MUMBAI, INDIA – Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a leading IT services company, has introduced a new hiring initiative called “Prime” as part of its campus recruitment strategy for 2024.
This move is aimed at attracting top-tier graduates by offering significantly higher salaries than traditional entry-level positions.
Higher salaries to secure the best talent
Under the Prime initiative, newly recruited engineers will receive annual salaries ranging from ₹ 9 lakh to ₹ 11 lakh ($10,000 to $13,000), a substantial increase over standard entry-level packages.
This approach is designed to secure the best talent from leading campuses and ensure that students who receive offers from TCS are less likely to explore opportunities with other companies.
TCS’s global head of talent acquisition emphasized the importance of the Prime initiative in a recent interview, stating, “With Prime, TCS is making sure that we are able to secure the right high talent… Colleges will make sure that students who are offered jobs in this category do not go for another company’s hiring process.”
Expanding prime across business units
Previously, TCS offered similar high-salary packages only within specific areas like research and innovation or product verticals. However, this is the first time the Prime tier has been formally extended to include several top-tier institutes across all business units.
The Prime category is expected to attract candidates with strong programming and coding skills as well as expertise in emerging technologies like AI and machine learning, according to Nandimath.
TCS has a history of introducing specialized hiring categories to attract talent. In 2019–20, the company launched the Ninja and Digital categories, offering salaries of ₹ 3.6 lakh and ₹ 7 lakh ($4,000 to $8,000), respectively.
While the Ninja category continues to dominate bulk hiring, the success of the Digital hires has encouraged TCS to expand similar initiatives, like Prime, across its operations.
For the 2024-25 recruitment cycle, TCS plans to hire 40,000 fresh graduates from campuses, with Prime expected to play a significant role in this process.
