compared with 28,231 a year ago and will freeze wages to rein in costs. Of the 18,000 new recruits, about 2,000 will be lateral hirings, with the rest being freshers.

"Our offer letters have gone out over two-and-a-half months ago and we expect most of the new employees to join soon. The conversion rate will be 80 per cent," Pai said. He ruled out any revision of the salary offers to freshers. Some of Infosys' rivals are said to have revised fresher salaries by up to 30 per cent, according to industry sources.

The company's bench is estimated by industry watchers at between 30,000 and 35,000. Infosys saw its utilisation rate (including trainees) at 67.6 per cent in the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2009. It was 69.8 per cent a year earlier.

"The fourth quarter results show that there has been pressure on billing rates and margins. Margin pressures will lead to Infosys having to streamline its cost of operations and look at improving resource utilisation and productivity," Karthik Ananth of Zinnov Management Consulting said in a note on Wednesday.

He expects that Infosys will continue to look to its employees to take ownership of cost reduction and come up with innovative ideas to grow business and reduce costs.