IT major HCL Technologies, which drew flak earlier this year for late on-boarding of freshers, is looking to get past the problem of over-capacity by ramping up off-campus hiring.
Two-thirds of the company’s intake of fresh engineering graduates now comes from off-campus hiring. This, in a way, is an indication of the general IT industry’s shift towards just-in-time hiring.
“We took a rap on our knuckles, and we did learn from it. A lot of our problem was a legacy issue, wherein we hired somewhere in 2010 for a business situation in 2013,” said Naveen Narayanan, Senior Vice President – Human Resources, in an interaction with The Hindu on Wednesday.
“But now we want to clearly ensure that we are not piling-up inventory, and are getting closer to just-in-time hiring. We will continue the pace of our lateral hirings as well, which now account for three-fourths of our overall hiring,” he added.
The company, which does not expect hiring to drop this year, is also tackling the problem of better communication with its newly-hired engineering graduates.
In particular, according to Mr. Narayanan, HCL is in the process of learning how to manage multiple communications channels.
“We have gotten that in place… and continue to do at this point in time,” Mr. Narayanan said.
Mr. Narayanan also pointed out that one of the bigger issues surrounding U.S immigration reform was the new wage compliance regime that would come into effect.
“It’s not only about the shift in converting thousands of H1bs into locals or greencards. But if you dig a little deeper, it’s about whether most companies are compliant on wages. When the new compliance regime comes into place, jump that IT companies will have to do is what will hurt profitability,” he pointed out.
