Bullish TCS to offer 35,000 jobs for freshers

Exuding bullish sentiment, India's largest software exporter TCS on Friday said it will offer 35,000 jobs for freshers at campuses in 2015-16, 10,000 more than offered in the current fiscal.

The Tata-group company also said that it is likely to overshoot its overall stated target of hiring 55,000 professionals, including lateral ones, during the ongoing 2014-15 fiscal.

"We will be overshooting that 55,000 number but at the moment we are not looking at what that final number is going to be. We will be doing 35,000 campus offers next fiscal," TCS executive vice president and global head for human resources, Ajoy Mukherjee, told PTI.

The process has already been set rolling and the company is visiting campuses, he added.

Of the 25,000 offers made for FY15, Mukherjee said he expects around 71-72 per cent freshers to actually join the company.

"The overall need of what we require for the next year and planning our head-counts from that point, campus (recruitment) is one of the things we have to do," Mukherjee said, adding that the overall hiring number for FY16, including the lateral ones, will be decided in February next year.

After declaring a 13.2 per cent growth for the July-September quarter profit at Rs 5,244 crore (Rs 52.44 billion), TCS chief executive and managing director N Chandrasekaran had said that he is bullish about 2015-16.

"Across the sectors, and across markets, we remain very positive. If at all, we are only increasing our investments both in sales and capability building. We have already hired 36,000 people (as against targeted 55,000 for FY15)... So, we remain bullish about next year," he had said.

Mukherjee said the growth in business has resulted in the likelihood of the company overshooting its overall hiring target of 55,000 for the current fiscal.

"Look at our volume growth in Q1 and Q2, it has been very good and this (overshooting) is based on that," Mukherjee said, adding that there is a conservativeness when the targets get prepared.

The company reported a volume growth of 6.1 per cent in the September quarter, on a sequential basis.

About the campus offers in FY16, he said the company will go to 350-400 institutes to make the offers, which is almost the same as this fiscal.

TCS typically meets the heads of institutes in the ongoing third quarter to discuss about hiring for the next fiscal, he said.

The hiring of more freshers may pull down the company's high utilisation rate, which stood at 81.3 per cent, Mukherjee said. He, however, did not give any target for the utilisation rate, stating it is function of many aspects.

On attrition, he said there has been some drop in August and September and the rate of 12.8 per cent may come down in the future.

However, as things improve in the economy and newer opportunities spring up, there may be more people switching or leaving jobs, he said.