Within a week of announcing its cautious guidance for the fiscal year 2003-04, the Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies has announced that it had hired about 600 techies during the last few days.

Though the Indian IT bellwether hinted that its intake during the first quarter (April-June of the current fiscal year (2003-04) would be about 800-1,000, it surprised industry watchers by going ahead with its aggressive recruitment policy, undeterred by the hammering it suffered at the markets last week.

"We have already hired 600 engineers in the last few days as part of our ongoing recruitment drive," disclosed Hema Ravichander, Infosys' senior vice president for human resources department, while giving an overview of the global company at a function organised by the CII Institute of Quality in Bangalore.

"Our recruitment drive during the just-concluded fiscal year (2002-03) was the highest in the history of the 22-year old company, when the gross number of employees has shot up to 15,356 from 10,378 at the end of the previous fiscal year (2001-02), registering a growth of 47.5 per cent," Ravichander said.

Even in the face of challenging environment and uncertainty throughout fiscal year 2002-03, Infosys created a record of sorts in the IT industry by hiring 5,509 people as against a net addition of just 907 techies during fiscal year 2001-02.

As a result, at the end of March 31, 2003, the number of software professionals crossed the 14,000 mark. The attrition rate, however, remained at a mere 6.9 per cent, far below the industry rate.

"Keeping in view our long-term requirements, spread over 12-18 months, we will continue to hire people as per the demand generated from quarter to quarter," Ravichander hinted.

The official, however, declined to reveal the number of employees to be recruited during the next three-quarters of the current fiscal year.

Asked why Infosys still had an attrition of 6.9 per cent when it has received several awards for being the best employer, Ravinchandar said the company was losing out many of its techies to top business schools like the Indian Institute of Management as they wanted to pursue higher studies and branch out separately.

"Our attrition rate stems out of individual needs to go up the value chain. Since 72 per cent of our techies are graduates, some of the brighter ones leave to do management courses to pursue their professional goals individually."

"A few of them leave to go either abroad or join other IT firms at lateral level. The remaining leave when they are not able to cope with the rigors of our training and work pressure," Ravichander claimed.

Post-graduate engineers constitute around 21 per cent of the company's tech employees, with the remaining 7 per cent hold post-doctoral or other degrees.

Interestingly, while Infosys' hiring remained subdued during the fiscal year 2001-02 due to global tech meltdown and post-9/11 uncertainty, when only 547 people were recruited, the company was on a massive employment drive during the boom period of fiscal 2000-01, when a record 4,442 people were hired, taking the total figure to 9,831 from 5,389 at the end of fiscal year 1999-2000.

Going by its outlook for the new fiscal year (2003-04), which projects a modest revenue growth of 25-27 per cent, the company is likely to maintain its recruitment as in the previous quarters, which has been averaging about 1,000 per quarter.