TCS demands better talent, offers this incentive to recruiters for right candidates

Mint

11 hours ago

Unhappy with the quality of candidates being provided for hiring, India's biggest IT services firm has urged its third-party vendors to raise their game, and promised a sweetener to help them step up. According to two vendors who spoke with Mint on condition of anonymity, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd said vendors can get 50% higher payouts for candidates who pass its quality checks.
This aggressive push comes as TCS, despite postponing its own wage hikes, looks to swiftly close critical software programming vacancies and capitalize on what it sees as a 'promising" first half of the current fiscal year.
In a series of virtual meetings with its vendors in April and May across Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Pune, the company's senior HR officials, including chief human resources officer (CHRO) Milind Lakkad, pointed out that barely 10% of the mandates that the recruiters got have been filled, the vendors cited above said.
'The company informed the vendors that they have 3,000 open oppositions, plus 600 other critical vacancies that need to be closed by June end," one of the vendors cited above said. 'They said that the first two quarters of the fiscal look 'promising' but cautioned that the quality of profiles need to improve."
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The critical vacancies include 200 open positions in Java in BFSI; 100 in SAP; 300 in testing, .Net etc., this person added.
To be sure, like other Indian IT firms, TCS has a multi-pronged recruitment method: direct from campus, through its own HR teams, using third-party vendors for junior and middle positions, and headhunters for senior roles, typically for senior management or C-suite.
Emailed queries to TCS remained unanswered till press time.
Recruiters told Mint that plucking the right candidate is getting tougher despite sufficient resumes in the market. This is especially because the sector is sending mixed signals—some companies are rolling out hikes, while others, like TCS, have put wage increases on hold.
TCS, with a workforce of 607,979 as per its latest annual report, has postponed wage increases citing the 'uncertainty in the environment". CHRO Lakkad told analysts in a post-earnings call that the company will wait for clarity to emerge before deciding on wage hikes.
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According to one of the vendors cited above, the hiring agents had asked for an increase in the flat fee for normal hiring (for very senior profiles, search firms get a percentage of the candidate's compensation). But the company did not agree to change the structure, and instead proposed the 50% incentive.
To be sure, TCS uses three rate slabs for its hiring vendors. The first, 'general' is largely meant for junior profiles and vendors can bill ₹30,000-50,000 per candidate. The second, 'special', fetches vendors ₹50,000-80,000 for candidates with four to six years of work experience. The last slab is for candidates with six plus years of experience. The vendor can bill ₹80,000-100,000 for each candidate who gets placed in these roles. Each slab has different skill sets.
'The vendors were informed that if they get through the quality checks and the person gets hired and if it was a tougher than than usual mandate, then they can bill more than the slab the candidate's resume was sent for. So that means, for a General vacancy profile, the vendor can charge rates applicable to a Special profile," one of the vendors quoted above said.
Over the past few years, the IT firm has become stringent about its recruitment methods. Vendors are no longer allowed to contact company officials for any queries regarding their mandates. Instead, the mandates are posted on a portal and vendors are required to feed the resumes here.
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