What Infosys looks for when hiring

Representative image.

In the first quarter of FY23, IT major Infosys added over 21,000 employees, taking the total headcount to more than 3.35 lakh employees.

The company plans to hire 50,000 freshers along with laterals to fill talent gaps. Infosys HR head Richard Lobo lists out the major aspects he looks for in a candidate, whether it’s for a junior, mid-level or senior position.

Infosys always looks for an aptitude to acquire new skills. This has not changed over the period of Infosys’ existence. “We never hire for knowledge, but we hire for learnability. We hire people who can put in the effort,” Lobo said.

Concerning specific skills, smart and extended IoT systems, blockchain, metaverse, cloud modernisation, cloud-native development, API economy, etc, are among the focus areas. One additional practice that Infosys has been following for the past year is focusing on adjacency skills.

“If someone has to be hired for AI, we are looking for someone who already has some big data and related skills,” Thirumala Arohi Mamunooru, senior vice-president and head, education, training and assessments (ETA), Infosys, told Moneycontrol.

Among other factors that are now gaining importance are design thinking and a problem-solving mindset, something Infosys invested in six or seven years ago.

“We are now trying to create the traditional things around problem-solving skills, strategic design, etc,” Mamunooru said, explaining that Infosys presents candidates with challenges and asks them how they would manage them.

Against the backdrop of the recent pandemic-induced disruption, Lobo believes the role of managers is changing. “Managers are not what we originally thought. Managing a team is a very low requirement.”

Today, he said, the role of a manager includes being technically competent, and your team should look up to you for your skills and your knowledge.

When hiring for the mid or senior manager level, the HR team looks very closely at how capable a candidate is in terms of technology and skills. It also considers if the prospective hire had worked on projects that required a lot of collaboration, where a team needed to be held together.

Thirdly, whenever Lobo hires a manager, he always asks one question during the interview: If I interview somebody from your team, what will they say about you?

“Of course, people could give you a wrong answer, but you usually get a lot about whether it’s more about them versus the team,” Lobo said. “We get an idea whether they’re more focused on their personal requirements versus handing the team,” he added.

Lobo conceded that the method is not 100 percent spot on. “But you largely get the right people on your team,” he said.