The top four software companies made record employee hiring in the quarter ended September, but it is the impressive figure of Cognizant Technology Solutions that everybody in the industry is talking about.

While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) continued to lead the pack, the US-based software company overtook Infosys with an employee addition of 12,000, including 4,000 through the acquisition of CoreLogic during the quarter.

Excluding the acquisition, Cognizant, on its own, hired 8,000 in the quarter. This was just 262 short of Infosys' numbers.

“Cognizant overtook Wipro in terms of revenue last quarter, and is now threatening to overtake Infosys in hiring employees,” said Mr Jayaprakash Gandhi, Career Counsellor, who tracks the hiring in colleges keenly.

Record recruitment

This year, Cognizant and TCS have done very well in hiring college graduates. Usually, in the September quarter, a large proportion of the hiring is of college graduates who join the companies next year, he said.

For instance, the Nasdaq-listed Cognizant made a record number of 1,820 job offers at VIT University, Tamil Nadu, one of the leading technical education institutions. “We have not heard of such a record even in other countries,” said Dr G. Viswanathan, Chancellor of the University.

“This level of hiring indicates that we continue to see a robust pipeline and clients are not slowing down their decision making processes,” said Cognizant's Chief People Officer, Mr Shankar Srinivasan. “Our clients are clearly indicating that they will continue to shift work to global delivery models and, as a result, like in past years, we expect our growth to continue to be fuelled by the ongoing share shift of budgets to the global model,” he said.

Strong demand

Commenting on the record hiring, Mr Siddharth A. Pai, Managing Director of TPI India, a consultancy firm, said the underlying business demand for discretionary work appears strong. While there are fears around the fiscal issues facing sovereign governments, there has yet to be any systemic collapse of businesses or financial institutions, which was the case in 2008.

The slow uptick in the US and in Europe, as evidenced by a drop in jobless claims, appears to be continuing. It is this that is giving Indian IT employers the confidence to go ahead with their plans. In addition, they have discovered new markets, both at home and abroad and are basing some of their expectations on these markets, Mr Pai said.

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