After 31% Cognizant Employees Resign, Company Will Hire 50% More Staff! 150,000 Employees To Be Hired Including India

Cognizant Technology Solutions plans to hire about one lakh lateral employees in 2021.

According to the company’s CEO Brian Humphries, while discussing the June quarter financial results with analysts said that it hopes to hire 30,000 new graduates this year and plans to make 45,000 offers to fresh graduates in India by 2022.

 “Against this backdrop, we continue to take a series of actions to reduce attrition, including compensation adjustments, job rotations, reskilling and promotions and a host of associated engagement activities…we now expect to hire approximately 100,000 laterals in 2021 and to train close to 100,000 associates,” 

– Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries.

Cognizant’s Hiring Process

Across both IT services and BPO, Cognizant’s attrition metric captures the entire firm, including trainees and corporates. At the end of the June quarter, the company employed over 3 lakh people.

CEO Brian Humphries said the company plans to make 45,000 offers to freshers in India by 2022.

“And then we will train roughly about 95,000-100,000 people in new digital capabilities. The third bucket is our graduate hires, 30,000 new graduate hires (have been) onboarded already for the financial year 2021. We have also given offers to 45,000 new graduate hires this year so they will be onboarded next year, in 2022,”

Rajesh Nambiar

High Attrition Rate

Cognizant reported an extremely high attrition rate of 31% for the June quarter, with 29% of that being voluntary departure.

“We continue to take a series of actions to reduce attrition, including compensation adjustments, job rotations, reskilling and promotions and a host of associated engagement activities. Fortunately, we meaningfully increased our recruiting capacity over the last 6 months as we anticipated the spike in attrition, following the V-shaped demand recovery in the second half of 2020,”

Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries

“We now expect to hire approximately 100,000 laterals in 2021 and to train close to 100,000 associates,” Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said.

Rajesh Nambiar, President-Digital Business & Technology and Chairman, India at Cognizant, agreed attrition is higher than it should be.

“We have doubled down on our hiring, we anticipated this whole imbalance and exits in the industry. In addition to investing in our people, we will also be making record hires to ensure that we will have a very robust talent pipeline. So we are going to be hiring 100,000 lateral hires this year,” Rajesh Nambiar said

Cognizant With Highest-Ever Headcount

According to the statement release, Cognizant now employs over 3,00,000 people for the first time in its history, marking the company’s highest-ever headcount.

The company said in the second quarter its voluntary attrition touched 29 per cent on an annualised basis and 18 per cent on 12 months basis (LTM).

Jan Siegmund, CFO, Cognizant, said that the second quarter top-line results that exceeded the company’s guidance were driven by improved demand for services and momentum in digital revenue.

“We delivered a strong second quarter. Through targeted investments, we’ve been shifting our portfolio to faster-growing market segments while extending our capabilities and partnerships to help clients build modern businesses. I see a stronger, more competitive Cognizant emerging, with growing commercial momentum,” 

Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries.