Cognizant Technology Solutions added 7,200 employees in the first quarter, which the company described as its ‘strongest’ hiring in the last two-and-a-half years.

But, the big shift in hiring is the increase in college hires, the fresh recruits as compared with lateral hires – attracting experienced staff from other companies.

About 44 per cent of recruitment were direct college hires and 56 per cent were lateral hires. Two years ago, 30 per cent was from college and the rest 70 per cent lateral.

“I would not view that [the hiring trend] as in anyway unusual. That’s exactly what we want,” according to Francisco D'Souza, CEO, Cognizant, a US-based software company with majority of employees working in India.

“We are able to recruit great talent. Our brand is probably the strongest it’s ever been, not just in India but in North America and Europe as well. We are getting the people and they are staying. Attrition has come down,” he said.

Cognizant ended the March quarter with around 178,600 employees of which 167,300 were service delivery staff, said Gordon Coburn, President, Cognizant.

The hiring is a testament to our continued confidence in the demand environment and our ability to continue to post industry-leading revenue growth,” he said.

Jennifer Hamel, analyst with the US-based Technology Business Research said, for the eleventh consecutive quarter,

Cognizant outperformed each of its India-centric competitors (TCS, HCL Technologies, Infosys and Wipro) in year-to-year revenue growth, expanding sales by 19.9 per cent year-to-year in first quarter 2014 to $2.42 billion.

Bets on Code Halo

Cognizant is betting on Code Halo – the information flowing between computing devices – to drive its consulting business.

Cognizant has coined the term Code Halo to refer to the digital information flowing between computing devices – tablets, mobile phones and gaming consoles -- driven by technologies such as social, mobile, analytics and cloud..

“Extracting information from Code Halos and using that for driving strategy and new business models has become the basis for competitive advantage in many industries,” D’Souza said. .

Cognizant needs to focus on their core business by driving efficiency and building scale in their existing operations. It is typically the core business that provides resources to invest in new systems, processes and business models that will create market differentiation and fuel growth, he told analysts while discussing the company’s first quarter financial results.

“We expect Cognizant will also increase investment in newer technologies such as machine-to-machine and artificial intelligence to create end-to-end digital transformation solutions, as evidenced by the acquisition of itaas in April,” Hamel said.

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