What HR Consulting Firm Says On TCS, Infosys Hiring Plans

Indian IT firms have been criticised by the US for unfairly taking jobs away from American workers

Bengaluru: Executive search firm The Head Hunters India on Tuesday said recent announcements of Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to hire 20,000 professionals each, apparently done to assuage the tension about IT industry's capabilities to be a net employment generator, are not rooted in reality. "Recently, domestic IT giants, Infosys, TCS, announced that they will be hiring 20,000 professionals each, thus apparently reducing the tension about IT industry's capabilities to be a net employment generator.. A closer examination reveals that it is not rooted in reality," The Head Hunters India founder chairman Kris Lakshmikanth told news agency Press Trust of India.

Mr Lakshmikanth said close examination of Infosys's hiring forecast of 20,000 reveals hiring of approximately 9,000 in India, as the IT company's CEO Vishal Sikka had already made a public announcement of 10,000 hires in the USA and another 1,000 approximately in rest of the world.

Mr Sikka had on May 2 announced that the IT giant will hire 10,000 Americans in the next two years and open four centres in the US in a bid to woo the Trump administration, which has been critical of outsourcing firms for unfairly taking jobs away from American workers.

The 10,000 people that will be hired will include experienced technology professionals and recent graduates from major universities, and local and community colleges.

Infosys will also train them on key competencies such as user experience, cloud, artificial intelligence, big data and digital offerings, as well as core technology and computer science skills.

Mr Lakshmikanth said that with plans of hiring 20,000 people, the projected gross number of people under employment will approximately increase from 2,10,000 as on April 1, 2017 to 2,30,000 as on April 1, 2018.

But after taking attrition of 12 per cent for Infosys, the projected manpower strength as on March 31, 2018 will be 2,02,400, he said.

"Since the bulk of Infosys manpower is in India, the net strength of Infosys in India will come down by about 10,000 people from the levels of April 1, 2017," he said.

Talking about TCS, Mr Lakshmikanth said that as on April 1 this year, the company had a headcount of 4,00,000 and with the announcement of 20,000 hiring this year, it would increase to 4,20,000 but the projected net hiring as on April 1, 2018 will plunge to 3,78,000 due to 10 per cent (42,000 people) attrition. "So, it looks like that the IT giants between them will have a net reduction in jobs," he said.

The trend of lower employee additions and shifting of workload away from human beings on to 'intelligent computers' is not confined to TCS.

Other companies such as Infosys and Cognizant have also been working on using artificial intelligence to replace humans, Mr Lakhsmikanth said.

"We have to live with automation, digital and immigration challenges," he added.

Talking about this year's outlook, Mr Lakhsmikanth said the Indian IT industry is likely grow 8-9 per cent in FY2017 and could grow at the same pace or accelerate in FY2018.

"Expect divergence in performance of companies depending on the mix of business (run versus change) and ability to capitalize on the digital opportunity," he said.