Infosys, the country’s second largest software services company, has shortlisted four external candidates to head the Human Resources Department.

And the man who is driving this change is the company’s new CEO, Vishal Sikka, who has been at the helm since August 1.

The selected candidate will replace the current head of Human Resources, Srikantan Moorthy, who is moving to another role within the organisation. While Moorthy is Bengaluru-based, it is not clear whether the new candidate will be based in Bengaluru or the US; however, he is expected to shuttle between the two locations.

“Ever since he took over as CEO, Sikka has been bypassing Moorthy to make hiring decisions across all levels — from interns, freshers to top management hires, which has obviously created issues between him and Moorthy,” said the executive.

Difference of opinion

“For instance, Sikka wants Moorthy to re-look at the kind of colleges where fresher hiring has been done all these years. He wants more high quality freshers from better colleges and is no longer interested in the Infosys model of fast people augmentation at the fresher levels to offer merely a cost advantage to clients” revealed the executive on condition of anonymity.

“In short, Sikka wants to put in place a Human Resources head who can bring about a cultural change within Infosys and for this, he has selected a candidate with work experience in a US product company, who also has a fair understanding of the services business,” added the executive. When asked to comment on the above development, an Infosys spokesperson said “We do not comment on speculation.”On why an internal candidate has not been selected for the role, another top official from Infosys said, “If there was someone suitable within Infosys, Sikka would have announced it much earlier, as he is a man with a mission who wants to change the way Infosys delivers services to customers.”

In an interaction with BusinessLine last month, Sikka said that it was time to change the way the company worked.

Human touch

“If all we do is provide ‘bodies’ who follow customer instructions to their conclusion like drones, then we should not be surprised if we are replaced by drones. A client survey reveals that clients strongly feel, the ability to think, to create, to proactively identify challenges and things that clients should work on, is what is missing with Infosys.”

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