Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s No. 2 software services exporter, is seeing greater competition for talent, and expects higher salaries to help prevent attrition, a top company official said on Wednesday.
Infosys, which plans to add 25,000 employees in 2008/09, has made 18,000 offers to students at engineering colleges, and will also hire about 330 business school graduates, Nandita Gurjar, group head of human resources, told reporters.
"At business schools, we are competing with financial services firms -- they are the ’in thing’ now," she said.
"But at engineering colleges, where we compete with other software firms, we get in at Day Zero or Day One."
The Bangalore-based firm, which trails leader Tata Consultancy Services, has said wage increases of 11-13 percent will impact margins by 2.3 percent in the June quarter.
But higher wages were essential to retain talent in an industry where attrition levels are at 14-16 percent, she said.
"Our attrition rate is 13.4 percent, and we’d like to get it back to single digits -- the level we were at in 2004.
"But that will be hard," Gurjar said.
India’s $64 billion software services sector has been hit by slower growth at battered banks and financial firms, sectors that contribute most to revenues.
But that has not affected Infosys’ compensation strategy, Gurjar said.
"We are in fact, offering bigger raises than others, whose wage increases are in the single digits," she said.
"We haven’t changed our strategy because of the slowdown, as we need to hire and retain the best talent."
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