Tata Consultancy Services has become the first Indian software services company to employ over two lakh staffers.
On a consolidated basis, TCS now has an active staff count of 2,02,190 after making net additions of 3,576 during the three-month period.
Its international competitors IBM and Accenture, employed 4,26,751 and 2,25,000 staffers as on March 31, 2011
Gross hiring
At TCS, gross hiring for the quarter stood at 11,988 largely because of attrition which edged up to 14.8 per cent.
“Because of cyclical reasons, the attrition in the first quarter tends to go up and we see several employees going for further studies. Also, some of it could be related to dissatisfaction that is generated within the ranks following our annual appraisal process,” said Mr Ajoy Mukherjee, Global Head of Human Resources, said at a news conference, here on Thursday.
In the quarter gone by, the company dished out salary hikes in the range of 12-14 per cent to its India-based staff and 2-4 per cent in other major offshore markets such as US, the UK and Europe.
TCS' Bangalore-based rival Infosys gave an offshore wage hike of 10-12 per cent and an onsite wage hike of 2-3 per cent during the same period.
For the current quarter, TCS intends to take on board up to 20,000 new employees, said Mr Mukherjee.
Campus recruits
Roughly half of this would be campus recruits who already have offer letters while the remaining would be lateral or experienced hands. The company has given campus offers to 37,000 engineers, who will join in staggered manner from the current quarter onwards.
In comparison, lateral hiring accounted for 75 per cent of the company's overall hiring during the quarter gone by, added Mr Mukherjee.
Utilisation rate excluding trainees was 83.2 per cent while including trainees it stood at 76.2 per cent.