Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, which added just 523 people to its rolls in the first three months of the financial year, said it is not cutting its fresher intake target for the full year, but admitted that there are some "onboarding delays".
The company had, three months ago, said it expects to hire around 40,000 freshers this year, slighly below the 44,000 freshers it had onboarded last financial year.
"The number 40,000 stands, but how it will be spread over the year remains to be seen.. There are certain [onboarding] delays because of [slower] project ramp up, so the onboarding of the associates also get delayed," acknowledged Milind Lakkad, head of human resources for India's largest private sector employer.
He said the pace of onboarding of freshers depends "purely" on order intake. But, he said, there should be no doubt that the company will "honor all its committments".
The words, while comforting to some degree, are unlikely to make freshers waiting for appointment orders euphoric. Many students, who have completed their education and are waiting to join TCS, face the prospect of sitting idle for longer than they expected because of the so-called onboarding delays by IT companies.
Some of these graduates may even join less glamorous companies during this waiting period, believing that it is better to go for a job in hand than to continue to wait for front-line companies like TCS and Infosys to send their joining letter.
Talking to the media after announcing the quarterly results of the company, TCS CEO K Krithivasan blamed the slowdown in the company's US revenues to clients going slow on older programs. North America grew by only 4.6% in the June quarter, compared to the same period a year ago. In comparison, Middle East & Africa revenue grew 15.2%, India grew 14% and Latin America grew 13.5%.
To make his point, Krithivasan said that the company won new deals worth $10 billion during the three months ended June, and this indicates that there is inherent demand for the company's services.
"But some of the old programs where the ROI [return on investment] is not very clear.. you end up having a reduction in deployment for such kind of projects," he said, adding that this does not mean that there is a fall in demand for the company's services.
He also said not all sectors in the US are seeing this kind of correction. For example, within the financial services sector, banking is relatively stable, while the mortgage sector is under pressure. Similarly, he pointed out, within telecom, many 5G operators have started focusing on cost saving after having failed to generate expected returns from their investment in the 5G technology.
The company, which has over 6.1 lakh employees, also said that it has given 100% of variable pay to 70% of its staff.