TCS plans aggressive hiring in north India
The Hindu Business Line — September 25, 2007

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest software exporter, is planning an aggressive recruitment drive in Northern India and intends to take 3,000 at the trainee level, and offer 2,000 lateral entries by the end of the fiscal. "The north is showing a huge manpower potential, and we plan to leverage it.

Tier 2 & 3 towns
The net additions for TCS this year would be 30,000-32,000 people. Of this 12,000-13,000 will be trainees, with North accounting for a healthy 25 per cent ratio," Thomas Simon, vice-president, human resources, TCS, said at a conference here.

For the first quarter, the company's offers in the region was pegged at 1,809, of which 70 per cent came from Tier II and Tier III cities.

TCS' sourcing channels include laterals, direct trainees, campus (management graduates), science graduates, Academic Interface Programme (AIP) and campus recruitments (engineers).

Talent acquisition
Commenting on the campus talent acquisition plans for the Northern region, he said that TCS visited 41 campuses in the first quarter of the fiscal, accredited 80 institutes so far and plans to have 35 more accredited campuses by the end of FY08.

Hiring would happen for positions based in the NCR region apart from Lucknow. While experienced professional hiring would be done for pre-mapped positions, the selected would be sent to Thiruvananthapuram for initial training.

Attrition rate
TCS has witnessed an attrition rate of 11.5 per cent overall, with 11 per cent attrition rate in the IT services business and 16.7 per cent attrition rate in BPO in the first quarter of current fiscal ended June 30. The company is expanding the talent pool beyond engineering students through its Ignite programme aimed at science graduates as well. TCS recently completed a seven-month on-the-job training programme for science graduates.