TCS to increase headcount by another 10K

India's Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will recruit an additional 10,000 staff in the fourth quarter ending this March, which will exceed its initial target of hiring 50,000 employees for the year.

In a Business Line report Tuesday, TCS' executive vice president and global head for human resources (HR) Ajoy Mukherjee said the additional hires will primarily be trainees who were given job offers, as well as lateral hires. The company originally aimed to hire 50,000 employees for its current financial year but by the third quarter ended Dec. 31, 2012, it had already recruited 49,600, the report added.

Noting the strong growth TCS has had, Mukherjee said: "The hiring is in line with business demand, the way the business has been growing, and most of our geographies have been performing."

The company had just announced better-than-expected results for its third quarter, with a 23 percent rise in net profit at INR 35.5 billion (US$651 million).

According to Mukherjee, the ratio of staff joining TCS after accepting job offers as well as number of trainees joining had increased. "These are the factors that resulted in hiring more than what we had initially planned for," he said.

He added TCS has an employee attrition rate of 9.8 percent in IT services, calling it the "best in the industry and a significant achievement". Overall company attrition rate, including its outsourcing business, reached 11.2 percent.

"The overall environment has also helped in retaining talent, I should not deny that. But at the same time we should not move away from taking credit for the good work," Mukherjee said.

TCS has not yet finalized its recruitment plans for the next year, which will be complete by early March. The company said it will keep to its earlier plans of recruiting 25,000 trainees for next year, out of which 24,000 offers have already been made.