The Hindu Business Line : Hiring as planned, mostly from campuses

Bangalore, July 11 Putting to rest speculation that IT companies would hire less because of the slowdown, Infosys Technologies, India’s second largest IT services provider, said hiring for the company would be as planned.

The company said it expects 10,000 people to join in the second quarter. It would also hire more people who have a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Commerce degree, the company added.

Out of the 10,000 that are supposed to join in the second quarter, about 8,000 would be hired from campuses said Mr Mohandas Pai, Member of the Board and Head – HRD and Education & Research.

He said about 3,500 people out of the 10,000 would be non-engineering graduates. The company wants to broaden its talent base, and the top layer of the BSc graduates is extremely good, he added.

For the first quarter, the attrition was 13.6 per cent, compared with 13.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008. Mr Mohandas Pai said attrition was under control.

Wage hike for the period was between 11 per cent and 13 per cent for employees in India and between 4 per cent and 5 per cent for employees outside India, the company said. Increases in salary impacted Infosys’s margins in the first quarter.

Mr Pai said salary hikes for the year has already been completed in the first quarter, and would not impact margins in the later quarters.

The utilisation rate in the last quarter dipped to 68.9 per cent (including training) compared with 70.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2008, the company said.