An interview with Mr. Bhaskar Das, Director HRD, Cognizant Technology Solutions, India, Ltd.

With so many IT companies flooding the market, how does CTS stand apart as an employer?

Looking at the market over the past 24 months, we have reasons to believe that Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) has become the first choice of many a professional, if that makes us stand apart, so be it. Ninety-nine percent of our global employee base comes out of India. Right now we are a 3000 plus organisation, and in India alone, in the core areas of evelopment we have more than 2500 people working for us.

Our recruitment policy focuses not on whether we get the right candidate or not, it goes more with the idea that anytime, anybody joins this organisation, they should be happy about the association. Secondly, we use the data from exit interviews to rectify some of the lacunas a person points out in the various areas.

We look at campuses not only as recruitment grounds but as a place where the young, hopeful IT professionals understand what Cognizant is.

Can tell us about your recruitment and training processes?

There is lateral recruitment for people who have more than one- year experience and there is campus recruitment. While recruiting we are very careful about the quality of the people coming in, and we do not let any kind of business or commercial exigencies lower those standards. In direct recruitment we visit about 50 campuses and we have been lucky that in the last 24 months we have established ourselves as a company of choice in many of those institutions. As far as lateral recruitment is concerned we hire from wherever the best talent is available. We have development centres in Calcutta, Pune, and Chennai with a new centre coming up in Bangalore.

As far as training is concerned, we have a Cognizant academy and our HR department looks into all aspects of training from the technical to behavioural to soft skills.

Indian professionals are constantly being lured away by overseas opportunities. In such a situation how do you attract the best talent?

In the IT industry people are always being lured away by overseas opportunities and that is a market reality. Indians will always be a preferred manpower sourcing ground for the global IT industry.

CTS primarily works on the on-side off-shore model which means that at any given time about 30% of work and 30% of the team will be onsite, in our case it could be the US or Europe. We have never felt threatened by overseas appointments luring away talent, because we ourselves offer it. Seventy percent of our business comes out of the US and 30% out of Europe.

We also believe in taking care of our people's aspirations not only in terms of vertical growth, but by way of career choices and enhanced responsibilities. In this highly mobile industry how do you deal with employee turnover?All IT companies are worried at the high levels of mobility prevalent in the industry. It is a commonly held belief that if you increase the salary, employees are less inclined to move out. We at CTS have found out that what really makes people move is career aspirations. This whole industry is based on a certain business model with a certain revenue model. Which means that every IT organisation would be working around a certain bandwidth of profitability, which in turn determines the salaries.

The way we have been able to retain talent is to constantly be aware of each employee's career aspirations and try to meet them. This we believe will help us retain our talent in the long run. Over the last 3 years our attrition rate is half that of the whole IT industry in India.

Apart from education what are the qualities you look for in a candidate?

At the entry level we look for ability to think critically, ability to communicate on a one-to-one basis and one-to-many basis. The thing we look for is-- do they have the ability to learn and learn quickly. It is in our hands to train and retain them and let them grow with the organisation.

At the middle to senior level we lay more stress on leadership qualities, the ability to lead teams and at the top level we look for strategic thinking which is very crucial.

What are CTS's future goals in the Indian software industry?

We want to become one of the top five IT companies in this country in terms of a preferred employer. Which means that our practices and processes should be oriented towards making CTS as one of the best companies to work with. We believe that, the more business focussed HR processes are, the more employee oriented it becomes. One has to understand that people orientation and business orientation are in fact one and the same. When the entire purpose is to generate wealth, there can't be business orientation devoid of people orientation or vice-versa.

We also would like to invest more in terms of academic interfaces and contribute such more in that area. We would like to see that CTS not only gives employment but also ensures that the industry benefits from our presence on the scene.

MALINI SURYANARAYANAN