India’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) aims to hire a similar number of freshers in the fiscal year 2025 as it did last year, which was around 40,000, CEO and MD K Krithivasan told Moneycontrol.
This comes at a time when the company posted three consecutive quarters of headcount decline, and for the first time in 19 years since it got listed, TCS’ full-year headcount for FY24 plunged by 13,249.
Explaining the divergence between slowing headcount despite a strong deal pipeline and steady revenue growth, Krithivasan said, “We look at the trainees we deploy, we put them through our own internal training mechanisms and maybe after a period of 6 to 8 months, they become productive and billable. So, there will always be a lag.”
“In FY25, we will be hiring a very similar number of freshers like we did the year before,” he added.
In terms of hiring experienced professionals, TCS will be taking a call on a quarterly basis depending on immediate demand and requirement, Krithivasan said.
Moneycontrol had earlier reported that TCS is already on its way to hire 10,000 freshers for FY25, as it has begun fresher hiring via its National Qualifier Test (NQT) across top engineering colleges.
Krithivasan said he won’t read much into the full year and quarterly headcount decline in the fourth quarter ended March 31, as it’s only about a 1.5 percent drop in the overall headcount as against a revenue growth of about 3.2 percent YoY in constant currency terms.
“It's not a great divergence, which is compensated for by the productivity gains that we have been working at. And there's always a lag between when you hire people and when they get deployed also. So, I do not read too much into the headcount reduction,” he said.
Meanwhile, TCS’ attrition rate too had continued to slow down. Attrition for the quarter fell to 12.5 percent, continuing its downward trend from last quarter’s 13.3 percent. The company expects further correction in attrition levels in the upcoming quarters.
Also read: There is a greater opportunity to increase pricing: TCS CEO K Krithivasan
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