Infosys is a global IT consulting leader and a digital transformation innovation pioneer. If great people build great companies, then Infosys certainly has a workforce to be reckoned with.
But how does the tech giant secure and retain the best talent? How are they fighting the skills gap and ensuring they have the right talent for digital projects?
Learn more about how innovation and a commitment to better hiring planning helps Infosys acquire and retain the best talent.
What is Infosys, and what do they do?
Infosys is a multinational IT consulting company that offers IT-enabled business solutions, consultancy, and outsourcing for its clientele. Infosys is paving the way for a digital future in key industries, from engineering maintenance to infrastructure management.
Modern businesses must embrace digital transformation to stay competitive and thrive, but undergoing this transformation is challenging. That’s where Infosys comes in – the IT leader enables businesses and guides them through digital transformation, by creating custom digital solutions, offering consultancy and implementation services, and outsourcing digital talent.
What are the basics of technical hiring planning?
Technical hiring planning consists of three key stages, which are:
1. Analyze
A thoughtful technical hiring plan identifies your company’s current acquisition system, analyzes the existing skill gaps, and determines your hiring needs. This stage helps you understand which roles your organization needs to fill, or will need to fill, and which talent is ideal to take up the positions.
2. Planning
After analyzing your business needs, it’s important to draft a formal hiring plan to meet your recruitment needs. It’s important to cover each front – where will you recruit talent from? What specifics should your job description cover? What is your employee value proposition? And how will you effectively assess candidates at scale?
3. Execution
This step is where you put your technical hiring plan into action. Whether it’s reaching out to potential candidates, accepting applications, or carrying out interviews, this is the stage where you execute your hiring strategy.
How Infosys implements these fundamentals in its strategy?
Infosys takes the basic fundamentals of hiring planning and adds its own innovations to create a best-in-class acquisition strategy. Let’s dive deep into what makes their technical hiring planning unique and effective.
Understanding the challenges in hiring
The challenges that prevail in hiring are well known – the costs are high, only a minority of businesses track their time to hire and cost per hire (according to Harvard Business Review), and many businesses fail to make the most of their existing talent.
Harvard Business Review also found that external hires take to perform as well as an internal hire would for the same position. And, of course, external hires invite steep acquisition costs with no guarantee of them being the right fit.
Infosys’ hiring plan takes these considerations into account, and the global IT leader successfully tapped into its existing talent pool to improve hiring. We’ll explore their efforts more comprehensively later in this article.
Innovation and change
Infosys has created a positive work culture that encourages employees to enhance their skills and develop their professional careers. The global company also embraced the pandemic’s shifts head-on; Infosys switched to a Work From Home model during the pandemic, and the business only announced its plans to shift to a hybrid work model in June 2022.
Read more: How Should Enterprises Conduct Technical Recruitment?
But instead of demanding workers return to traditional in-house environments, Infosys has prioritized a hybrid work model to meet its workforce’s needs.
Infosys’ hiring planning is also led by a strong, values-driven culture that inspires top talent and instills a sense of purpose.
Their famous 5C Framework helps talent understand the company’s goals and align with them:
- Connect – the use of engagement platforms for communication, employee wellness, and mentoring sessions
- Collaborate – the use of collaborative tools to ensure knowledge and ideas spread across the company
- Celebrate – the use of rewards and other celebratory practices to show appreciation for employees and their team efforts
- Care – cultivating a relationship based on mutual trust and empathy between managers and employees
- Culture – encouraging inclusivity and diversity among ideas and discussions
What makes Infosys’ hiring planning unique?
Infosys’ unique approach to hiring planning is driven by the company’s deep understanding of recruitment needs and its commitment to innovation. Here’s more on how these values translate to better hiring.
Seamlessly Balancing Internal and External Recruitment
As we mentioned in the previous section, Infosys realized the potential of internal talent pools and set out to extract the full potential of its existing workforce.
In 2016, Infosys rolled out Compass, an internal digital platform that redefined the very structure of an ideal hiring plan. Compass became a source for Infosys employees to mobilize opportunities for career growth inside the company.
The platform allowed employees to switch job roles. They were to make a standard digital account that showcases their past work experiences, skills, and endorsements. This allows employees to view a curated list of fresh openings within Infosys.
The result? Compass helped Infosys fully unlock the potential of its existing talent. Today, the tech giant provides internal recruitment opportunities for 100% of its job offerings. Rajesh Ahuja, Global Head of Talent Acquisition, further emphasizes the need for internal recruitment.
