IT providers main Cognizant on Wednesday mentioned it goals to rent about 24,000-25,000 freshers in 2026 as a part of its technique to broaden “backside of the pyramid” workforce.
The hiring goal represents a rise of roughly 20 per cent over its 2025 consumption, the place the corporate onboarded shut to twenty,000 graduates.
Through the firm’s This fall 2025 earnings name, Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S mentioned the corporate is targeted on a “broader pyramid” technique, shifting high-value tech experience to entry-level staff by means of using Synthetic Intelligence (AI).
He famous the non-linearity of income and margins, and mentioned the corporate is decoupling income development from headcount development. For 2025, revenues grew by 6.4 per cent (in fixed forex) whereas the workforce solely elevated by 4 per cent, leading to a 5 per cent improve in income per particular person.
“We’re hiring extra faculty graduates. In 2025, we employed extra faculty graduates than in 2024, and in 2026, we’re planning to rent extra faculty graduates than in 2025. The thought is at hand this experience on the fingertips of individuals on the backside, and drift that worth down to truly create not solely vital non-linearity however broader pyramid early careers in our journey,” Kumar mentioned.
Of the 20,000 graduates employed in 2025, the corporate mentioned 16,000 are already “in manufacturing” engaged on consumer initiatives, whereas the remaining 4,000 are at present present process coaching.
“This yr we plan to extend this by an order of magnitude, about 20 per cent, so we’d be very pleased to land round 24,000-25,000 for 2026,” firm CFO Jatin Dalal mentioned.
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The corporate famous a definite shift in its recruitment profile, transferring from a linear hiring mannequin towards a graded system. This features a premium hiring swim lane dubbed ‘Tech Wizards’ for recruits from the Indian Institutes of Expertise (IITs). Different graded classes embrace energy programmers and software program engineers.
Kumar emphasised that the corporate now prioritises “learnability” over years of expertise.
“Individuals assume extra skilled hires is the way in which to go. I really assume learnability is the way in which to go. It’s so quick and dynamically altering. Actually, in the event you go to the varsity graduates, you may realise that they have not seen the outdated manner of doing software program… in order that unlearning shouldn’t be wanted, you would get a lot increased throughput,” he added.
Addressing considerations about AI-led job losses, Kumar said that whereas tech disruptions take away “jobs of the previous”, they create considerably extra jobs for the longer term by modernising outdated software program and lowering technical debt throughout enterprises.
The corporate on Wednesday reported about an 18.7 per cent improve in web revenue to USD 648 million within the December quarter. The corporate’s This fall 2025 income got here in step with estimates at USD 5,333 million, growing 4.9 per cent year-on-year from USD 5,082 million in This fall 2024.
Cognizant’s complete worker rely as of December 31, 2025, was 351,600, a rise of 1,800 from September 30, 2025 and 14,800 from December 31, 2024.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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