Cognizant Plans To Recruit 1 Lakh Employees This Year; 45,000 Freshers From India
Cognizant Technology Solutions announces a hiring spree in 2021 with plans to hire about one lakh lateral employees (from the industry) and to train close to one lakh associates. This comes against the background of high attrition rates that have swept the industry. Also, it expects to onboard approximately 30,000 new graduates in 2021 and make 45,000 offers to new graduates in India for 2022, said the company’s CEO Brian Humphries, while discussing the June quarter financial results with analysts. The US-based IT company has majority of its employees working in India.
“We continue to take a series of actions to reduce attrition, including compensation adjustments, job rotations, reskilling and promotions and a host of associated engagement activities. Fortunately, we meaningfully increased our recruiting capacity over the last 6 months as we anticipated the spike in attrition, following the V-shaped demand recovery in the second half of 2020,” the company's CEO Brian Humphries adds.
The hiring plans comes in the backdrop of improved business environment. The company in fact revised upwards the full year 2021 revenue to $18.4-$18.5 billion or a growth of 10.2-11.2 per cent as against $17.8-$18.1 billion or growth of 7.0-9.0 per cent announced during the first quarter results. “As noted in last quarter's remarks, we expected attrition to go up sequentially in Q2, and it did. Second quarter voluntary attrition reached 29 per cent on an annualised basis or 18 per cent on a trailing 12-month basis. Our attrition metric captures the entire company including trainees and corporates across both IT services and BPO,” he said.
Cognizant now employs over 3,00,000 for the first time in its history, marking the company’s highest-ever headcount to date, the release said. “We delivered a strong second quarter. Through targeted investments, we have been shifting our portfolio to faster-growing market segments while extending our capabilities and partnerships to help clients build modern businesses. I see a stronger, more competitive Cognizant emerging, with growing commercial momentum. We are bullish on the industry and our prospects within it.” Humphries in the release said
Jan Siegmund, CFO, Cognizant, said that the second quarter top-line results that exceeded the company’s guidance was driven by improved demand for services and momentum in digital revenue.
