IT walk-ins' are happening, but through internal referrals

CHENNAI: After deferring placements till the year-end, IT companies are showing the first signs of recruiting people through employee referral programmes for lateral hirings.
In the last two weeks, Cognizant and Tata Consultancy Services two of the Big 5 have made offers to potential employees, which suggests that while the job market has still not opened up, it is quite flexible based on needs.
Over the last two Saturdays, Cognizant held walk-in' interviews for lateral hires, through a referral programme. A staggering 3,000 people turned up of which 250 were given offers. Not surprising, considering that there aren't too many offers around for IT professionals now. What was surprising, however, was that there was a significant turnout despite the company looking to recruit only people with more than four years experience for jobs with niche skill sets.
"The Employee Referral Programme has been a big hit and has helped us get the best talent referenced through years of association. Approximately 40% of Cognizant's lateral hiring comes though this programme. It has helped us shorten the due diligence process compared to other channels of recruiting, retain the organizational culture and get people with right skills and experience in relatively shorter time," R Ramkumar, vice-president, corporate marketing and research, Cognizant said.
TCS too is resorting to lateral hiring. "But, our lateral hires are just need-based and skill-based. It happens through referrals from our employees and is known as bring in your buddies'," a TCS spokesperson said. The company had last week sent a mail to employees for providing a buddy list'. TCS, however, did not wish to comment on the number of offers it made.
Industry officials say the high turnout could be due to two factors people wanting a change in their job profiles or people having lost jobs recently.
"Many IT companies invariably look at cutting down a small percentage of their employees every year. Some of them who are asked to leave might still be good performers but compared to others might lose out on one or two percentage points, which by no means is low," an analyst said.
The analyst also pointed out that if such companies were still hiring laterally, it could be a pointer that well-performing IT companies were getting a large number of projects than others.