HCL Tech in aggressive hiring mode, to take 20,000 freshers in FY22

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India’s third largest IT major HCL Tech will hire 20,000 freshers in FY22 on the back of increasing demand for digital and robust deal pipeline, said VV Apparao, Chief Human Resources Officer.

Apparao, during the earnings call on April 23, said that the company is in an aggressive hiring mode and has already made 17,000 offers. The company, he said, expects the number to ramp up to 20,000 during the year. HCL Tech on-boarded close to 15,000 freshers in FY21.

Its peer, too, have robust hiring plan in place. TCS will hire 40,000 from campuses, whereas Infosys and Wipro will hire 26,000 and more than 9,000 from campuses, respectively.

HCL Tech hired a total of 44,695 employees in FY21, a mix of freshers and laterals. Total employee count at the end of the year stood at 168,977, with net addition of 18,554 staff last fiscal.

The attrition declined to 9.9 percent, from 10.2 percent in the previous quarter, even as the war of talent continues to be the theme of the year.

While the company expects the attrition to increase in the coming quarters owing to the huge demand for tech talents, it has already put in place processes such as skill-based bonuses to reward and retain top talent.

In response about the compensation for FY22, Apparao said the company will take a call on that in this quarter given the wage hikes and bonuses were awarded over the last three to six months.

The company rolled out wage hikes for its employees, effective October 2020 and a one-time bonus to the tune of Rs 700 crore last quarter. The hikes were in the range of 7-8 percent for offshore employees and 2-3 percent for their onsite counterparts.

The company reported net profit in dollar terms at $2,696 million, up 3 percent quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) and up 6 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) for Q4 FY21. For the year ending March 31, 2021, the company reported $10.2 billion in revenues, up 2.4 percent year-on-year.

The company has signed 19 digital transformation deals in the quarter. C Vijayakumar, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), said the new total contract value of new deals are at an all-time high at $3.1 billion, up 49 percent YoY. For FY21, new deal TCV stood at $7.3 billion, which is 18 percent increase over FY20.

This momentum comes on the back of multi-year transformation cycle the IT firms is seeing.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol last quarter, Prateek Aggarwal, CFO, had said that given the size of IT landscape that most of its customers have, be it Fortune500 companies in the US, it will take years to change to digital technologies like cloud migration or to be nimbler to serve their customers better.

“I see it at least a 3-5 year kind of technology upcycle. As far as HCL is concerned we have invested quite in advance,” he added. This includes investment in its Mode 2 and Mode 3, which are digital technologies and products and platforms, over the last few years.