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Candidates in queue for TCS' entrance test. The road to the exit of the Sathyabhama Engineering College in Chennai, the venue, is 2.5 km.

Chennai , Aug. 2

A THOUSAND and hundred in, 5,400 in the queue.

The clamour for getting good talent in big numbers seems to be getting louder in the IT software industry.

TCS is the latest in line claiming a record as it made offers to about 1,100 fresh engineering graduates in a single day on the first of this month.

Earlier this year, Cognizant talked about making 500 offers in a single day while subsequent media reports said that Infosys had 730 candidates actually joining the organisation in a single day!

Speaking to Business Line, Ravi Viswanathan, Vice-President, Chennai Operations, Tata Consultancy Services, said, "We received about 16,000 applications from 241 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. Of these, 14,000 candidates were eligible to take the test. About 3,020 were shortlisted and we selected 1,112 candidates. This is a record for us."

The number of candidates in a day seems significant given that TCS had estimated that the number of people it would add to its rolls this year ending March 2006 would be 13,500. Of that, 6,500 are to be chosen from campuses.

TCS has also signed memoranda of understanding with three universities to help prepare students for the industry, while they are still at college.

Mr Thomas Simon, Senior General Manager, TCS, said, "We will participate in faculty initiatives and make IT training part of the curriculum."

This, he said, would help reduce the 72 days that a fresh engineering graduate spends in training when he joins the rolls. "With our involvement in the campus, the number of days taken to train a fresh candidate to our satisfaction would come down by 60 per cent (or about 43 days)."

The company also grants incentives to students (to whom it has made offers) if they participate in the company's initiatives in the campus. "We offer them a special sign-on bonus if they participate and clear our training programme within the campus."

TCS, he said, also made grants to universities to train faculty or to update libraries. "It is important for faculty, equipment and standards of libraries to reach a level that the IT industry demands. Typically, we make a Rs 1 lakh general grant to an institution, followed by a Rs 50,000 grant for equipment support and another Rs 50,000 grant to upgrade the library."

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