Recognizes that 20,000 freshmen are employed to support AI-LED software services in 2025

US IT company Cognizant has a large employee base in India and has announced plans to hire 20,000 new students by 2025 – a move aimed at reshaping the company's talent pyramid, especially to support managed services and AI-LED software development.

While the company's overall total remains flat compared to the 3,36,300 in the previous quarter, Cognizant's leadership emphasizes the strategic importance of talent amplification as the company accelerates its growth and innovation agenda.

“As we said on Investor Day, we are hiring 20,000 freshmen, which is part of our strategy, which is more than twice as much as we did last year,” said Ravi Kumar S, CEO of Cognizant.

This year, Kumar noted that the company plans to hire more new graduates to build a stronger workforce pyramid, especially as there has been an increase in managed services over the past two years.

“But that also comes with the overhead of higher benches with higher costs, which is actually at sea,” he said.

He said the company is focusing on three areas – hiring freshmen, increasing productivity through artificial intelligence and increasing utilization to effectively manage human capital costs.

People who know shared that 14,000 former employees have rejoined the company, including 10,000.

“…As talent grows, we are strengthening the talent pipeline, and the skills required in the era of AI. When you hear us talking during Investor Day, we are increasing our workforce at scale and leveraging AI to meet demand faster and identifying talent pools to address new areas of AI unlock,” Kumar said.

The New Jersey-based company reported revenue growth of 7.45% year-on-year to $5.1 billion in the January-March quarter.