LTTS to change hiring strategy; focus on freshers

Engineering services arm of Larsen & Toubro, L&T Technology Services, would be recruiting more of freshers in the coming years as part of its strategy to save costs and get more enthusiasm into the company.

"If we continue to grow at the current level, we might start completely lateral hiring and focus on freshers. They are cost-effective, dynamic and bring more enthusiasm into the team. In many cases, we have observed that the freshers perform far better than lateral hires," Keshab Panda, Managing Director and CEO of the company told DH.

As part of the plan, the company plans to recruit around 1,500 freshers from the campuses in the current financial year. The total employee strength of the company, as of date stands in excess of 15,400.

As part of the strategy change, the company is also planning to focus on more and more retention of the employees and groom them for the top managerial position, replicating the model followed by Tata Sons.

The company, as of date, has the lowest attrition in the engineering services segment. Its voluntary attrition stands at mere 14%, with most of the attrition taking place in Bengaluru. "In Mysuru and Vadodara, we have single digit attrition levels. However, in Bengaluru, we see higher attrition. That has got mostly to do with the number of options available in the city," Panda said.

Of late company's have been hiring more and more freshers. While tech major TCS, last year, said that it is in process of hiring around 27,000 freshers from colleges, Bengaluru-based Infosys also has said that it's planning to hire around 20,000 freshers from colleges across India this year. Last year, of the 70,406 employees that Infosys hired, almost 20,000 were the freshers from the colleges.