Amid skyrocketing attrition rate of record 31%, Cognizant has decided to hire 1,00,000 laterals during this year. The company also faces requirements for new talents to meet growing customer demands.
Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries said during the analysts call said hyper-personalization is fueling significant demand in analytics, AI, and ML along with strong demand and our bullish outlook on the industry.
“We are committed to meaningfully scaling our headcount over the coming quarters. As we noted in last quarter’s remarks we expected attrition to go up sequentially in Q2, and it did. Second-quarter voluntary attrition reached 29% on an annualized basis or 18% on a trailing 12-month basis. In fact, we now expect to hire approximately 100,000 laterals in 2021 and to train close to 100,000 associates,” said Brian Humphries.
In addition, the company expects to onboard approximately 30,000 new graduates in 2021 and make 45,000 offers to new graduates in India for 2022 onboarding.
“Fortunately, we meaningfully increased our recruiting capacity over the last six months as we anticipated a spike in attrition following the v-shaped demand recovery in the second half of 2020. Our human resources team has done a remarkable job helping us mitigate the impact of elevated attrition through comprehensive hiring, onboarding, and skilling programs,” said Brain Humpries.
While Cognizant’s revenues for the June 2021 quarter came in at the top of its guidance and it also raised its revenue guidance for 2021 to 9-10%, attrition stood out as a key concern, reflecting its weak footing amidst the war for talent.
