HCL Technologies has reduced the duration of its training programme for fresh graduates. This has helped the company put them quickly on projects and improve the revenue per employee, said Naveen Narayanan, Senior Vice-President, HCL Technologies.

With the company’s focus on improving profitability and productivity, there is increased pressure to get a candidate on to a project quickly. The reduced training time is one such measure.

Fresh graduates are usually put on a six-month training programme. However, this has been reduced to three months as candidates now come with niche skills.

Narayanan said the company is also recruiting more experienced people and adopting ‘just-in-time’ hiring to put them at clients’ sites immediately. Currently, around 70 per cent of the people are hired laterally, and the plan is to increase this to nearly 75 per cent, he said without giving a timeframe.

Narayanan pointed to HCL’s higher revenue per employee level of around $50,000 against $40,000 for some of the competitors. Further, the employee utilisation has improved to 83 per cent from 75 per cent a few quarters ago.

Narayanan said HCL has tied up with a few colleges to provide niche skills to candidates so that they can be put on projects quickly. However, the company still needs to teach some of the fundamentals, he said.

On the issue of training, E. Balaji, former CEO of recruitment company Randstad India, said IT firms, which are the largest employers of graduate engineers, are forced to start their own training facilities to address the quality issue. Many have invested heavily in infrastructure and good faculty. Also, training programmes run for 6-9 months, putting additional pressure on the margins of the company as the new hires remain non-billable during the training period.

During tough times, IT firms have to optimise costs by reviewing training strategy either by cutting back on the duration, partnering with external training companies, or collaborating with colleges willing to tailor their curriculum to fit the needs of the industry, he said.

> raja.simhan@thehindu.co.in

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