fresher hiring

IT services firm Cognizant announced plans to recruit around 24,000–25,000 freshers in 2026, marking a sharp ramp-up in entry-level hiring as part of its strategy to strengthen the “bottom of the pyramid” workforce. The proposed intake represents a nearly 20 per cent increase compared with 2025, when the company hired close to 20,000 graduates. Speaking during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S said the company is reshaping its talent pyramid by pushing high-value technology expertise down to early-career employees with the support of artificial intelligence. Kumar highlighted the growing non-linearity between revenue and headcount, noting that Cognizant is deliberately decoupling growth in revenues from workforce expansion. In 2025, the company’s revenues rose 6.4 per cent in constant currency terms, while headcount grew by just 4 per cent, leading to a 5 per cent rise in revenue per employee. He said the company is increasingly hiring school and college graduates, with each year seeing a higher intake than the previous one. The objective, Kumar explained, is to enable entry-level employees with advanced capabilities early in their careers, helping build a broader talent pyramid and driving efficiency at scale. Out of the 20,000 graduates recruited in 2025, Cognizant said about 16,000 are already deployed on client projects, while the remaining 4,000 are undergoing training. CFO Jatin Dalal said the company plans to scale this number by around 20 per cent in 2026, targeting an intake of up to 25,000 freshers. The company also pointed to a shift in its hiring approach, moving away from a linear model to a graded recruitment framework. This includes a premium hiring track called “Tech Wizards” for candidates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), alongside other categories such as power programmers and software engineers. Kumar said Cognizant now places greater emphasis on “learnability” rather than years of experience, arguing that younger graduates adapt faster in a rapidly evolving technology environment and require less unlearning of legacy software practices. Responding to concerns around AI-driven job losses, Kumar said while technology may eliminate outdated roles, it creates far more opportunities by modernising legacy systems and reducing technical debt across enterprises. Cognizant reported an 18.7 per cent year-on-year rise in net income to USD 648 million for the December quarter. Revenue for Q4 2025 stood at USD 5,333 million, up 4.9 per cent from USD 5,082 million in the same period last year. The company’s total workforce as of December 31, 2025, was 351,600, up by 14,800 employees compared with a year earlier. Source: PTI