HCL Technologies will hire 12,000 fresh graduates from campuses during the current fiscal. The company said it would hire (net) another 20,000 people in the 2-10 years’ experience category during this year.

HCL chief human resources officer Apparao V. V. told The Hindu, “We are very bullish on campus hiring this year. In fact, we are doubling it. We will hire 10,000 freshers from Indian campuses and another 2,000 from U.S. universities. Our lateral hiring will be in tune with our revenue guidance.”

The company said it has increased its focus on hiring women. Last year, it had only eight women in the vice-president (VP) category and in the last fiscal, it hired eight more women in senior positions taking the number of women VPs at HCL to 16. “We have been focussing on gender diversity across the board.” For the fiscal ended March 31, HCL reported gross hiring of 51,589 and a net addition of 17,884 people. In the fourth quarter, it hired 14,249 people with a net addition of 5,637. HCL reported an increase in attrition to 17.7% against 15.5% LTM (last twelve months).

“A 15% attrition is good. We are putting in all efforts to understand what the pain points are that result in attrition. In some cases, there are customer requests for employees and in such cases, we let them go. Salary is another factor that leads to attrition. Some 60% of our attrition was voluntary,” confirmed Mr. Apparao.

HCL had conducted 1,77,351 sessions of training and reskilling in digital technologies during the fiscal. The quarter saw 84,900 of such training sessions. Under these, 31,140 people in the six months to 15 years’ experience category were trained. In addition, the company trained 79,970 people in general skills during the fiscal.

HCL’s localisation

HCL now has 36,478 people outside India, of which 16,931 are in the U.S. Currently, some 67% of its U.S. staff are locals compared with 64% a year ago. “We will see a further increase in our localisation activities as we expect a lot of business growth coming up in key customer markets. We are in need of diversified skillsets.

“We are also setting up customer experience centres and proof of concept (POC) kiosks in customer markets and we are doing it in collaboration with local authorities, local talent and in conjunction with local cultures,” added Mr. Apparao.