Capgemini, the French IT firm that has a huge presence in India has announced that it is planning to recruit up to 30,000 more employees this year. This is a significant number since the company employs over 1.15 lakh personnel in the country and this number would add another 25% to that. Out of the company’s total strength of employees, more than 50% are located in India and hence this is a very important geography for the company’s operations.
The company says the new recruitments will have an equal mix of freshers as well as experienced people. These are often called lateral hiring.
The company says it has also taken up re-skilling its employees, in order to prepare them to be ready to take over new projects they are receiving from their clients. The company concedes that their clients have also become quite demanding and the re-skilling has become critical. Some of the lateral recruitments may address this need as well.
From the demographic viewpoint, the company’s employees are very young with over 65% below the age of 30.
In terms of the location of the employees to be recruited, the company has a large facility near Mumbai, in Airoli, where they will be placed, at least a bulk of them. Some of the other centres will absorb the rest.
In terms of the business model, Capgemini has adopted a model where they do not develop products but concentrate only on offering their services to their customers. This may appear to be different from the strategy adopted by most other IT firms in India.
In terms of their policy on startups, Capgemini has associated with a number of them but not making any investment in them. The company co-opts them in some of their projects but with a transparent communication to the clients on the involvement of the startups.
For good measure, the company has taken on board, a Chief Innovation Officer, who used to be with a startup earlier.