Cognizant Plans to Freeze All Lateral Hiring in India

IT giant Cognizant plans to freeze all the hiring in India for this year. It will freeze most of its lateral hiring across all functions in India, with few exceptions in sales roles. Last year, Cognizant became the second IT company to touch the 2-lakh employee mark in India.

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has already deferred joining dates of all campus offers it has made to students across India to the latter half of the year, and said it will honour all commitments.

“We remain committed to growth and plan to honour the more than 20,000 campus offers we have made. The timing of our trainees’ start date in India will be deferred to Q3 (July-September). This will continue to be dependent on lockdowns and school schedules across India,” Brian Humphries, chief executive officer, Cognizant told Livemint.

Cognizant has a global headcount of about 2.9 lakh employees, of which a majority is based in India. Last year, Cognizant became the second IT company to touch the 2-lakh employee mark in India, next only to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd.

Globally, Cognizant has been focussing on strengthening its capabilities in four key areas: data, digital engineering, cloud, and the internet of things (IoT). As part of this, the company has already doubled its investment in Cognizant Academy so that it can redeploy staff in these new skillsets.

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Cognizant also hinted that it would tweak its bench policies to the current environment. “Against today’s covid-19 backdrop, we feel that traditional industry bench policies do not adequately address the interest of the impacted employees. Consequently, any employee impacted by demand/supply imbalances may benefit from extended medical coverage and exit packages through the end of the third quarter,” Humphries said.