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Ms Nandita Gurjar, Vice-President, Human Resources

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Aug 13 India’s second largest software exporter Infosys Technologies on Tuesday said it is in talks to rope in five of the top IT hirers to come together in an industry-initiative that would see the creation of a large pool of “industry-ready” graduates.

Infosys, which currently has ‘Campus Connect’ programme at about 500 engineering colleges, is now looking to expand the scope of the initiative to an industry level to reach out to 1,000 colleges in possible partnership with leading IT companies.

Campus Connect which kicked off in May 2004 is an industry-academia partnership programme, designed to enhance the quality of education in the IT space.

The company says that Campus Connect has been extremely successful in keeping college faculty and students up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in the IT industry.

Under the initiative, the company trains the faculty on industry-relevant curriculum, which is then disseminated to students to make them “industry-ready”.

“We are talking to five of the large hirers to come together to enlarge the talent pool. Companies that become a part of the initiative can reach out to colleges state-wise or through some other model. This will mean pooling together of large resources to strengthen the infrastructure, if required, in such colleges. We hope to see something concrete on this, by December this year,” Ms Nandita Gurjar, Vice-President and Group Head – Human Resources, Infosys Technologies, told reporters here. “However, in Campus Connect we don’t enter into an MoU with the Universities to be the first one to hire from their campuses because the intention behind the initiative is to create a larger talent pool. So, we will need to work out the modalities on how the structures pans out when we join hands with other companies,” she pointed out.

Ms Gurjar said that the initiative in its expanded scope would target fresh set of colleges.

“It will take at least three years for the fresh crop of graduates to hit the market. This is the best way to manage costs and create a large employable talent base,” she added.

As on June 2008, Infosys had 94,379 employees – it hopes to touch the magical figure of one lakh shortly. Its gross addition for the same quarter stood at 7,182 professionals, while the net addition was pegged at 3,192 people.

“We will be recruiting 25,000 people this year (compared to 33,177 in FY08), of whom 18,000 will be from campuses. We are sticking to our commitments for the year. This is true of the campus recruits and also lateral hires. However, Infosys also goes for entry-level direct hiring, and if there is a slowdown in the market, we will have to take a call close to Q3 or Q4. But that number is over and above the guidance that we have given, and hence there is no change in our targets,” she said.

She said the company had given wage increments of 11-13 per cent for the current year compared with 12-15 per cent a year ago.

More Stories on : Human Resources | Employment | Infosys Technologies Ltd

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