Infosys Plans to Hire More College Graduates in U.S, Says CEO

Infosys is looking at hiring fresh graduates in the United States to boost its profit margins, CEO Salil Parekh said. The IT company has already hired 4,000 people out of its target of 10,000 local American employees by 2021, Parekh said at Morgan Stanley’s annual India summit in Mumbai on June 6.

“The way we have looked at it, we have announced 10,000 local hires in the United States and we have already achieved 4,000 in last 12 months including 800 college graduates. We have a plan that this will become close to 1,000 college graduates per year in the coming fiscal and the fiscal after that,” said Parekh, according to Business Standard.

“In terms of margins, we have not outlined anything in the market what will the impact be. What we are noticing today is recruitment from colleges in the United States, at least in the very short-term, will be beneficial to our margins in FY19,” he was quoted as saying by the publication.

The Bengaluru-headquartered firm has stepped up its local hiring in the recent past. The company said in April this year that it will train and hire 3,000 American workers at its United States Education Center in Indianapolis by 2023. “Infosys will provide an initial investment of $35 million to create the first 125,000 sq. ft. of development to transform the 70.5-acre site at the old Indianapolis airport terminal into its U.S. Education Center,” the company said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Infosys also announced in March that it will open a new office at Hartford, Connecticut, for which it will hire 1,000 American citizens by 2022. The firm’s latest Technology and Innovation hub will be a $20.6 million project focusing on healthcare, insurance and manufacturing, and will offer data security and data-sharing services to its clients, it said at the time.

Parekh, who took over as the Infosys CEO last year after the acrimonious exit of Vishal Sikka, added that the changing immigration and visa policies of the United States would not have a negative impact on the company. “We think, the environment is such that if we do the things in the right way, this (local hiring) is going to be a further expanding our business. So, we don’t see it as a constraint but the dynamics globally is different and the business model needs to evolve to adapt to it,” he said, the report added.