SYSTEM FAILURE

The hiring scam unearthed at India’s top IT employer, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has delivered a jolt not only to the parent Tata Group but also to the sector at large, and is likely to make tech firms take a hard look at their hiring processes and put better systems in place.

- M.G. Arun

The scandal involves a few employees in TCS’s Resource Management Group (RMG)—which is in charge of mobilising contract staff for various projects—allegedly giving preferential treatment to certain staffing firms in lieu of bribes.

Experts believe such instances of scams or governance lapses will hurt the country’s image as an IT services destination, and encourage clients to shift work elsewhere. Tata Group chairman N. Chandrasekaran has said the firm will be reviewing its hiring processes to ensure such events do not get repeated. RMG, which is very much a part of the company, though, is different from the talent acquisition team that looks for permanent staffers and, in turn, hires executive search firms for the purpose. Industry sources say that TCS mobilises as many as 1,400 such staffers a day, depending on the requirement of the various verticals within the company. The firm had a total of 592,195 staff as on December 2022, having added 65,750 employees in 2022 alone.