“Your best talent is inside. It just requires a nudge to create an internal hiring system which will give you the best talent possible.”
Of course, external hiring cannot be eliminated entirely – the company would be left understaffed. Thus, Infosys devised a framework to rotate internal talent whilst expanding its outreach externally.
Per their framework, hiring managers first evaluate the existing talent inside the company and what potential lies outside. They then:
- Assess the new position, and determine where to source the best talent from – internally or externally.
- Judge both sources. When the applications roll in, Infosys’ hiring managers vet internal and external applicants.
- Unified evaluation. Short-listed applicants undergo the same recruitment process, which includes an assessment.
Therefore, as the company returns to routine post-pandemic, it continues to create jobs in the market while getting the most out of its internal talent pool.
Work Diversity
Infosys has committed to inclusive hiring practices and has hired at least 50% female engineers across different engineering universities in their most recent hiring rounds. The IT giant took more than 20,000 freshers on board after Covid restrictions eased out, and they plan to onboard at least 35,000 fresh graduates in 2022.
Moreover, in an effort to cultivate inclusive workspaces, Infosys has committed to diversity and inclusion in its sourcing, recruitment, and culture. The IT company has even taken necessary steps to ensure disabled persons are welcomed and empowered in the workplace.
How has Infosys’ hiring strategy evolved?
Infosys has adopted its hiring planning and strategy several times over the years to stay current. While their core values remain invariant, their approach to talent acquisition has evolved.
Promoting Skills-based Technical Hiring
Many companies have realized the need to evaluate candidates beyond resumes, CVs, and unstructured interviews. In tech especially, coding challenges and technical interviews are crucial to vet applicants. These evaluation methods help you assess applicants’ practical skills and conceptual knowledge – essentials in tech talent.
Infosys’ recruitment process involves:
- A three-section online assessment test to determine logical and analytical reasoning skills, quantitative aptitude, and communication/verbal skills. The evaluations are led by AI technology to reduce bias and ensure a fair assessment.
- The technical interview, where candidates are asked questions related to their resumes and area of expertise. They may also be asked to solve puzzles, quizzes, or coding challenges.
- An HR interview to determine cultural fit.
This three-fold process helps Infosys prioritize merit-based hiring and ensure they hire candidates that are the right fit.
Read more: Is Skills Based Hiring in the Future?
Tapping into Internal Talent
We’ve already discussed how Infosys leverages its internal talent pool to fill new roles. But how is it making sure that employees are equipped to face new challenges and assume highly skilled positions?
By reskilling and upskilling at scale. Reskilled employees are helping Infosys meet 34% of the company’s requirements for digital projects. In their 2021 Talent Pulse Report, Infosys reported that 80,000 of its internal employees had been upskilled.
These upskilling initiatives not only served the company’s direct goals, but also fulfilled one of modern talent’s greatest expectations – upskilling and learning opportunities.
What can we learn from Infosys’ technical hiring planning strategy?
Infosys is a global leader in IT, and much of its success is driven by its exceptional workforce. Businesses can learn a great deal from Infosys’ technical hiring planning.
Tap into your Internal Pool
Existing employees are your greatest talent assets – and Infosys’ success is a testament to it. Investing in reskilling and upskilling not only helps fight attrition but also helps companies fill internal positions faster – and with possibly better-suited talent.
Create opportunities for your employees to move up the value chain, and all parties benefit.
Embrace merit-first, skills-based hiring
Merit-first hiring ensures fairness – candidates are hired based on their skills, aptitude, and proven abilities. Infosys highlights how companies are moving towards skills-based hiring, and away from degrees, to meet business needs:
As companies shift towards skill-based hiring rather than degrees, educational institutions will have to make a strategic #digitaltransformation to remain relevant.
Read more: PoV by Thirumala Arohi, Infosys.
Skills-based hiring helps companies reduce the skills gap internally and recruit the best talent for specialized roles.
The Need for Adaptability
When the workforce needed remote environments, Infosys obliged. And now that the world is recovering from the pandemic, Infosys is still committed to delivering flexible working opportunities through its hybrid model.
Similarly, although the skills gap prevails in the tech sector, Infosys has adapted to address the problem head-on.
Companies that adapt quickly and effectively will remain leaders. Those that fail to do so will inevitably fall behind.
Ready to hire like Infosys?
With an extensive library of 150k+ unique questions for more than 2000 technical skills and precise candidate report analysis for faster decision-making. WeCP was able to cater to the Ed-tech Unicorn UpGrad by scaling their remote examinations all across the world.
Contact us for more information.
Or, schedule a demo with us.
