Infosys offers 18,000 jobs to fresh engineers

Thursday October 11,2007

Bangalore, Oct 11,The Infosys Technologies Ltd is on a hiring spree. For the ensuing fiscal year (FY 2008-09), it has made a whopping 18,000 job offers in about 1,000 colleges across the country to take its total headcount to over 100,000, a top company official said here Thursday.

'We have offered jobs to about 18,000 graduating engineers in campus interviews conducted in 1,000 engineering colleges across India during the first two quarters of this fiscal. The offer is by far the largest ever by an IT firm in the sub-continent,' Infosys board member T V Mohandas Pai told reporters here.

'To meet our growing demand for quality human capital, we plan to hire about 9,000 freshers in the third quarter (Oct-Dec) and 4,500 in the fourth quarter (Jan-March) of this fiscal (FY 2008),' he added.

During the second quarter, the company and its subsidiaries made a gross addition of 8,543 employees. With 4,013 employees leaving the company during the quarter for higher studies and other jobs, the net addition was 4,530.

The total headcount at the end of September increased to 80,501 from 75,971 in the previous quarter and 66,150 in the same quarter last year.

Of the total employees, software professionals account for 75,313 and trainees 6,517. About 3,000 employees are from various nationalities and working at the company's global software development centres across the world.

'Our attrition rate is less than the industry average although it has gone up by 0.5 percent to 14.2 percent from 13.7 percent in the previous quarter and 12.9 percent in the same quarter a year ago. After a couple of years with us, many of these bright engineers are keen on pursuing higher studies and more challenging jobs,' Pai noted.

To enhance the quality of engineering talent and create human capital, the company conducts a 'Campus Connect' programme in about 360 colleges across the country for a whopping 31,000 students.

The programme includes training faculty members at its world-class Mysore campus to improve the standard of teaching in about 1,000 engineering colleges.

'Several IT and other companies have started making a beeline to these colleges for hiring graduating engineers. We are seeing a qualitative change among our new employees, thanks to the global training we offer at our Mysore campus. This transformational initiative, along with Project Genesis, which is aimed at college graduates for our BPO business, will deepen the talent pool,' Pai added.

The company has trained 1,217 teachers in various engineering and other colleges so far this fiscal.