Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) saw its net quarterly hiring turn negative for the July to September period while attrition fell below 15%.

In an exclusive interaction with CNBC-TV18, TCS CEO K. Krithivasan admitted that the hiring was less than the number of people who left the firm. “We continue to hire, we've not stopped. But we probably hired less than the number of people that left us but it's not that a lot of people left us also. Attrition, it is also coming down,” he said.

Krithivasan explained that in the past few years, TCS hired a lot and has been training the employees on new technologies continuously. Therefore, when there is uncertainty in demand, the firm also needs to see how to optimise the existing workforce, he said.

“When they're available for us to be deployed in programmes, we try to use them and it's important for us to give them the opportunity to work on projects. So, there is no need to hire as many people,” he said.

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TCS CEO’s remarks come as the company’s overall headcount came down by 6,333 during the quarter under review.

In the previous quarter, it was the only one among the top five IT companies, by employee size, to have added 523 staffers while others’ hiring numbers were in the negative.

The company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Samir Seksaria said a similar headcount reduction is expected in the future, without specifying an estimated number of quarters that this could go on for.

He admitted that the headcount reduction is a margin lever and that is reflected in the second quarter results. “The key is disciplined execution, specifically by driving productivity and utilisation. Also, we are being able to replace or further optimise the sub-contractor cost,” he said.

He also noted that TCS delivered margin expansion despite giving full cycle increments to employees.

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While TCS, in its earnings report, said, it has over a lakh strong workforce for Gen AI projects, Seksaria in the interview, highlighted that the firm has been investing enough and working with customers for the Gen AI projects.

On entry-level hiring, Milind Lakkad, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), said, the firm sure has delayed the onboarding of freshers but is continuously engaging with them.

He also the company expects attrition to come down in the 11-14% range and that it can happen as early as next quarter

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(Edited by : Amrita)