Cognizant has seen nearly 13,000 employees return to the company. Ravi Kumar, the CEO of the Nasdaq-listed IT services firm, said this happened as the company recovered from its previous challenges and returned to growth and stability. Cognizant added 3,800 employees during the third quarter, a trend that its industry peers also mirrored. Despite this recent hiring, Cognizant’s overall headcount is still down by 6,500 year-on-year. However, the company didn’t reveal its hiring target for 2025.
What the company said about its recent hiring
During a media briefing, following the release of the company’s Q3 FY24 results., Kumar mentioned: “The buzz around us is high … you can also see the LinkedIn traffic that is talking about the company. The mojo of the company is back. They have worked at Cognizant earlier and now want to come back. We are also going to campuses, starting next year, in a big way.”
Meanwhile, Jatin Dalal, the chief financial officer of Cognizant, stated that the company plans to continue hiring in line with its positive growth trajectory.
“If you look at volume growth this quarter it is 3.5 per cent in constant currency growth. Of this 150 basis points came from Belcan, but 200 basis points came organically. If we are generating incremental revenue every quarter then we need to reach out and hire the top talent from the market,” Dalal added.
Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar on the impact of AI
In response to a question about the impact of AI on Cognizant’s business process management (BPM) business, Kumar highlighted the unique potential of AI to transform the work of knowledge workers across various sectors.
“There have always been technologies that have disrupted tasks at the bottom of the pyramid. In some way that is where BPO (business process outsourcing) too is. I believe that this is a technology that is not only going to disrupt the bottom of the pyramid task but also knowledge workers,” he noted.
Kumar also highlighted that Cognizant uses AI algorithms and platforms to generate a staggering 2 million lines of code annually. This showcases the increasing role of AI in software development.
Explaining AI’s impact on developers, he said: “The issue is not just about people in BPO but also people in software coding, testing, and designing. But as knowledge workers get disrupted more software will get written because it gives unique access to more people. There are only 26 million software developers in the world. This will give access to more developers. This will further lead to higher productivity, lower cost.”
Kumar acknowledged that while AI may eliminate some jobs in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, but it will also create new opportunities. He predicted that AI agents to be integrated into various processes to automate tasks which may potentially lead to the creation of new roles and responsibilities.
“Cognizant has a large exposure to natives, and they in the BPO world reinforce machine learning algorithms. As machines write more and more software, to interact with these machines you will need people with different skills like liberal arts,” Kumar noted.